The Comfort Machine

by then their civilization had evolved to ruthless efficiency

Injustice and oppression had been outsourced to less developed countries

Leaving them only to

Eradicate grief

They tried all the usual suspects–

Hot tea, warm milk, kittens

Yet the mothers still grieved

So “They”

Invited the white coats to come

Put their heads together,

build the perfect

Comfort machine.

It worked of course, they were prone not to failure

As they stood at the scene of each tragedy

Bystanders on the side

…the Comfort Machine churned out its magic

Combed out the violence

scrubbed the murder

Bleached out the violation

Unthreaded both deceit and apathy 

Established a perimeter of fire

Around self-preservation

Passed a final round of shots

Among the dignitaries-

Bone bourbon, tequila, absinthe

They murmured in approval the way a barkeep might shout

Last call

As the music continued to pulse hard and fast through the crowd

Everyone turned 

To the mothers for some final sign it had worked

As the Comfort Machine idled and purred

Over the still deafening sound 

Of silenced hearts

Come away with me

thin, dark, pretty girl in the roadside diner

Come away with me…

Crosses by the highway

Words from the language of lost tribes 

Speak of both our solitary and communal grief

A crass apparition of the law

Hangs over each of us

Would be angel 

Spies the man trudging

along the shoulder

Half-naked

Exile from a violated garden

Fig leaves exchanged 

For the skin and blood of 

the One who can save us

Along this broken road

We are all

Pilgrims

The victims’ impact statement 

they said they lost them 

Tossed in the trash?

Recycled?

Whatever

I see  them clearly

The shape of ordinary Syro-Phoenician

Cursed on lined paper

Wtf.

How do you lose

The story of the rape of children

In parking lots

Playgrounds

Public spaces as well as cannibalizing

The geography of “playing house” and “family?”

You should know that the state of f#cking  Texas 

Can “lose” the words we wrote 

All they want

But the story belongs forever

To the indelible

Victims’ statements.

Serenity at the dollar store

Her grandmother holds several objects close to her bosom as they make their way to the front of the store.

Serenity asks for a balloon.

Grandmother asks, do you want the balloon or the play-doh?

Play-doh, Serenity replies.

Behind them in line, I ask if I can buy her the balloon?  (In honor of some young women I love who used to be the Serenities of the world, all grownup now.)

Serenity’s grandmother agrees.

Yet after briefly snagging a balloon, Serenity puts it back.

You don’t want it? 

No, she replies, we are going to the park and it will fly away.

We inventory other possibilities–a two-headed dragon?

Nope. One too many heads.

A bag of plastic dinos?  Yes but only this one, and this one, and this one.

So efficient, young Serenity. I give her 30 cents worth of plastic.

She gives me joy.

The Breakfast Gambler

Grandma picks out several pieces of fruit from the wire basket.  We sit and eat our respective breakfasts in silence as the pert weather girl plots the course of the storm into which we intend to drive.

I do not intend to drive, I intend to passenge, pulled along by my grandmother’s gravity.

Slow rain begins to fall as she indicates with her hands my need to wrap it up, Girl.

I ask with my empty cup if I may get some more orange juice?

She says, you drink as much as you want now, but understand this:  down the road I  am not stopping so you can pee!

I attempt my most impassive gaze, like the people on the poker channel on the tv…no tells.

Will she or won’t she?  I am betting she will.  I stake my money (and my bladder) on the belief that down the road she will stop somewhere…

So I can pee.

Wild Hope

After so long waiting

Wild hope

quietly emerges from the crowd

Some unnamed Jewish festival in Jerusalem 

Near the Sheep Gate, of course

Where we  

Lame, blind, and patently foolish

Lie prone, waiting for angels

Angels and the ghosts of gods 

Occasionally 

stir the waters

Every plural word written of 

our collective loss

Reruns the ambiguity between 

Our healing and our disgrace

Clouds in our eyes

We fail to

Drink such strong medicine

Poured out

For us

More

You want less?

Probably not 

Save the sagging bits of self left

Clinging to your soft middle

You want more

More sunshine and more rain

More fame, more privacy

More love, more oxygen in the lungs 

Once filled with more

Sing loud, sing more

Full-throated 

This four letter word for greatness

Expanding out into 

Infinite light 

Last

these ordinary words

Hewn from a tree

To the curve of the foot

Or simply endure 

Itself a stone, a hard place

To be in the presence of God

As he dips the bread into wine

Supper of blood and agony

Last…

Supper

Day

Glimpse…

Of who we will be 

The first and the last

The last shall be

First.

First you must know

The beautiful feat of God.

Legal

It has troubled me for some time that in Texas people are legally allowed to kill human beings and use their tiny, defenseless body parts for “science.”

But the two people with the courage to infiltrate and expose this science-fiction level atrocity were indicted by a Harris County grand jury for using fake IDs.

So to recap–fetus harvesting: legal 

Fake IDs: a big deal

Or are they?

I spend way too much time listening to Texas teens brag about their fake driver’s licenses to believe that we in Texas are suddenly cracking down on forged driver’s licenses.

In fact, I wish we were. 

But in the case against the brave people from The Center for Medical Progress the prosecution is selective, punitive, and political.

In fact, one has to wonder how many of the grand jurors in this case have ever owned or used a fake ID?  How many of their children are using them now?

These are far simpler, easier questions to ask than how many Texas mothers have allowed their own children to be carved up, evacuated from their wombs, then bought for “science” while the rest of us hide behind the now meaningless phrase “everything they did was legal.”

In Texas.