Camped in Edom

Who drinks from the fount
Of knowing, if all gulp
The well of being, drowned
In these libations, these dolt
Days, bathed in theophanic fire?

It is not I, nor could it be.
On YouTube and at church
I hear the maxims, those we
Have baptized, those that lurch
From Bethlehem toward Raqqa.

Who asked for this? Who wished
Into existence the acid rain and
The slave markets at Tripoli, quenched
With blood, tears, rot tissue, and sand,
The stuff of the one and the many?

Ask me not whence evil nor whither
Divine justice. The ragged mass
Cries, spits, vomits, will not dither.
Post again; sing the dirge of the crass—
Not explicit nor crude, but measured—
Sensible.

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Blood, Soil

Schoenstatt in Berlin-Tegel and
Vitally necrotic in Dachau with
Eyeballs turned to heaven; land
Washed in the blood of mirth.
The tranquil passing of the meek.

Call them martyr or Stolperstein;
Ring the bells, each note a name
Forgotten to the hell maw, the Rhine.
Ask forgiveness for bastard veins
Glutted with sheep entrails that speak.

These fields teem with new life
As the lion and lamb lie down.
Soul stuff streaks under the rice
Paddies of Huế and is now sown
Again, again for these holy freaks.

God only knows whence or whither,
Springing again in antichrist’s reign,
We may put our hope, or what feather
Cascading in smog Luft perched on slain
Peasants, the blessed may now seek.

Forgive the unconscionable; raise up
The dead who live on in winter wheat.
These days men feel each seam rupture
In abeyance to global perversions, feats
Of unholy violence, set upon—and weep

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That Old Debate Rages Today

What a day to be a materialist or
Indeed to consider Pentecostalism,
Its shaking and quaking, its horny roar,
Of a kind foreign to the pungent chrism
Of a Solovyov or Bonaventure on Easter!

It’s no time to be an idealist to
Put a thousand candles before a
Triptych somewhere deep in Togo,
Or listen to a million voices blend an
Aural Orgasm into the stylings of Norcia.

Will anyone understand before it’s
Too late? Or will we all be condemned
To hooting and hollering, to spooky fits
Of unbridled eros, the ménage à trois of
The so-called Spirit? God, I hope not.