journey something

(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.