Chronicle of Nod

 

 

In the beginning was the word.

It went downhill after that.

This shall be – and it was, in his image.

He needed help and she appeared.

He said don’t, they did, and so began

the dying, but not before the begatting

and of course, the first murder.

Cain was marked and sent to begat

out from the presence of the Lord.

 

Many beginnings since, and words

that go ceremoniously along –

All men are created equal,

We the people, with a core message

that man is endowed by his creator

with rights no government can take away.

Words that inspired a republic, with

elected representatives of the people

taking an oath to uphold.

 

There was a war to decide if slavery

was in God’s image or an unalienable right.

Trench warfare took killing one another

to new heights of efficiency and honor.

Spawned the war to end all wars,

that would end the ignorance of bigotry,

remove fascism and all its pageantry,

genocide and imperialism from the earth

forever, or at least ‘never again’ in our lifetime.

 

We have settled into a new beginning,

given new words and priorities with both new

and renewed meanings.They’re rapists.

poisoning our blood, they are animals.

The crowds roar, carry signs applauding

mass deportation. Masked police hunt down

neighbors, put them to die in camps.

The ‘never again’ is now – eventually will be marked,

sent east of Eden to the land of Nod.

 

***

 

Maybe like others

 

 

Fooling around we didn’t get to sleep until 3 am.

I’m up at six, sitting in my corner of the sofa,

on the squashed pillows you have designated

as mydomain. Sitting eyes closed, sleep depraved,

brain-dead, I can’t shake the thought of –

suppose you weren’t here.

 

We’re married fifty plus years and joke that,

I’ll be leaving you now! –

when going somewhere without the other,

but supposed you just didn’t come back.

I realize this sounds like unwarranted distress,

things like this don’t happen to people like us.

 

It flashes that these fleeting thoughts before coffee

were the existential knot in the gut, the every minute

fear under the fingernails of slaves in the south,

Jews in nazi Germany, and now, non-whites at home.

I turn on the news, a tourist on a visa in St. Augustine

is run over by a truck, fleeing ICE.

 

You don’t need to be a person of color. Maybe

you’ll be mistaken for an activist, a communist, or accused

of driving your car into a masked patriotic agent. Maybe

you’ll look too long, or hold your phone up in the air,

disappear to a gulag. This is only for others, except

 

when the others become you and you don’t even know it.