deep night in the terrorist state

in the wake of the mumbai attacks

this little world i've created
is not enough
to keep out the terrorists.

compassion's not enough
nor is knowledge,
and truth seems a blight
on my consciousness.

a million disembodied
voices cry out for kindness,
but there is not enough
manna nor enough water
to assuage the infinite want.

i sit, deep in the dark
of the darkest night
and confess that i am
not enough, not enough
even to keep out my
own hopelessness.

if there were a plan for
all this carnage,
we'd have to ask what
kind of god would
visit upon us bloodlust
and hunger in order to
turn us into
worthy servants.

i can't even ask you to
ask that question,
i can't even ask you
to still see beauty
in the tiny acts of love
between human beings,
i can't ask for anything
but an end to my pain
that rages hot and endless.

something is happening
that could turn the tide:
but when i reach out
to touch it, little clouds
emerge from my mouth
and rain vomit and blood
onto the earth.
i am not a messenger
of hope, i'm not sure
i have a message at all

as i sit in the dark
of the deepest night
tranquilized with fear,
overwhelmed with terror
that seems to live within,
that seems to consume
all my attention
and leaves me black
and suicidal with despair,
my disembodied voice is all
that you know or hear.

i am a failed prophet
because i'm inside myself:
my inward terrorist winds up
turned on its head,
chanting in nonsense tongues
about love, when i wonder
if that is what we want
at all, a slap in the face
as one being touches another:
perhap we want simply to
suffer alone as a sort of perverse
justification for assumed guilt

and compassion only denies
us self loathing which
a religious education and
enough societal abuse
has hardened into our bone
and usurped the good
from our latent brain,
the one that knew intrinsically
how to survive, the question
being do we survive alone
or as a whole of good
en face the terrorist state,
when it is ourselves we hate.

can we unmask ourselves
enough to reveal the will to
revenge that lies beneath
the surface and controls us?
or do we only wish to be seen
as conscious beings
with nothing to hide at all
as we move through this world?
good luck with that,
my fellow seers and peers.
i've been abused by those
who only wanted to help
or so they said, and i've done
the same to many.

so what of good and evil?
my shoulders feel a burden
that doesn't belong to me,
handed down generation to
generation through slaughtered
jewry and la politique blasée.
but the terror sinks below
the surface and arms itself
with patience, emerging at
the right moment to cut
the enemy in twain
and howl victory to the
highest hills, which all bow
down under the sadness of
our failed evolution.