My Apology

I met a toy man with a broken nose
He said that forgiveness was the way to
Survive silent stings of remorse that patter through the twilight
Because night and day collide
like daydreams and sparrows with clean windows

We sit and spew feverish poetry at fraudulent paces
to outweigh the guilt that we share
For bombing a home in Afghanistan
and buying gasoline for camel slaughter.
We grasp the clutch and leave exhaust fumes to compete with cigarette smoke
and stare at burning prairie.
Ooooooh. Fire. Me like fire. Me make fire. Me burn trees. Me kill meat. Me cook pig. Me burn big.

Breathe in the oysters. Straight from the can,
a homeless man eats breakfastlunchanddinner, while you wait for your whites to dry.
Public
Laundry
Mat
Don’t stare. Don’t.
Don’t, oh God! Don’t say a word! Don’t! Don’t! Don’t!
Maybe he’ll leave, maybe he’ll leave
maybe I’ll go buy him some fried rice and laugh when he can’t use chopsticks

I’m shooting a .45 into the dark
and maybe I’ll hit that rapist that waits in apartments for single young women
Maybe I’ll hit that unborn baby.
Yeah.
Kill that unwanted brat.
Maybe the mother, or the father.
No.
I’ll aim for whoever pulled the plug on Terri Shivo
And miss
Because I got distracted by my right to choose.

We fly across pink clouds of fire with F-15’s racing across superheated tension.
We’ve got tone, we’ve got lock.
Fire! Fire! Fire!
And a mother weeps for her son, crushed beneath the rubble and politics from an land an ocean away,
and Janet has a husband buried beneath Twin Towers of sorrow
and children cry for parents who never left work

White crosses and all the names on the Vietnam Memorial can’t remind us that the casualties of war are the casualties
we look at the president’s reputation
we look at Euros
we look at the Dow Jones
I want blood
I want revenge
I want answers
I want my Nikes
I want ESPN
I want my George Foreman grill

America. Don’t you understand I’m great?
We don’t need you.
You like war. You like pain.
You like Ted Turner

America. What have I made you?
I’m following the yellow brick road, but it’s running red
red with agony
I sip battery acid and talk through stumbling syllables about how many mega pixels my conscience can recall.
I’m seeing bodies like a broken record player
Skip-skipping on an endless loop
Drifting through the daydreams of deception
Passion, love, hate, envy, battleships and suicide bombers
I’ll show you what’s in the hearts of man.
White noise static.

Sign father faith and free your fragmented mind.
Take it back.
Jehovah witnesses are knocking down my door,
Buddha’s selling incense in the parking lot.
Shiva’s selling karma to my niece
Father Patrick communes with the alter boy

NO!

I believe the right things for the wrong reasons.
Because you said so, because you said so.
And the reason is slipping away.
And the reason is a gun and the trench coat mafia asking:
Do you believe in God.
And the reason is Lori Hacking’s missing body.
And the reason is Elian hiding in the closet.
And the reason is nailing my convictions to a cross that we won’t look at until the blood’s been cleaned off.
And reason cannot coexist with modern man
It’s born between the pages of fiction
look under fantasy.

God?
God.
God?
God!
The older I grow the further away you seem
I know you’re there
Peaking over my shoulder as I sip spirits and sing sweetly in this young girl’s ear
Smiling when Luke and I sneaked over to the neighbor’s house
to shovel that old lady’s ice
The cynic in me counts the contradictions that lead intellect to disbelief
On mortal terms I stand my ground
Shaking because the ground is holy.
I don’t understand, but I still can believe.
And that flies in everything
I can believe.
Finding faith means losing religion,
Losing reason,
Losing logic, and due thought
While watching the sun slip behind tears of a child
I’ll look for a chance to reach out and touch you
But my doubt will only grasp air

I met a toy man with a broken heart
He said that forgiveness was the only way to survive
I’m one big apology.

I met a toy man with a broken soul
He said,
“We all fall apart.”