My Heart Cries Havoc!

My heart - oh, my heart -
cries Havoc! Mercy! Kyrie!
"Unthinkable" has vanished.
All, all, all is thinkable:

Waters poisoned forests flaming islands drowning -
Wolves at our doorstep with teeth of bullets -

And the children -
God, the children -
Dead, dying, futures mortgaged
Shot down in schools
Homeless in hurricanes
Motherless mobs with
Jackals as nursemaids.
A cage, a cage, for their tender age!

All, all, all is thinkable -
imagined, enacted, decreed and designed -
Locked
and
Loaded.

In a punch in the gut on the morning commute
A bumper sticker flaunts two stark silhouettes:
"Your son," the figure on the restroom door,
"My son," armed with the rifle-death-machine.
"Come and take it" demands the man
With the banner of death by the hotdog stand.

Oh, God! God! God!
What threats are here made,
taunts are here laid
down at our feet?

What will we - can we - wear to shout
our pain - shame - defiance - unity?
What rainbows? What colors? What ribbons?
What orange vests with lists of death?
What shroud, sackcloth, or ashes would be
Enough?

Enough.

"Enough" - an impossible word.

God! Oh, God! Has this world ever learned?
Do we need another flood
to wash clean our sins
of cruelty, violence, greed and despair?

Oh, God! Havoc! Mercy and kyrie!
My heart! oh, my heart!
Break my heart, break!
Oh, Absalom! Oh, fallen sons and daughters!
Fallen on the battlefield of these
thinkable tragedies!

And you who watch and teach and lead -
you who stand and speak and rule
you who make and buy and spend
and end your days when you begin -
arrest your beating hearts.
Drop into time's abyss with me
and see:

In this yawning moment
Your next words matter -

the way light matters or air
or the sun, stars, cosmos,

or this green earth that we
burn so callously
crumbling its nourishing dirt
into garbage dumps
and choking its living waters
with plastic poisons
that suffocate sea turtles -

Oh, god! Can't we see?
Every death is mine-yours-ours.
We choke and gas
ourselves
We massacre
ourselves.

We are the ones
who swallow the plastic
who immolate our souls and our futures
under this brown, sulfurous sky
while children fall - pop! pop! pop! -
to the thinkable tragedy
of our indifference.

"I REALLY DON'T CARE, DO U?"

Cyberspace is a place where nobody hears,
A soul-less Beast - all mouth and no ears -
An impotent hydra with infinite heads -
A machine made of fury, a furnace for a heart
Gorging on our madness
While we, the blind, gouge out our own eyes,
Bash in our own skulls.

Oh, God! Havoc! Mercy! Kyrie!
Let poets scream and wail!
Let artists paint with blood
and writers carve warnings on living bone
while teachers count carcasses
from dawn to dusk.

Hearts of mercury, lead, and fumes - awake!
Wail! Wail and break.

Is there not one soul living to heal the wounds?

My heart - oh my heart -
cries Havoc! Mercy! Kyrie!