a white chicken
with eyes the color of hell
roams the city
a gaggle of wheelchairs
huddles at the crosswalk
the fires still burn
throughout the city
water is withheld
and our brothers dangle
from lamp posts and trees
it is no time to sleep
our sisters are slaves
to pasty-skinned men
protected by guns,
our children cry out
for food and justice
it is no time to sleep
the hard men in suits
force us to pay tribute
to their temples built
in praise of mammon
and mammaries
it is no time to sleep
we must gather in the darkness
to share poems and plastique
to identify those who kill us
with their words and their money
and drive them into the wilderness
it is no time to sleep
oh God in Heaven
Creator of all beauty and strife:
You made us in Your image:
gave us imagination
to envision accomplishments
beyond belief:
the art of the Renaissance,
the Spanish Inquisition.
those without grace have no mercy
those without art have no grace:
they brutalize the living
in Your name,
sacrifice themselves
on Your altar of their own making;
souls lost
and fated to oblivion.
they deserve Your pity.
those who live celebrate
Your all-powerful
gift: Your challenge
to create: life and
failure, brilliance and
mistakes. hear Us:
We will use Your bounty
to transcend Our fate.
Marc Thompson is a stay-at-home dad in Minneapolis. It's a great job and a lot of work. He has an MFA from Hamline University and his poems have appeared in journals in the United States, England, Australia, Canada, and Japan. He is the author of two chapbooks: Ordinary Time and Oklahoma Heat. Good luck trying to find them.
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