Armor-Plated

Armor-Plated

Everyone wants to be armor-plated,
Kevlar 3 piece suits and casual wear,
walking down the sidewalks fully bullet-proof.
Fewer connections, a lot more aloof.

Everyone wants breath guaranteed, and capes to wear
shielding the breeze of passersby shooting spit and words
to fill the fragmentary hurts to dust.

Everyone wants painless waking, no limps, no stairs,
no crooked hips or back spasms. Just a jump out of bed
toward the morning Utopia, a wander around
Walden’s Pond.

Everyone needs a piece of safety, a tag unlawful to remove,
inspected by number 103, a gilt-edged certificate and
strain free policy.

Everyone looks like a man on the run, or a shrinking violet
kept out of the sun,
Everyone keeps one eye open, back covered and
mouths unopened. Let the words stay put within their
cells under lock and key.

Everyone stings at the shotgun pops when early morning hunters
grouse their prey. No one follows the resound to its source once
the heart has jumped from fat happy to razor thin.

Bullet proof, rust proof, prove my religion, prove my God;

But the nails matched the holes in is His Hands, the spikes
the gashes in His feet. The cup was emptied fully unguarded, unarmed.

Everyone wants to be bullet-proof, not like our Christ whose skin
was thin as my own.