theodicy

a poem

he’d cruised the cosm
Natal to the Skeleton Coast
roasted pinyon eyes
in the floated fell
demoted whole to bodies
in death and copulation
sentenced all to both
at birth and reprehension
population curves
turned like old eggs
burned along the red coast
he sold typhus
in fucking Moscow
hired an arsonist
for the Palisades
dealt athsma hash
where killdeer lay cremated
he loosened Lake Medusa
at a fireworks barbecue
donning baggy pants
and cooked affect
as he shuddered Port-au-Prince
like a jar filled with ants
Bondye wept and both Ezuli’s
dragged out dusty Zaka
from Cité Soleil’s debris
he danced
through the wetted chambers
of the Irish Empress
where he had a simple cigarette
and simply frowned
eyes like downed power lines
teeth like mother war
plunged into infants
to suck inventions and economies
Karakum to Chernobyl
Warren County to Danakil
tides of yersinia pestis
red with puss and progress
he coughed
dead Indians with measles
a trillion tons of tears
to drench the lower ninth
(the Yangtze took two million once)
his satellites
track carbon clouds
from Edmonton to Louisville
his battlefronts leak
into your crawlspace
and kitchen, like amputees
on garbage heaps
like molded sponges
where he tests the trigger pull
of accidents and madness
his kinder hid in sewers
and there were more
who would love him
than we can spell
even as the houses lit
on Fukushima faces
and priests raped the young
and Gaza shook and starved
and nukes stood by
on the launch pads of ego
and wives with swollen eyes
trembled in bathrooms
and surgeons murdered wombs
(you know) his cocoliztli once
ate through New Spain
like a feral wretch
and his fish breath
shot hypersonic missiles
along otter coats, yes
he’s a floating signifier
with his wash and wear hair
and for bodyguards
the seven demons of cholera
his hands spread like erosion
on damp Maman Brigette

(extinctions and distinctions
that an aeon can’t reverse—
would he have us
find ourselves despicable?)

in a thief-religion
still two young lovers
eat cherries in the dark
and old friends
share the stolen dawn