2004 #2

Let us pray: 2 poems for all those who have been shot without their permission

1.

Thank you for today

The daily infusion of ignorance

splashes of self righteous comment

colors too many impossible to blink impossible to

hide

the daily dosing of disenfranchised

thank you for the dysfunctional and the disaffected

because they could not be here tonight to thank you themselves

Thank you for the mouths too swollen to speak, the eyes too damaged to see, the ears and hands too broken to navigate through your spastically cut up and ruined landscape

thank you for all this wonderfully distracting noise

thank you for the bleach and water all the disinfectants too strong to resist

the disproportionately unseen are neither held nor acknowledged yet always in need of a good honest scrubbing

the contracted beyond contact the contained beyond reach the counted only as a guess from an office in a galaxy far far away

thank you for the equations to justify all this overwhelming

Thank you for the release from the box

the sac

the cell

the skull

the pin prick

shifting plates

the fissures

the forgotten spaces between

the daily ejaculations of unkempt meat the procession from father to son from infant to slaughter

Thank you for hell

and heaven looks great on the side of that tractor-trailer leaving feathers in its wake

thank you for deep fried angels and every night lit up like the fair just coming to town

thank you for the ghost

thank you for the coffee

the pavement like a coffin

the stream of cigarette smoke and blood sandwiching freshly bleached glass

the camera click and the soft tapping of feet rushing always rushing

away.

2.

Give us this day our daily ghost

our daily phantom

phantasm

nightmare

creepy holy fucking jesus mary AND joseph how how how how not even why but how?

The mild

the annoying

the profound

the sick

the surreptitious

the meek and the sacred

the lovely

the profane

Give us the strength to dodge the next insane ballistic free weight

The shift away from blue lights

the shift away from red lights

the shift away from yellow lights

the shift into darkness where all light is safe and dead

Give us the badge and the mag light

The billy club and the suit

The photo op and the blood, like another’s words, taken out of context and without permission

And give us, O holy horror, you egg stealing raptor, you bullet throwing cocksucker, the chalk to mark the spot where we will last take breath

Give us a helicopter ride to the top of the graffiti stained water tower the hunger for sterility and a liking for bags that seal

Give us portability and a head’s up when the next idiot crawls out from the back of sane to take a shot

Give us the will to push the damn things out of our faces and out of the faces of our children

the guts to slice an eye out if the shit really starts thickening

the video feed

when we’re hungry

the audio nutrient when we cry out and when we cry out

ENOUGH!

Give us, O ghost, the will to flush the toilet

--geo
jun '11


(this one was rewritten from a poem i was fortunate enough to have published in Oyster Boy Review, #3, i think...that was way the hell back in 1995)