Family History

24 August 2016, 12:45 am

It happens slowly,

all at once.

Those of them who know the story

leave those of us who know less.

We who know little

begin to pass on the narrative

to those who know nothing.

We deemed it fitting,

they were so young.

What would we tell them of the hurts,

of the anger,

resentment?

I find the story necessary,

now those who were there when I wasn't

begin to fall silent. Few now can tell me

what I don't already know.

Few now can give me what I never wanted,

what now I can't live without--

the mortar to hold together

the gross, obvious bricks I couldn't bury,

the wounds that never healed.

There are pains which cannot be relieved
by therapy, by understanding,

by the act of naming.

They must be lanced and drained,

but the tools for such grow few

as time dances away from us,

as do the Ones Who Know,

the Ones Who Might Bring Understanding,

the Ones Who Are No Longer.

Terrorist

17 November 2015

Look into a child's eyes

tell her she cannot have shelter

food, home, the head on her shoulders

because her father might kill us;

tell a boy he isn't welcome

to a childhood he'll never have

because his parents might

detonate a bomb.

Create a terrorist.

Serving the Judge

16 April 2008, 8:30 AM

Important men sit
in the corner discussing important
things theological, while I fill
coffee, bring hot water for tea,
provide for their general comfort.

One, a gentleman, the other, an egoist,
a half self-, half state-appointed god,
passing judgment without knowledge.

He asks for half & half, and stirs his coffee
carelessly, discussing the need for Christian
leadership in high places, unaware
I serve him now because he failed to serve me.
His Christian leadership has cost me much
in time and trouble, because in his very holy,
right-wing, obdurate way, he has misjudged

my circumstance. He has no way of knowing
the woman serving him, topping off his coffee,
sweeping the pocket change off the table
into her apron, has been at his mercy
more than once, and found his mercy wanting.

Fuse

24 January 2008, 9:11 AM

Sundry fuses of assorted origins—
of varying lengths and flammability—
lead to the same stolid surface
of a seething, seldom-righteous
indignation, fairly tapped at times,
though often precipitously misplaced,
unjustly projected upon an unwitting
trigger—innocuous if not innocent
object upon which blind angst is spent
in the offender’s apparent absence.