I wonder if they hear God
In the recoil of a gun.
Or if——
In the choir of children’s screams
They hear angels sing.
Does gunpowder rise like incense
To carry their prayers
Up to heaven?
If guns be their Bibles
And bullets be their verses,
Then let their communion
Draw them into the presence of God.
Raising. Rising. Lifting.
The foul and desecrated cup.
Despised and despising.
Infernal hells now bear them up.
Wicked tongues now contend
To shatter souls by misleading.
Toxic words will they bend,
Poison masked in gentle seeming.
Make war and put to death,
The gods of these accurséd men.
Make nothing of their breath.
And to thy God—their souls commend.
Stir and rise, lowly Fool,
Let your wisdom be their folly.
Drive back the hellish ghoul
With fire and flame and volley.
The Magician before his work
Is quite unlike The Fool—
To work his will upon the land,
Prepares he every tool.
Beneath the wary Architect—
Bends his stolen power.
By his Devilish instruments—
Falls that mighty Tower.
Play the witness—Sun and Moon—
Gradual his marching,
Inverting Death and Temperance,
His foul Path disheartening.
A Judgement on this weary World,
In madness proclaims He—
But Justice shall Fall on his head,
A Hanged Man cannot see—
A curse upon my father’s house,
And on men such as he
Who in cowardice do espouse
To stand in God, mightily.
In them you’ll find no might.
Neither find you any wit.
They claim prophetic sight
And build up gods from shit.
I dedicate this poem to far-right American White Evangelical Christians everywhere. May you die as you have lived, and may your God treat you as you have treated others.
You hold who I was, frozen in time. He is but a corpse no longer among the living. How far has he journeyed from you. How much more has he become.
O, how watchful have I been to see you unmoved. Settled like silt along the banks of fetid waters; deeply rooted like thorns underfoot.
Here we stand. Host of the dead and I. Bear you now your arms, for neither can live while the other yet draws breath. Come and find my vanities forespent.
A bloated body
Floated gracefully by.
Swollen and buzzing,
Swarming with flies.
Its eyes like milk.
Its skin a mottled grey.
Adorned in silt
On a bright summer’s day.
This semester, I’m taking a creative writing course on poetry. We examine a number of poetry genres and forms before trying our hand at writing. Today, we discussed found poetry wherein lines are composed from words and phrases “found” elsewhere. Found poetry often flips a narrative on its head or provides criticism on the source or subject from which the work is derived.
Following is my poor attempt at a Found Poem submitted as part of the writing exercise.
CW: Christian Nationalism, School Shootings, LGBTQIA+ Club Shootings, Christian Clichés
Content Warning
Jesus With a Gun
I asked Jesus into my heart!
I was born again!
I am saved.
A good christian.
Pulse nightclub,
Club Q,
Thirty-eight transgender people
Shot or killed by other violent means;
God helps those who help themselves.
Virginia Tech,
Sandy Hook,
Rob Elementary,
Parkland,
More than 338,000 students
Have experienced gun violence at school
Since Columbine—
God works in mysterious ways.
I asked Jesus into my heart!
I was born again!
I am saved.
A good christian.
Slurs are a slurry of swill.
Urine and feces
Served at wine tastings.
Their bottles are fermented.
Ours are fertilized.
Drink up.
It’s poison,
And we’re all gonna die.
Forgive all this white noise.
It’s just my religion.
A holy mission
To put women back in the kitchen.
Because I need a sandwich in this man’s world.
So break out the casseroles,
And there better be raisins
In that potato salad.
We conquered the world
Just to dump its spices into the ocean,
Like tea
On a balmy Bostonian day.
If we can’t handle it,
No one gets to have it.
White pride.
It’s a precursor to genocide.
We’ve shackled dark skinned bodies
And forced entire cultures to die.
Go ahead,
Write it down, it doesn’t matter,
We’re burning entire libraries alive—
With all the great works still inside.
So drink up—
To the new world we’ve civilized.
Or, colonized.
Shout out to Jesus Christ!
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