False Portents

False Portents
(and failed importance)

So now some new prophets are spewing old judgments at
the new sins they think
the country is sinking in.
Where were they when brothers hung from trees,
their necks broken while their lynchers lit fires
and made plans to meet up for chicken fried steak
right after church and singing “Just as I Am”
one more time.

Where are your harbingers, you judgments of doom,
about how immigrants stole the first nations’ lands,
lying with pen and word about treaties and trading
and never warring again with the redman. The first
feet upon the magical land’s dirt carried the same
blood as the feet which disembarked from boats on
sand. There was no Manifest Destiny that blew
the bobbles across the sea. Where is your Great Judgment
of God
at the men who left bodies strewn across the prairie and
thought they carried orders as they rode away while
the blood seeped into sod.

Come now, you who forget your Father’s great mercy,
who ignore the greatest Command ever uttered by One.
Where are your words about buying people like firewood,
treating women like luggage and questioners like lepers
(which is silly, we know, for all we know, that even if
you could catch the dread disease for an east wind blowing,
from the west breeze slowing it all until it rested within
your next inhalation. And Jesus touched them, while all
ran from their bells and hid their children inside closets
where the foul air could not reach their impressionable lungs).

Where are your words about unreasonable force,
false remorse, religious bigots and bone-dry spigots that
once poured grace. Where, oh Seer, have you wandered
to perceive
the love so unrestrained it burns the arrogant in its flames,
returns the first blow with only stillness,
walks the second mile out of the sheer bliss of
obedience to the Son of His love

Who, better than your contemporary pronouncements,
announced the Father who rains and shines and invites
and designs the best way, the merciful way, for the

Wicked

and the Good.