At Swim the Child

A word on the guilty, on the maimed – 

We healed them all, without award

Or banner hung in our name.

The Savior Our Lord Jesus Christ

Would say here a piece about harlots

Singing hosannas louder than saints

But volume comes at a discounted rate.

We’ve replaced straw mats with straw polls,

All of our lepers are gay or politicians

And the masses will never see their Promised

Land of Fifteen Minutes.  The poet asks,

What if I could tell you something true?

As though that would be out of the ordinary,

But as we read him we relax our guard against

The scarring justice of the true word,

Discovering the poet’s truth to be no more

Than the false idol of verse (although he says

He does not bow down before false…)

But it is Daniel who bows before no idol

And reeks of mane and sinew,

The chewed remains of the unfavored

And the lame.  Our debits in the den

Outweigh our incoming advances, our voices

Give no tendon to our protests, but oh

How we stomp on the notion of revelation,

Doing our best to re-imagine apocalypse

Until we are positive our mercies

Are aligned just so, our altruisms just so

Aligned to ensure fast and final entry.

***

We all separately have our idea of what fast

Means, of what final implies, we throw

Our gravel against the boulders

Of impiety, not to make a bend but to add

Our pittance in choir against the distance

Between what so-and-so said

So long ago we should do and what

Our DNA nature says we will do.  Under

What hallucinogen so-and-so decided

So long ago to define mercy is left

To other scholars, but here we are,

Crimping our ways to a will,

To a will we do not comprehend,

But not a will but a watery image

Of a will, of an ice-floe ethics

(Invented by social mores to prohibit

Basic cannibalism) straining to imply

A pattern where no image of pattern

Is implanted.  Some redactable name

We want to give this shadow, this glaze

Of conscience, this glare of morality.

We know it like we know

The fear of the child, thirty odd

Years ago, adrift in the water,

With no purchase, no hold:  this moment

Called nameless panic nameless because

Too young to know what is ending,

Panic because depth becomes measured

By a fading shadow of a board, far

Above, now far behind.  What so-and-so

So long ago throws is not a life jacket

But a ghost, and what we catch, drowning,

So long ago, is not a saving pull

But a balled weight, with our name

Inscribed:  true, deceit, true…

©2012 – Mark A. Douglas – All Rights Reserved