Blind Offenses

Fragility binds the skin of the wrist to the bone.

Yet you insist upon searching for me there
with blunt-knife kisses
clenched fists, shovels, gun butts.

I feel you as a wave forever trying
to overpower stone.

As you think up new ways to suffocate
and bury so many in receding tides
Their bones become flowers
broken and stripped by rain
but neither dead nor forgotten.
Their very existence a stubbornness
that defies you.

Yet you continue
trying to drown Hope in traffic and noise
in pompous patriotism
in effect without "cause"
to distract
to divert the world's eyes
from your face
and the way
you sharpen your teeth on time and misery
open. tear. divide.

Cutting me to bleed you.


Thirst
a sandstorm of words
Distance an illusion
Denial the blind offense
that renders a fuckable corpse
into a refuge. A trophy. Another body
Another land to be abused. Mouths and flags twist
and shadow the ground
dancing like a wind-swept noose.

I know.

Imprisoning me makes you feel free

Killing me gives you need
means
reasons
tools.

Your language of hate resonates

but Silence is the one pleasure

I will die


Refusing you.



(For those whose bloodied bodies become
the chessboard upon which global power brokers play).
For Dafur. For Iraq. For survivors. For the silenced.
For civilians. For soldiers too.

*footnote: the fuckable corpse bit is a reference to a term some friends and I coined way back
to describe our view of politics ("corpsefucking") because so much of politics today is both vulgar, dishonest, despicable but also optimistic and important. The term was intended to represent those who infect law and democracy with their greedy little diseases and in infecting law and democracy, threaten the wellbeing of every living being. This poem is about anger but also recognition. It says: tell me how to hold my anger so that it becomes a tool rather than a weapon, an open hand rather than another wall, another bomb, another war that destroys both me and you. I refuse to play this game of death and consequence by your rules.

peace!