Sometimes that happens. I can’t avoid every headline, damn it.
What is Sin?
I can point you to what catechism you choose
Or I can tell you this. The unnamed man
Who vandalized and killed the Holy Thorn
Distilled an act of speech with just one aim:
To hurt its lovers’ hearts. In actual fact
The worst things ever said to me were things
I heard said to my mother. To profane
A thing someone holds holy is to take
Their soul in effigy and burn it, so it does
Not matter then if you were only careless.
Paradise has been wiped off the map.
The inferno’s wave swept over, and the still-
Frame frames of burned-out cars mid-flight
Still sign their silent testament of ash
To what carelessness means. Do you hear me?
But it gets worse. All I can do is write
A verse as blank as my expression is
On contact with the boasted atrocities
Done in my name. They would, quite literally,
Destroy the world sooner than have to see
People they hate escape their suffering.
The people they hate are holy. Nero burns
His tiki torches in Charlottesville, and thinks
He’s good, cause Snopes debunked that faulty tale
That said he fiddled while Rome burned. He’s not.
Those torches were people, and now they’re witnesses.
Thick clouds of witness boil across the sun.
Don’t spit your decalogues at suffering souls,
Don’t pour contempt on how they name themselves,
Don’t roadblock their escapes from cruelties,
Don’t jeer and scoff, lest you turn and find yourself
An arsonist, or an idiot with a match.