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.