Middle Finger to This Earth High On Its Own Dust
I hate this world with all its arrogance
—a basket of rotten fish high up on the shelf
of a room filled with flowers,
as if to say: all the fragrance on God’s
ploughed earth will never be enough
to hold this room away from my stench.
I have marked as enemy every field
that looks only into its own eye; that sees
nothing but the green of vines still deep
in its earth; not the halo in the sky;
not the small feet of the children dancing
in the glade. See,
I stopped loving this world when it opened
its rotten maw to swallow a gathering of boys—
boys who, though too young to know death,
knew enough of darkness—the boys,
they held out their dreams, as numerous
as the stars and willed each into a sun.
How else do I tell this mindless earth
that we do have a bone to pick? Yes, Earth
you, who chewed on the soft, buttery flesh
of hope, and spat out its bones,
the cornucopia like ugly dioramas
in the museum of time.
You, who still had the guts to swallow
offerings of tears in the wake of the deaths,
your tongue, quick like an animal’s.
You took not only the boys.
You took their mothers’ joys. You take
everything. Why earth—
do you think yourself above all
in the many worlds, when, in fact, you lie
below our feet, hungry, like an abyss?
O Fate, I born myself again today
as a lightning in the hand of God. I
will lend across the sky a mirror
to remind the world of kindness,
and karma. I will not kiss the belly
of a wicked earth without a fight.