Filed under: My poetry | Tags: christian spirituality, Peace, Poetry, spirituality
(in reaction to this story).
Have you ever once in your life
Slept alone in the emptiness of the woods?
Have you awaken in terror
Only to behold a mountain on midnight’s horizon?
Have you sensed in your sleep
The black shadow escaped from the underworld?
Have you ever sat long enough
To consider the day of your death and how you will die?
In one moment, you will meet the faces behind your game of Risk
Are you not terrified to look back on this world from the next
And feel the haunting remorse?
You talk of terrorism and pre-emptive war
Like its chess in the park
You use 9/11 to justify your every move, your every word
But the dead of New York are begging you to holster your speech
Baghdad’s massacred are asking you to burry your violent rhetoric
The lives of our children are desperate for a new vision
And let’s be honest, your words
Are as bald-faced as the top of your head
“Enhanced interrogation” is how you dress up torture
For a Western fundraiser
I know what enhanced interrogation is
And so does your mother
And so does God
Anyone can see, this world isn’t getting any safer while
You justify violence against our browner brothers
With no real knowledge of darkness, danger, or evil
See, you’ve spent too many nights in your safe little
Seely posterpedic sleep number feather top
Bassinette
Delilah trims the hedges of your hairline
And gives your beard a warm shave every time you slumber
Your kind were born into the razors and sheers
And make no mistake, the afterlife is waiting
Waiting to grab you as you are
Waiting like a maze
And you will beg for a cup of cool water to touch your tongue
For a moment of relief from torturing yourself with the regret of your life
But that water was used for waterboarding,
And there won’t be a drop left for you
So go back to your mountain range in the great heart of Wyoming
Walk into the rocky forest until you have lost your strength
Take off your cowboy hat
Sit in that place and draw yourself inside a circle with a stick in the sand
Look your mountain straight in the eye
Fix your gaze and don’t turn away
Ask her where you are from and where you are going
Beg to understand the nature of your breath
Leave the circle only when all fear has left you
Then you will know wisdom,
Then you may find grace, maybe for you.
