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poem in metamorphosis

driving into twilight
with
the hands of christ

these are the words i carve
into this page in the seconds before
my wife walks through the door
to tell me a woman has
just been arrested for drowning
her five children
and where exactly can a poem 
go from here?

what hope can it offer
any of us?

and the paper is lined
and in the upper right hand corner
there are streaks of blood
from a scraped knuckle
and these are important facts that will
be lost along the way

what i wanted to do was
describe my trip home last night
through the purple liquid air
but the moment is gone

the haze has been blown away
by simple atrocity
and all i can think about
is what goes through the mind
of a six month-old baby 
when oxygen is replaced by water

how is terror expressed
without a vocabulary?

i have come to a point in my life
where i forgive no one
their acts of violence

where i sentence killers
to the deaths they've inflicted
and no
this isn't a solution
but i'm beyond caring

i am pushing against
the twilight
with the tortured hands of christ

there is no place for the
blood to flow but
everywhere

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