Knelt in prayer, hunched before a withered book,
Or stood at attention, faded flag in hand,
We are the slaves of metaphors and memes
Life a stone is the slave of stand,
Language of the alphabet,
A lover, floundering in darkness and dampness,
Of love itself.
When the threats rained down like lava
And forged fiery beaches of hate,
I took to the podium to smother
With love the fire into steam,
Only to hear they, the unaffected,
Say, “Let’s not get political.”
The flags are at full-staff
Though Jackeline is dead
Of dehydration
And the Guatemalan boy whose name
Has not been released
Is dead
Of the flu—
The steam began to billow,
The engine howl,
The air to vibrate and scowl,
The sun to emerge from below
To erase shadows, cast doubts,
Cleave good from bad,
Stir the lover and the lout.
Time heals all wounds
And makes normal the insane,
The abhorrent, the terrifying;
Like the frog in boiling water
She distracts and delays
Until it’s too late,
Until the world becomes
A boiling caldron
And we die, alone and surprised.
The first step to tyranny is blame
Laced with fear:
Immigrants, minorities, The Other—
All who stand between the masses
And the glory of yesteryear,
When all was simple and all were tame.
Everything is broken,
From a gash in the sky
To towers of freedom
Crumbling, to unspoken
Hatred now let free to fly.
The fatal flaw is clear to those who look
(But o, we did not wish to look!):
To proclaim one thing but do another,
To promise riches and then plunder
The promise with a smile and a look
Why this Romance woven in silent sighs,
This dark electric dream that tears in two
A love, once whole, now lost in shuttered eyes?
Science, mistress of mystery, undo
The sorrow tangled in my own delight!
As the nation went insane
I hid behind outrage;
I gathered logic like kindling;
I laughed and shouted and shook my head;