Our Denial
and we rehearse our denial
written in us by our seedy histories
and the massy heritage of paged pain
that staggers our sloping shoulders
to this deft genuflection on tattered knees,
a night’s resurrection belated as day
we slope awake again today and list this
loveless stuff, our thousand missing blisses
through that hoary history that makes us me
that makes us “we”
for days have denied us and we them
again, the outside that breathes
its rehearsed lies to us, death’s residents and
this hell’s voluntary denizens
spit on that life that exudes the pit’s
stink, the breath of a God that feeds on corpses
the breadth of their beloved suffering
and a thousand other things, think,
and we pull pain further, his patient carthorses, father,
we strain again at what tethers us –
nothing but love.
Page(s) 24
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