An Explanation

The reason you are religious
or rather
The reason you dream of poetry
is simple:
You either wish to adorn this broken world
with lilacs
covering the dingy clutch
wiping away the eye's refusal to see
opening throats choking on unsung hymns.

or perhaps:
You wish to see for once the true face of things
expel a primal misunderstanding
like squeezing out a festered splinter from outraged flesh.
You recruit an army of assassins one glance at a time
ruthless lovers with a bone to pick.
You and your comrades plan to strip us naked in the street
cover us with kisses and adoring glances
pull us down into the mud
rolling one on top of the other.

Not many will survive this.

Names will be erased from houses.
Numbers removed from city streets. Children will cough up medication,
small redhot discs of metal,
and showers of prozac will rain down upon neatly shingled roofs.
Dazed and unwashed fathers will hide beneath kitchen tabless
Shocked and bitter mothers will scramble for the closet
hands over their ears.
Leaders will begin the cannibal feast at last,
unleashing their terrible hunger on their own thighs.
Therapists with faces painted purple and green,
lawyers with blood red flowers in their hair
will join the miserablist circus,
where the dancing never stops.

You will walk calmly through the flames
scratching lions under the chin.
You will wave at the four Gorillas of the Apocalypse
as they put the "rump bite" on the four Preachers of the Do What You Are Told.