Self-evident

"Our country is the world, our countryman is all mankind."
from The Liberator Oct. 23rd, 1857.

Give me strongest, your most virile,
Clap 'em up on the boats put 'em up on the stand
"Fifty, can I get fifty dollars for this Nigger?"

Give me your smartest, your most dangerous,
War crimes go away if you're of some use to us.
"Landing a man on the moon..."

Bloody Monday, Louisville immigrants,
Bloody Kansas abolitionists.
Lexington revolutionists.
Klu Klux Klan.
Black Panthers, Crips
Bloods, The Fallen at Sharpsburg
Or Wounded Knee.
Hiroshima. Krauts and Japs.

Some things seem pretty clear,
If the man across from you is just like you, you have problems
Killin 'em. The US military uses video games to desensitize soldiers.
But gangstas know that the other guy is just in it for him,
Just like me clawing for some power and bread.
You be killin em. Oh.
The Katrina looting in N.O.
Would be illegals,
Smashed between boats.

Red and yellow, black and white, they are precious in His sight, but instead
It's blood red, bleach white and blue.
Our country is the world, our countryman is all mankind.

I Feel Fine, Just Hollow

For Josh Metzler

I am trying to make sense of this
I know I'll walk with you again, just not for now
I'm trying not to be too serious
You'd laugh at my tears, and be uncomfortable

I feel fine, just hollow
Like the breath is missing from my throat
I sit and hear your silence echo

I'm not trying to get over this
I just wish everything would stop, just for a while
The world doesn't miss your smile
Which is a shame, cuz it's illuminated now

I feel fine, just hollow
Like some breath is missing from my throat
I sit and hear your silence echo

Wristbands, rubber ducks, sleeping bags and dust
Momentos of a past,
Everything has passed
I remember when you stood up, broken and brave
And prayed over strangers that day
I want to be like you some day
I hope I can be brave

I feel fine, just hollow
Like the breath is missing from my throat
I sit and hear your silence echo

Have fun stormin the castle
I don't know how to say good-bye
I know one day we'll all expire
Some day we'll walk again, together in other skies.

I feel fine, just hollow
Like the breath is missing from my throat
I sit and hear your silence echo

Ash Wednesday Collage

Commissioned by Michelle Hindman

I was a heavy heart to carry
My beloved was weighed down
My arms around his neck
My fingers laced to crown.
Who is the betrayer?
Who's the killer in the crowd?
The one who creeps in corridors
And doesn't make a sound

I've gotta climb to the top
Never stop til I reach it
Til I feel that I'm good
And that I'm in control
Ring around the rosy, pocket full of
Ammunition, it's our condition
Know thyself
I do not hope to know again

You gotta be good
You gotta be strong
You gotta be 2000 places at once

Time is always time
And place is always and only place
And what is actual is actual only for one time
A sin inside, sinful, sinning
Tremble little Lion Man, you're not as brave as you were
At the start, He was there,
Always watching,
Adam, where are you?
Ashes, ashes, we all fall down.

Because I do not hope to turn
I'm gonna leave you the first chance I get
You prefer the light of your TV
To the star, multi-foliate rose.
We are formed of everything we love.
I want a lover I don't have to love
I want a God who's just out to give a fuck

I am fine
Everything's gonna be alright,
Rock a bye, baby, treetop,
When the bow breaks,
I am fine
Every little things gonna be alright
Jesus is coming
I am fine
I just need one hundred dollars
My powdered-sugar funnel cake cocaine
I am fine
Clean everything
And make it seem
Like we never really needed it anyway.

Just stop and go and stop and go til you can't go anymore
We never really needed it anyway
Sick cycle carousel
It's a cold and it's a broken hallelujah
A repeating record, a happy-meal toy with a talkbox
"I love you"
Let's just keep touching, let's just keep, keep singing.
I'm gonna leave you.

Pray to God to have mercy upon us
And pray that I may forget
Because I do not hope to turn again
Addiction is symptomatic, not manic,
Addiction is a coping habit, it surfaces from time to time
In time I am lost, in time I will be the chief of sinners again
In time I am
adam
the demon sleeps inside,
don't wake it baby, dark-haired mistress,
I couldn't feel so I tried to touch
Don't wake up, sleeping sphinx
Slouching towards Bethlehem
Christ behind a purple shroud.
Salvation prayer placebos and theologies of assurance
Keep us safe and sound
Far from your arms.

Death by water, the hope only of empty men.
I made a lot of mistakes, I made a lot of mistakes.
This will be my last confession
I love you never felt like any blessing
It was not your fault but mine
And it was your heart on the line.
Between the porch and the altar, the priests weep
"Spare us oh Lord, your people"
Nothing here is mine,
There is none right.
I see Hitler in the mirror, Nero,
My cousin the "murderer,"
Of these I am the chief
Tim McVeigh, John Wayne Gacy Jr.
And on my best behavior,
I am really just like them.
My weakness I feel I must finally show
I am not who you think I am
Righteous rags, righteous trash
Rushing helter skelter to destruction with fingers in ears
For what is done, not to be done again
May the judgement not be too heavy upon us

Where will the word
Resound? Not here, there is not enough silence
No time to rejoice for those who walk among noise

Cross my arms across my chest,
Cross the ash upon my breast
Genuflect to salvations past,
Escape to future fancies
No nearer. Not that fateful meeting.
This is not a gift I can accept, but I appreciate the sentiment
My love is vain, my love is a sordid string of adulteries
And omissions of heart, head, soul and strength, not good enough,
My love has concrete feet
My love's an iron ball
Wrapped around your ankles
Over the waterfall

You should have tied that weight, tied it around my legs
(Look beneath the floorboards for secrets I have hid)
Instead you took my place, at the bottom of the lake
I renounce the voice, any impetus
i do not exist
Shut up if you want to get paid
Because I cannot hope to turn again
Sweet/salty spring, one breath, one singing
I'm gonna leave you the first chance I get
I will die all alone,
Everyone does, the moment after.
And is it worth the wait
All this killing time?

Teach us to care and not to care
Teach us to sit still.
To stop breathing, Redeem the time.
Pray for us now and at the hour of our death.

Jesus Christ, I'm not scared to die
I'm a little bit scared of what comes after
Suffer me not to be separated
And let my cry come unto Thee.
This light is too slight to hold back all my dark.
In the hollow round of my skull.
Shall these bones live?

we are all lepers here overcome by our fear of pain let us remain, numb
too real we can not feel our hands already froze holding our bloodless hearts, dear
pumping liquified apathy through our veins hands frozen to heart now we can hold
nothing else but the soothing lack of pulse still beating us we are all lepers here

Proffer my deeds to oblivion, and my love
To the posterity of the desert and the fruit of the gourd.
And God said
Prophesy to the wind, to the wind only for only
The wind will listen.

Sound the simple ash. (put on sacks)
Sound the cymbal clash, without love I am.
Wavering between the profit and the loss
The dreamcrossed twilight between birth and dying.
Sprinkle the ash on good soil, rocky soil, road,
I hope it can choke out the thorns I love.
Mercy, cover me, kill me quickly,
Because I do not hope to turn (change my heart)
Because I do not hope to die.

Solemn bell tolls deep, the ash crosses me in my sleep
Blessed is the mourning, we need help, we're still lost still
Grasping dust atoms, polar forces, the devil is raging inside me
and God? Rage on, rage on, Blessed is the mourning, my love
Flood us with Fire consume with Your raging Waters to keep us breathing give us Your feeling
Flood us with Fire consume with Your raging waters to keep us bleeding (breathe Life)
Spare us save us love us tame us
Mercy, our only hope.
Ashes, ashes,
We all fall down.

Timothy McVeigh (III + IV)

Timothy McVeigh (III)

Homegrown, Kansas corn, fertilizer for dashed fields,
Heartland, only states I feel at home. Good people. Practicality.
My dad was about to go away, USS New Orleans,
Tall hotel in San Diego,
My five-year old terror at being so far from the ground,
And what if we were bombed here too.
We would fall.
This is an act of war. (Or an aftershock of bombs in the Gulf?)
My mother glued to a television, so much uncertainty,
So disconcerting to see her so concerned.
Middle East? (Where Dad is going)
Must be? Government buildings.
The demon sleeps inside of us.
The demon sleeps inside our hearts.
Manhunt, shaved skull dehumanized,
A Ryder truck like the one we packed with boxes,
Bright yellow, like a Wal-Mart Smiley;
Bright orange jumpsuit for a murderer with morals, slightly skewed.
A soldier like my father. A murderer like my uncle.
My friends felt the shockwave from the bomb in their elementary schools.
Children in daycare. Severed limbs.
A man who lost his faith and wrote it on a cap left in the rubble.

When Colombine happened it changed our lives,
There were things you couldn't say or do,
But when Sept. 11th passed and the results were in,
With an enemy we could fight, with wars where we could say we'd win,
It was a relief, a sigh:
The demon slept outside.
An enemy to misunderstand and thus somehow comprehend,
A sad circle in a way, it was okay.
The demon sleeps.

Timothy McVeigh (IV)

I'm afraid. That my votes could create monsters.
That a headline about Guatemala could make a CIA hit okay.
That the kids in the suburbs think murder is entertaining,
That the kids in these streets think it's how you prove something.
That immigrants and families are murdered to "keep us safe."
That frying you didn't solve anything.

I'm afraid. Of how politicians misuse fear like this.
Of how much sense McVeigh makes, how coldly rational,
His vigilante justice. Of myself and my poems.
Of what I could say and what you would think.
Of saying peace when there is no peace.
Of saying anything with urgency.

Rev. King, Gandhi, Rosa Parks, we hold you as our saints--
Idealistic Saints for a bloody age, we hope,
To learn from you, a way to stop the bleeding.
Batman, Holocaust, Pvt. Ryan, Maximus, Palestine,
It doesn't seem there's another way.
Christ, we're bleeding.

Timothy McVeigh

Timothy McVeigh (I)

Bombed out, bullet-stained apartments
Justified in the name of democracy or greed or so many things
One government building
Hits so close to home.
Pull out a line of empty chairs for Iraqi children?
Freeze their moment? No, it is over, Mission Accomplished.
Ash silhouettes, flatlined dead we call our own...
America missed the joke.

Timothy McVeigh (II)

As if, as the TV says,
Violence could be redemptive...
If Fight Club is a good movie,
Is OKC a tragedy?
If the only way to get someone to listen
Is blowing up children...
But nobody's listening,
They just see a demon mug-shot,
Faces, still and dead.
Your cold brutality,
Foolish idealist!
As if, as the government says,
violence could be redemptive.

Queen St. (Toronto)

Ethiopia, Little Tibet,
every post another ten postings,
advertisements, long string of shops,
a soul of a city
sure of itself and its music,
Record shops, cannabis pipes,
Pho restaurants,
No accent seems to sound the same,
Except the repeated syllables 'coffee shop'
Six Starbucks, eh?
"Socialism is the new conservatism"
"Why a Canadian aid ship is needed for Gaza,
break the blockade."
The evening ladies' group at the knit shop
Peers around at each other, smiling,
A blast of cold air, the people are walking fast,
Don't let the cold catch.
Hockey in the park behind a woman exercising on
Cross-country skis
And an array of galleries and art supply boutiques.
I misread: "Ask is this for the community?"
Streams of smiling grafitti.

The Fenian Invasions

A good man is hard to find.
Members of the fabled Irish brigade,
Outstanding throughout the war,
Slaughtered and fearless at Fredericksburg,
Defend the Union bravely,
Down the confederacy,
Litter battlefield graves, white crosses with names.

With their own nation trying to be free,
To no longer be a colony,
An abortive invasion near Buffalo,
Canadian volunteers fall, get their names on plaques.
The reinforcements are halted by the US Navy
And Irish revolutionaries in the homeland
Are halted for the time being,
Waiting for Yeats and the widening gyre of history.