Member-only story
Guilt
A poem about brutality
All palms are pale flags, waving from masts of doomed vessels.
As bullets are lifeless, they empty bodies of their life,
like uncorked bottles tipped over. Death wears a white mask.
Death wears blue light. Everything is a windshield
waiting to be smashed. To not speak, is to pull a trigger.
All of the continents are shaking, god panning for gold
and finding nothing but broken bones. The birds forget
the words to their songs, so they just shriek
in the key of forgetfulness, the only thing keeping them sane.
Someone said Chaucer worked for the wool trade,
so he wrote about human suffering. What will we write
about our riot gear, our face shields of human silence?
A mother in yellow, beating her son on national TV,
while my new car sets unscarred in the garage.
Tomorrow I’ll walk to the mailbox. I’ll notice the tulips
and how their color leaps urgent and vitally bright.
The air might smell of mower exhaust, grass, and rain.
I’ll get in my car and drive to work. I’ll kill you all over again.
