The Arm of the World

Sometimes when I wake up on a Monday morning,

the arm of the world has gone past me overnight,

pitching through the darkness with overwhelming speed,

with the chrysalis of containment's entombed entrails bursting open.

*

I spend the day like a pendulum,

>what I thought yesterday >compared to the day before,

<what other people think <compared to what I think

>what I measure against >to what they measure against

<and compare what I think is evil >to what they think is evil,

<my experience >to their experience.<

*

>A leader claims to represent me <while blaspheming my beliefs.

>It takes less effort to work quickly in darkness <than to negotiate at dawn

>walking down from the mountain >0<into the valley of the shadow of death<

extending no mercy to the merciless, justifying killing to prevent the thought of killing

questions that have no good answer, >in the wrong application of might.

*

<My mind is not a simple world. >But some things used to be simple.

<Going for a walk <and letting your feet touch the ground,

<Planting a seed <and letting it grow.

<Then 165 girls were killed, or another number greater than 1 <the stain, divided equally between all our names,

<Or not divided, >because a drop would kill no one,

<rather that it has been multiplied <so that each of us takes on the full weight of those deaths, >and the full sorrow.

*

<Don't you see that we are all connected, that they are all our children?

<Now guilt and the stains of blood even cover beauty.

<To ask their forgiveness, and mercy, <we can't, because they are dead.

>The arm of the world has gone past them overnight, while we continue to live.