Holding onto the Bible
The air crackled with
an overload of irony & police sirens
the day the Leader stood
before the Church, shuttered and bulwarked
against our rage & disappointment
He held his Bible
awkwardly
as if handling a baby with a crapped diaper
or a hot loaf of bread sliding
unexpectedly from the oven
When you called for Law & Order
were you calling down the gods of war
like reliable but overworked Mars
or was it Ares or Shiva?
Were you channeling those prophets
of revenge, Isaiah, Jeremiah & Elija
still suffering their own forms of PTSD ?
Your fingers did clutch those pages tight
lest errant words leak out – like
…Blessed are the peacemakers:
for they shall be called the children of God.
There’s nothing like the whiff of tear gas
in the evening
