A Litany for Cryptofascists
You heard me;
you are quivering
in sanitary hostility
on a red red face.
You are a vanishing drain
of attention.
I will love you for
what you are: human.
I will disdain you for
who you choose to be;
I know you heard me.
The circuit of my eyes
holds you in black compass
though you flutter sweetly,
imagining I listen,
the golden godlike verse
ringed round your simple
mouth, open as a church
and fell as a ditch.
Instead I am flowing,
finding each opening
you have not sealed,
each port of pure rage
your world has made,
your hate's betrayed.
Your weak hands
push futilely—
never in your
superiority
have you thought
anyone would find—
the unsettled dead things;
the sucking black hole
of intolerant vanity and
bariatric desire for notice
you've fed on in your mind.
Oh, I contain legions,
and have more without.
We change endlessly,
circle ceaselessly,
becoming ever stronger
as we feed on love;
love consumed makes more love.
Oh, we will love you
until you are fat on love.
Fat as a tick,
face blanched with rue,
our love will consume you.
We will be here,
and you will not—
you will not know
when we have
had it all.
We hungry angels
feed to fly,
and full,
will lift your husk away—
hurl the rustling
shell you were to end
the lesson where it began—
with me.
You heard me.
LK Barrett lives in Tallahassee, Florida and wakes up in a good mood six of seven days. She is comforted by the fundamental absurdity of the world, the persistence of beauty, and the inexorable finality of justice. She is a Viet Nam era USN veteran, and a student of Ganteng Tulku Rinpoche. She is as yet a marginal Buddhist. She keeps trying. She has written poetry from the age of six, because she has no choice but to do so. The thing that is using her for a voice is fond of mixed meter, slant rhyme, and the Oxford comma.
