The Disappearance of the Flies

      " 'Secular humanist' - it almost sounds like mockery."
                          - Overheard at a climatology conference 


So, the word’s finally out:

I am the world's Nazi,
and you are my Jews.

Not that I hate you absolutely –

on the contrary, I enjoy you,
for the most part;

those of you I cannot eat

or flog into subservience,

to help or amuse me, decorate my

upscale live-work high-end design space

now – or by no later than the end of next quarter –

are just in the way,

as I thrust ahead

to glory, sweet power,

and a suffocating wealth

built on the dependable human delight

in the enchanted moment of acquisition.

I’ve got you,

I’ve got the world.

It is no longer God’s or nature’s;

it is mine,

I own you,

I who hate to have and love to get.

There was once a despot

whose footsteps bloodied his time.

After he had conquered the world,

bored with his possessions,

he decided to destroy them:

slaughtered his slaves, his women, his sycophants,

sent his soldiers to the ends of his empire

to pillage and sack it, out of boredom and rage

that he had no more worlds to conquer.

He burned his own palaces to the ground.

In a raging drunk one night,

he broke his neck in a ditch.

The peasants crept up to his filthy, stinking body,

the one that had conquered the world,

and watched the flies flickering over it.

There are no peasants tomorrow.

There are no flies.

Sun and Ice

With edges sharp

as your eye’s knife,

it stands, suspicious

of the rite,

the callow, beg-eyed, leg-thrummed calf,

the wet, thin-fleeced, wobbly lamb.

The chasuble

drapes the rail.

The crow opens his wintry beak.

Where’s the blood that saves the mark?

Somewhere under Easter week.

Their sacrifice

will not suffice.

The heart is made

of sun and ice.

Oh, how I hoped how we might sing! How

wrong I was. It’s like a tick,

that sticks to the skin, or jerks the eye.

The square will not

the circle win,

though roses open

in her hand

and thorns stigmata the winter land.

The altar stands

between taut oaks.

We ’wait the god

and kneel in mud.

Slap the drum.

Pluck the dance.

Eat the blood.

Horses, prance!

Bring in the callow, leg-thrummed calf,

bring here the thin-fleeced, wobbly lamb.

The eyes stare

and staring, blind.

Drink the heart

of human kind.

Love is not a fallow field.

It ripens, or it does not yield.

The sacrifice

will not suffice.

The heart is made

of sun and ice.