Unsatisfied Unsettled

    Say nothing for those who see nothing
    concealed, suppressed trauma
    and unchecked philosophy

    The grinding, ruthless race
    of unsatisfied winner takes all
    the plots of violent hearts
    and lies of mischievous mouths

    We are conditioned by a lifetime of storms
    taught the ambitions of greed and malice
    brought up to believe this is the way

    But watch without envy
    and wait without impatience

    There is no future here, no reward, no hope
    the unsettled glow behind his eyes
    will flicker into darkness.

Proverbs 24:19-20

The Visions of Iddo the Seer

    These are the visions of Iddo the Seer in the first year of King Jeroboam, son of Nebat.¹

    When the sound of the fire died down and the desert wind, full of grit, laid low, I was found naked, more than naked, outside the walls of the city. I climbed the foundation of the walls and looked about the city. I saw the house reduced to scattered stones.

    I was assaulted by terror and unable to stand. I climbed out the window and stood on the sand.

    I saw stones stripped and laid bare in blind circles. It was the house of the dead, flying the banners of corpses.

    Men cowered behind the wall. Forced through barricades into darkened corners. The city was a great inhabitation of despair. And I was afraid to scream.

    Strange visions in my head during the night. Visions and a voice that said, “You must not speak of yesterday.”

    I saw beasts and stars and horns and slaughtered children in the rubbled remains of an open air prison. A shadow army. A whisper militia now screaming for the whole world to hear.

    I saw lightning and all the shekinah glory legends, all eyes and fire in the storm hovering over my bed. I saw burning olive trees beyond the walls and checkpoints. I dreamt of burning human bones ritually defiling the land. I dreamt of fish and cucumbers, leeks, onion, garlic, and watermelons rotting.

    The voice said again, “You must not speak of yesterday.” I sat long in silence listening. Waiting for another word.

    I saw hellfire fall from the sky to burn families fleeing in the dark. I saw the earth crack open to devour and drag them down. And the voice said again, “You must not speak of yesterday.”

And I knew it was not the voice of HaShem. And all I could do was scream into the sound of the fire.

2 Chronicles 9:29

1 922 BCE approximately. Scholars continue to debate.

A Future History of a Remembered Apocalypse

    Fifteen years ago, just before midnight, on the night that the mounted police came to our door, I was in the basement writing unrhymed distortion poems for the Free-Radical Press. The horses’ Lorenz-Helmschmied barding was crafted of plaited ultra-high molecular weight polyethylene fibers. They rode silently to the door. We never heard them at all.

    We didn’t hear the blackwing Megiddo-Copters either, sweeping low over the valley with pulsar flares and active INVICTVS tracking systems. There would be no escape.

    The mounted police came with calamitous purpose, looking to deal punishment, harboring the view that the world needed God’s wrath to purify it and wearing neuro-peripheral interference shock gloves. The demands of divine justice held in human hands. We were alienated and estranged, enemies in the mind of wicked works. Dumbfounded and numb with broken hearts.

    Life inaccessible without proof of citizenship. Blood like the blood of a corpse without a demonstration of loyalty. Compliance. Peace through strength. And peace through blood. Split skulls and spilled blood. Casualties mounted.

    We heard a voice over the loudspeaker call out the command, “Go!” And the cavalry attacked, a hellish invasion with bitter biologicals and chemical weapon sprays. Federally authorized weapons of mass destruction. Flashes of fire and brimstone smoke and sulfur.

    An army of red-blooded pressurized American patriots was gathered at the place, ready to make an overwhelming assault with fireworks and jump-cut explosions. Two hundred million poorly trained agents authorized to use excessive force without legal restraint.

    I saw single mother saints and brown skinned prophets shot down and trampled. The house erupted into flames. I ran out of the house, scrambling to put on my shoes and my coat as I fled.

Revelation 16

A Technical History of Violence – part 1

     Si vis pacem, para bellum.

    Our contemporary language is indebted to the Roman men of action who had as many great words as they had weapons to wield when they needed them. Semper Paratus. Semper Fidelis. Great words to describe the human physique. Great words to understand the anatomical structure – jawlines and bone structures – of their subjects. They knew how to describe a variety of pharmaceutical effects. They knew how to accelerate the process when necessary. Roman guards with hammers and war-clubs killed as many as five hundred prisoners a day and filed the proper reports.

    But the toughest part of the executioners’ job – taking hours, if not days, sometimes as long as nine or ten days – was figuring out what drug and what dosage, precisely to finally kill the victim. Too much of the wrong drug and too little of the right drug produced equally unsatisfactory results. Administering the drug was precision work. You have to account for fungus and pH levels in the water, for barometric pressure, and semi-erratic auguries. Traumatic exposures of this sort often left them bleeding to death from the inside.

    Pause for the audience – seated at the bar in red shadow and gold lights, a moody backroom at the club on the corner. Drinking cheap beer. “Buy us a drink, player?” Lights flash green and gold in rhythm to the music from the jukebox. They do not look at themselves in the mirror behind the bar. Cigarette smoke drifts. Breathe. Prepare yourselves. Make your orisons here.

    They caught their victims by the beard – in every battle – caught them and smote them. Slew them with sword and spike. Many well-respected generals of the law were drawn out of the paw of the lion. They abandoned their soldiers to slaughter. All men most miserable, their young years given to cruelty and to blackmailers. Betrayed. Soldiers who trusted the day. Soldiers who braved the night, but were led to the slaughter.

    Our responsibility is for war. Our responsibility is to strength. In order to raise the mighty warriors of tomorrow, the soldiers of future generations, it is imperative that we make all the natural preparations. They need to be taught verbally. They need to be tested physically. This is freedom. War provides and strength enables everything.

First Level Documents

    Initiate search protocol:
    Translate and log variable data – sort by date (approximate) and/or subject.
        Variable mood. Variable weather.

    Please enter your personal ten-digit security code now.
    Computer beeps confirmation.

    System verifies coded pathway. Engage.
    View: local news: pentagon threats.
    View: secret information – first level documents

    Interpol documents (digital transfer from Denmark, from UK) indicate a history of domestic violence. Trying to leave chaotic and dangerous situations -Noted: Lack of intervention. Noted: Lack of response. Thirteen minutes of inactivity*unexplained.

    Sort: War
    Sort: Death
    Sort: Sorrow/Tears *exception-tears of joy.

    Exterior night and interior darkness. A web of branches over uneven ground. The world falls silent. Darker as it moves deeper out of sight. A tingle of electricity in the beating EKG monitor.

    Vaulted walls open. Chambers open. The wall, the rumbling floor are spinning.
    Cleared access – second degree secrets. American assassinations (cash exchanged)

    View: Local News. Police reports
    Null.
    View: Local News. Police investigation.
    Null and void.

    Clear path. Closed loop process.
    What a man knows in secret cannot be used.

The Night of the Murder

    We saw this coming. Everyone knew. But everyone looked the other way. Pretended not to notice. Or to care. We were all tense. Unsettled. We were nervous. What could we do?

    Which isn’t to say…

    We’d seen the photos. We saw the police on the street, the detectives. We saw the reporters and the news crews. The bathroom window broken. A stranger on the corner. An unknown car parked across the street.

    We closed the doors. Like being in a void. Avoid. Weightless and unreal on the floor. Fallen. The press of feet and hands on my face, my head. Stopped center. Even my skin was ill at ease.

    But what do we know? We were obscure strangers in the dark.

    “What?”

    “We don’t have to…”

    “We don’t have any choice.”

    “Of course we have a choice. We always have a choice. God damn!”

    “Sorry.”

    That got half a smile. But not much more. And no news.

    “Never go that dark.”

    The shadows continued collapsing into the basement where he kept his pornography, his filth. The beginning, middle, and end of all his horror. All the conversational cause and effect, false affect. Fate and destiny forever just below the surface, continuing inevitable. No one paused to consider these things. We barely spoke to each other.

    We smoked cigarettes.

    I remember one woman, a local girl. Unzipped. On her knees. Surrounded by broken windows. Sightless windows. Half remembered buildings passed by, offices moved to new, brighter premises. A disused playground, abandoned by progress, forgotten by the future. Children crossing narrow pathways to secret places. Sheltering in improvised homes here and there.

    Some desire nothing but to keep as they were. Some forget. Some sleep.

    No. No. Forget it all. We had no recollection of night of the murder whatsoever. No barking dog. No surveillance. Nothing. We were trapped. Cold and nervous. The following gaze of prying eyes. Only moonlight on the lawn.

The Verisimilitude of Truth

    Ready now. This is all the warning we’re likely to receive, and we are already sinking. Check winds and tides and set sights for enemy lines. The right kind of people have the right kind of skills. Men of arms and a warrior ethos. Bear down and engage. Clear the fleet for fire.

    We hold these truths to be self-evident:

    The people of Iran want freedom – therefore we must bless them.
    The people of Iran are terrorists – therefore we must bomb them.

    The military has directed energy weapons, microwaves, and laser beams. We saw dragons and we saw drones. Sound waves and energy raves. Their heads were exploding inside their skulls. Bleeding from the nose. Vomiting blood. Moving helps with the pain, but they fell, incapacitated. Good show. Show death like a sleep and let them cry for water. No one has gone consciously unto heaven from death.

    Gunshots continue.

    Somewhere off the coast of Yemen, a U.S. reaper drone fires a Hellfire missile at a flying, glowing orb. A kinetic strike by Hellfire missile results in destruction. In explosion. Details remain unclear.

    45% of Precision Strike Missiles
    50% of THAAD Intercept Missiles
    50% of Patriot Air Defense Missiles
    30% of Tomahawk Missiles
    20% of long-range Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missiles
    20% of SM-3 Missiles
    20% of SM-6 Missiles.

    Depleted.

    Decades and centuries. I was there, strong and full of life… a threat to global peace and security… the most vicious of all the little Satans… Brutal new age powers. Richer. Stronger. Vigorous voices beg no forgiveness and make no apologies.

    We are scouring Hillary Clinton’s 30,000 retrieved emails for clues. I myself haven’t read them, of course, but I am familiar with the contents. I know all of what I need to know. The information I received had the verisimilitude of truth. I read it quickly enough, skimming for what stood out to my eye and my mind. I regret my confusion and wish to clarify...

Before the Money

 

    The other day I wrote a surreal sort of crime story: Money Makes Demands. I thought it was going to be just a one-off bit of writing, but today I've written a sort of backstory for that story. 

Before the Money

    How did it begin? First point – and on this he was very clear. Certain: I would give him an alibi for the time of the murder. And just like that, I was in for better, for worse. For risk and reward. For crime and punishment.

    I’d been a man without a safety-net for too long. Not destitute, not yet. But these were desperate times. The obvious shocks and lesions of international discomfort and internal abuse. Living in danger both foreign and domestic. And here he was offering me money for a job – a job that would cost me. Laurence had the notes, the books, the one remaining letter, and – importantly – the motive. I was to be a blind. A shield.

    I was to be the protection and security of division. What he hadn’t inherited, he’d taken. What he hadn’t taken, he’d destroyed. A known offender. There were stories of contacts in Italy and Spain. Trade in Eastern Europe. All the illusions of a criminal imperium of a mid-level boss. And me – just another day player. An unnamed extra in the night.

It wasn’t always like this. Golden nostalgia tells me things were in the long distant past. But too much time passed now. An ex-wife or two. A foundered business. My daughter – was she angry with me? The two of us alone for so many years and separated now.

    Thirty years ago, thirty-five, there had been adventure. Promise and challenge. There had been love – or the expectation of love. All of it unfulfilled. No champagne. No lunch at L’Adagio. I had the early trauma and long path of failure same as anyone. What secrets did I have? Laurence knew he could offer and knew I would have to accept. ­The bright light of youth had gone out years ago.

    Laurence gave me the list:

    -Theft from property
    -Homeless
   -Disappeared and unidentified
    -Apparent suicide
    and
    -No record of employment

    “What does any of this mean?” I asked but Laurence only raised an eyebrow. He wasn’t one to answer questions.

    “You want the money? You’ll follow instructions. Details will follow.”

    Money was transferred with a pen and a click. Payment message received. Now I was obliged to follow through. There was always a choice. Choices and options. There were choices that had to be made. But was I prepared to kill for them?

    The law firm downtown where Laurence held office was a false front. That was obvious. No investigation was necessary. I took the money along with the list. He motioned toward the door. But I hesitated to leave. Not that it was warm and dry inside – though it was. Not that it was pouring outside – though it was. But a reluctance. A reticence. I knew what I was getting into.

    Or thought I did.

    The night that followed, behind the Leslie Houses in the dark, working over the earth. Digging in the uneven ground. Soft earth and wet leaves. Dark but not silent. I could hear the murmur of voices, muttered prayers and intimate whispers. Screaming fathers. Laughing children. Televisions and barking dogs. I worked quiet, looking for the older graves. “This is the first test,” I told myself. “This is the first of what will come.”

    I crouched in the dark. He hadn’t said grave robbery. But would I have refused? Could I have refused? The world fell silent. And now it was raining again. Drenched and slipping in mud, I was nearly done when my phone rang.

    “Get the item and get out of there. Now.”

    Head beating. Surprised by tears. Somewhere between scream and sob. I couldn’t help myself It felt like a dream. Rush run faster. A kind of clarity in movement. Thrust. Double back dark but not empty. Across the field. A glance back and no one. The car was waiting. Drawn up and ready and away. I’d become another crime story. I would make the delivery and wait for the next assignment.

***

    The fact remains that I’d tried to call my daughter earlier that day. Truth, whole truth and whatever. She was always the one to charge in and change until things worked again. She was the one who looked after people She looked after me after her mom left us. And again, after her stepmom left. And then, somewhere along the way she’d left me to. Or I’d left her. Or both.

    She didn’t answer, of course. Maybe her phone was turned off. Maybe she still didn’t want to talk to me. There wasn’t enough evidence to convince her of the better life. I already tried.

    Our last conversation was a shortness of breath. “I’m not really interested,” she said at the end. “You don’t have interruptions. You have objectionable characterization. You have the resistance of a moment.”

    “We need to talk,” I said to her voice mail and put my phone back into my pocket. I told myself that I would try to call her again later. But I knew it was unlikely.

    Meanwhile – Laurence…

    Someone was in charge, but I didn’t really think it was him. Strangers not friends, someone else was in charge. It could have been any number of blood sucking ticks from any one of the families that had moved into controlled territory. A pattern of abuse that led to the death of his victims. Hurt and humiliation. Hurt and burns. There were people chattering on the courthouse steps and women in the bathroom – but no one was talking about him. Whoever he was.

    The trial was over before it had begun. Betrayal was there. Say what you want. What now? More questions?

    I checked my phone for any sort of response and went outside for a cigarette. If anyone was going to find me, it wouldn’t be there. Walking away, unstuck and open. Skulking around outside. Chain smoking on the stairs. Worrying about everything. I was still trying to make sense of it all. Life in the past few days or months or years… I couldn’t make sense of any of it.

    What was I doing in this hotel room? This hotel room? I didn’t understand but maybe that was the advantage of disappearing problems. I was scared – an odd inglorious feeling. I was frightened. There was real trouble – of falling – of running from police. Released from the rails and real trouble. There were gunshots and breaking glass outside and the crash of falling bodies. I hooked the chain on the door and turned off the lights. I lay on the bed and starred at the ceiling.

    Spiders and sex workers running through the night. The mercurial mercy of doctors, cops, ministers. It was all betrayal. Betrayal and murder. And I still had to set up that alibi.

    Kicking myself now.

    What could I say? I knew the despondent feeling of wanting the consolation of a woman. The remembered past was locked away. All you could do was deal with the pressure brought to you. I might have made mistakes. You make a lot of mistakes along the way – but there had to have been a few good decisions too, right?

    More gunshots and the sky broke.

Money Makes Demands

    It was both later and earlier than I realized. It must have been some time after midnight. I was in a thin corridor, crowded and cluttered with posters framed photographs – all the artifacts of a rich man’s gilded and spoiled history, that led away to the left. I considered the hallway a potentially useful exit, especially as they approached. Laurence would be here soon with a list and inventory of demands He was expecting another fourteen grand from me, but I didn’t have the money. I never had it, any of it. The whole deal was skunked from the beginning. Confound him and his perpetually raised eyebrows.

    Yet, let it be said, the old man did, in some ways, remind me of the moon.

    Looking around, I saw little in the way of any other help or aid at the far end of the room. One victim was still there on the wall. Flashed and slashed. Beside the body was an old television on a stand, pointed at the corpse. Some silent film noir played upon the screen. A man in a fedora, a woman with a gun… Beyond the archway was an open-plan ceiling. Moonlight but no escape.

    And at the far end of the hall, yet unnoticed by everyone, a room without a view. I stared into the blackness and felt the faintest rush of morning air. Something breathing. A way out? Or was it just another way further into the dark? There was no time for this or any of the other old debts.

    “Why am I here?”

    I stepped and staggered over the unmade bed, ignoring the blood on the bed sheets, withdrew the key from my pocket and told myself to breathe. And breathe again. When I arrived, I had expected something to happen, but not like this. And now it was too late. Treacherous panic reared up within me. I narrowed my eyes and, despite the stench, breathed in through my nose.

    The old man’s lower body was gone but not through the open door. Exposed from the waist up. Arms pinwheeled, hands pinned. A body posed in perpetual tumble. Mickles and muckles on my mind, I must have missed much. Like the fact that one of his eyes was smaller than the other. The other had been gouged out. He was old and severed by a vicious knife wound. The cause of death couldn’t be clearer.

    Two years ago there had been another the same. Slashed and flashed. Left in the basement surrounded by pornography and filth. Laurence had come back sober. His share of horrors was particularly dark. After the fire, no one attributed it to coincidence. Burning old news and secrets. So many secrets.

    “Why am I here?” Drop everything. Go. Follow. Flee. Get out.

    There were additional stab wounds, but I didn’t have time to count them. White, now desaturated. I’d taken too much time getting here. Clearly too weak, too feeble. Too late to form an opinion. Trying to think. Trying the door handle.

    One last time, “Why am I here?”

    I thought once more of my family, my daughter and all the notes and maps in her room. She knew about this. Probably. All that research in the libraries of Europe, she had to have known. Right? Either it hadn’t registered or she didn’t want to risk telling. Was it all my fault? I wouldn’t doubt it. I had failed her too often. The last time I’d seen her was at the carpet shop, abandoned there. I couldn’t expect her to wait anymore.

    I paused. Was that the elevator? Someone upstairs? Down? I opened the window and peered out. Moonlight was spread across the lawn like silver milk. There was nothing in the unsupported air. Had someone called the police? Where were the lights and sirens? Why the delay?

    I buried the key beneath the books and journals and newspaper cuttings inside my backpack. Laurence would demand it. Money makes demands. Always. Eternally insistent. Another pause and I shoved my backpack behind the bed. Further behind.

    “I heard that you’d called,” Laurence said from the door, annoyance in his mouth and that superior arched eyebrow. The man standing there in that silver three piece suit and silver revolver in hand. “And now you are going to...”

    “I’m sorry,” I blurted out, spinning round. “I have to you,” I stuttered, words spilling out of my thoughtless mouth. “I mean, I have to tell you. There can be no excuse. A full report, properly. In person.”

    “Why are you here?” Laurence asked. “It can’t be because of Franklin, can it?”

    Silence.

    “Was it something to do with Franklin? It’s very important that you tell the truth. Don’t lie to me, my boy. My good boy.”

    Silence. And then “I can’t tell you that right now, but if you’ll give me, if you’ll let me…”

    Sudden gunshots and armed intruders, masked, crashed through the door. The military police had finally arrived. Splintered boards clattered across the room. From where I lay, prone upon the floor, I watched as Laurence turned his gun upon the police. He fired once, twice before a salvo of automatic gunfire ripped him to shreds.

    I screamed my way into the darkest levels of hell.

Let God Arise (Psalm 68 Roughly)

(1-6) What Are We Going To Do?

    What are we going to do? That’s what everyone wants to know. Your talking head propagandists, your nationalist social scientists don’t know. These scholars and lobbyists claim to see the invisible hand but cannot see the kingdom of God in history. What are we going to do? We cannot claim the banks and loans and deals and assets on your books. What are we going to? That’s what the managers of decline are asking. That’s what everyone wants to know.

    Have ye not read?

    Do not consider riches as private property but as common good. Your economic philosophy is in practice, godless. Insatiable greed. Domineering avarice. They demand the spirit of men and destroy the breath of women. They deny. They defend. They depose. But they cannot explain the irruption of the spiritual in the physical realm. Fools of one flesh.

    Like the smoke of a fire, drifting gone.
    Like melting wax in a fire.

    Let God arise -Father and defender of orphans and widows. Sheltering the homeless lonely in a holy place. And prisoners too. Freemarket rebels can find their own place in the wilderness. Let them have the bootstrap deserts they have made.

    What are we going to do? Ride through the deserts – let them see.
    What are we going to do? Build a road through the desert for the Rider on the Clouds.

    Sing and play music. Dance and be glad. But – and I love this part – What does the Rider on the Clouds need with a road?

(8) A Sweaty Sky

    Too much, too much. We are overwhelmed. Even nature by fear is beset in the presence and glory of the one who strides across the desert. The wind stops its bluster and blow. The great expanse of heaven gets nervous. The sky breaks out in sweat and rains shower down upon the earth.

(12-14) A Long Sequence of Non-Sequiturs

    Chieftains and kings of armies, having failed in highly confidential negotiations and transactions, having failed to deregulate, or discourage the enemy, are in flight, in flight. Their ambitions in flight. Their strategies are not working. Gathered militias and blockading forces have failed to secure the straights despite the outlandish destruction of material property and the slaughter of civilians. They are loose-tongued commanders with no charge.

    The nuclear maneuvers of fighter jets and submarines turned back and routed. Rerouted.

    Meanwhile the women – fair and beautiful – at home divide the spoil and booty of war -sorting through the pots and saddlebags for free blessings as they sit in the sheep pens. Sheep pens!

    They are singing the good news.
    They are singing and at ease.

    Then there’s something about metallic doves with wings of silver and pinions of green-gold. Victory doves. This is not an assault. Peace doves. This is not an attack.

    Now the snow is falling on Mount Zalmon – which might be something clever about white snow on the Dark One. No more bluster. No more bloviating boast or bluff. Disordered, self-glorifying kings are scattered as the purity of snow falls on the mountain.

(20-23,30) The Contradiction of Blood

    This God of ours, this God we know
    This is the God who saves.

    Take comfort in the Violence
    and the Vindication
    though it seems like contradiction.

    He smashes the heads and long-haired skulls of his enemies, the hairy crowns of psychopathic gunmen. Bullies and bulldogs. Abductors. Exploiters. Captors. Slavers. Smash them dead! Liars. Thieves and Liars. Murderers from the lowest and highest estates. Smash them dead! Dictators. Authoritarian tyrants and Fascist fools. Smash them dead!

    He drags them back from the hills, drags them back from the sea to do it all over again so you may bathe your feet in blood.

    But! A word of caution. A word of restraint. Take warning here: Our enemies may not be his and he will fling far and scatter wide all who take orgasmic delight, all who take profit and material gain, from the horrors of war. You have been warned.

(24-26) A Musical Interlude

    The noble procession proceeds:
    Singers ahead (sing good news and at ease)
    musicians behind
    and in between are
    are row upon row
    of beautiful girls
    beating their drums.

(28-35) Let God Arise

    Take command – it befits your power. This is the way. One way. Take command; it is yours. Reclaim what is yours, most powerful, most respected, inspiring awe and admiration of the entire world. Stop the wars that we have unleashed. Bring unity to the world we have divided. Bring prosperity to the world we have plundered.

    Rebuke the crocodiles in the reeds who lie in wait to devour. Rebuke the bulls who rage and trample over us and our children. Rebuke the silver idolaters trading in secrets and exploiting the mammon-market.

    Sing this song, Play and perform it for the Rider of the Heavens. High heavens. Ancient, primeval skies. Singers ahead (sing good news and at ease), a crescendo of instruments and the climactic pounding of drums. The crash of symphonic cannons and solemn bells and chimes and gongs.

    Then let the reverberations of silence ring long into eternity.

    The Kingdoms of the earth with outstretched hands. Europe. Russia. China with outstretched hands. Latin, South, and North America with outstretched hands. India, Australia, Palestine, Cuba, Indonesia with outstretched hands. Syria, Venezuela, Kenya with outstretched hands. All the tribes and nations of Africa with outstretched hands. All islands with outstretched hands.

    Speak with a voice of power.
    Splendor in the clouds of power.
    Awesome strength and power.
    Blessed be God.
    Amen.

See Also: 
Let God Arise (a sermon)
and
Sweaty Sky (a limerick)

Desperate Signals

    Please. Hear me.

    We are captives of a brutal peace. Another spectacle made of blood, suffering another forceful assault. Anther succession of mortal explosions and the corporeal fire that burns even the air. A proud legacy of street-level violence. Machine gun mounted motorbikes and government guns on pickup trucks flying vulgar presidential banners fire into the gathered crowds. Public protester executions. Beheadings and gauntlets. Gassing socialists with illegal chemicals. Hacked thousands flee as refugees.

    There is an inequitable Armageddon at the door – the imbalance of munitions and humiliations over hunger and rotting sickness. We’ve scuttled past the strong war warnings to push the clock forward – the symbol of our destruction.

    We are traded for betrayal. And the same fate for many undefined sins against the state and houses of dynamite. Times of trouble such as never was such a wasteland. Repeated. Desperate rejections of this regime. We are begging in waves. The blood of ten thousand. The day after and again repeated. The fallout of chaotic response.

    The artillery ambitions and strategies of the resource savages – those who buy and sell the world beneath and cap the sky above have brokered evil in this place. Millions of tons of debris, the rubble of ruined lives and unexploded ordnance. We know the wickedness of their weapons. We know the vanity of their lives. We are nothing but physical potential forces to be added up, accounted. The ledger of our lives allows only a little fight. The military turned in and the open energy of our vitality transferred out.

    All military economies are thus. No neighborly peace, no negotiated truce behind locked doors. Savage battle is how things are done here in the crucible of war. Exploitation and salted earth. No cease fire for bitter arguments. Cold blood despots make sick peace jokes. The catastrophe of intimidation power. Normal procedures are followed for murder – in secret, unacknowledged or publicly documented. Either way there should be no flesh saved.

    We are besieged. This is the plain and forecasted truth with dangers exposed. The infrastructure of invasion turned inward. All choke points secured. Cut off by simultaneous offenders. It is an open secret. The poisonous promotions of violence and horror. It’s a game to them. “Shooter, shoot her!” comes a faceless command from the demons of common criminality and civil battery.

    From the ramparts of history, we’ve been raised – to live and die within the walls of a conquered city, but we are silenced in this day. Four years already and three years more. And then? Our desperate signals sent out, stand up nation to nation. Land or sea. Still there is no response and the days are unshortened.

    Please. You know the answer.

Now For War

    Now an apocalypse of our own making.
    Now an apocalypse we can use.

    We are bombing schools for the cause of Christ
    And the Christ, Inc. shareholders approve
            (but deeply regret the inevitable, but very necessary, tragedy)
    of bombing hospitals.

    Appointed, anointed
    and the self-aggrandizement
            of worms who are not men
    to light the signal fires in Iran
    to cause Armageddon
            explosive encounters
    to mark the return of Jesus
            false face actor of a
            grotesque eschatology,

    crude bones unsubstantiated
    and the groping swagger
            of insatiable egos
    flaunting the marks of its colors

    burn gold, silver, and precious oil
    your greater condemnation
            revealed in fire

    the Earth groans murder
    under the villainies of your theology
    the fires of signal men shriek faster
    and strip flames from the doors of hell.

    Now for war.

A Daily Resistance - February 9, 2026

    Take these unresolved fragments: 

     I’m writing – but who’s reading? Singing, but who’s listening? And will it be remembered?

    Have you seen the news today? Have you heard the reports of an estimated 200,000 women, pregnant with Iranian infants, children – bayoneted, suffering tormented, demented attacks, buried alive with gouged out eyes? Stripped and kidnapped of political power. Deplorable American worship. Naming it thus was always justified.

    Is it vanity to want to be remembered? To make a mark? To leave a legacy?
    Is it vanity to want to be recognized? To matter?

    An uncontrolled psychosis far from normality – still too close to the moon. Beneath the shadow of this failed republic. The violent fragments of American cities explode and fling themselves into the fire.

    In a hundred years who will remember my name?
    In fifty – who will care?

    Have you seen the news? Autospeak machines that speak of wars and secret empires. Speak of a superior race and the toxic price of infrastructure.

    I am lost in the smoke and haze. I am swallowed up and lost in the chaos of our times. Swallowed up and devoured along with the great mass of women, children, and men. All consumed. All forgotten.

    Trumpet radio announcement vile screeds. Shackling perversity to God’s own firepower Repudiate his racism or stand with him condemned. Stick out your chest and raise your chin. We see you. We know.

    Still – I am writing.
    Still – I am singing.

Our Earth We Now Lament To See

 

    I found this hymn by Charles Wesley in our methodist hymnal (#449) today. I came home after church and quickly recorded my own little version of it. Wesley's words, my melody. 

    Our earth we now lament to see
    with floods of wickedness overflowed,
    with violence, wrong, and cruelty,
    one wide-extended field of blood,
    where men like fiends each other tear
    in all the hellish rage of war.

    As listed on Abaddon's side,
    they mangle their own flesh, and slay; 
    Tophet is moved, and opens wide
    its mouth for its enormous prey;
    and myriads sink beneath the grave,
    and plunge into the flaming wave. 

    O might the universal Friend
    this havoc of his creatures see!
    Bid our unnatural discord end,
    declare us reconciled in thee!
    Write kindness on our inward parts
    and chase the murderer from our hearts!

    Who now against each other rise,
    the nations of the earth constrain
    to follow after peace, and prize
    the blessings of thy righteous reign,
    the joys of unity to prove,
    the paradise of perfect love!
    

A Hymn for Christ the King Sunday

Happy Antifa Sunday. This is a hymn I wrote for our church service this morning. 

Let congress, and parliament,
kings, and premiers and presidents,
Confess the truth and now repent
Before the King.

Confess that we have gone to war,
Killed our enemies and ten thousand more,
We’ve ignored the voice of the poor
And suffering.

All our violent, warring states,
Founded on vicious crimes of hate,
And built with greed insatiate
Are worthless things.

May all earthly empires fall,
Scattered hard and not recalled,
Let the Lord’s victorious call
Forever ring.

Let the whole world be amazed
By the one who died and was raised,
Lives forever to be praised
And hailed as King.

All the humble and broken ones,
Neglected daughters and forgotten sons,
Will be like the stars and the sun
Bright shining.

Christ the King, with nail-scarred hands,
Will bless the people of the lands
Who acquiesce to Love’s demands
For living.

The Owner of this Property Is Armed

 

For the past several months I have been working as a United States Postal Carrier in a rural community in central Iowa. It's hard work, but I enjoy it. I'm outside, working independently, and helping the community. It's good work. 

And I observe a lot as I carry the mail. All through the month of October I watched people putting up thier Halloween decorations. Now those are coming down and Thanksgiving and Christmas decorations are going up. 

One of the things that I've observed at a number of the homes that I deliver to are stickers at the front door that declare: The owner of this property is armed and prepared to protect life and property from criminal offense. There is nothing inside worth risking your life for.

Now - the question I have is is this: IF there is nothing in the house worth dying for AND the owner of the house is still willing to shoot and kill for it - what does that say about the owner of that house? 

If none of it is worth dying for - why are they willing to kill for it? 

Burn It Down

    Jesus and his companions watched the news with horror – the rioting, the buildings on fire, people shouting in the streets, broken glass, shattered skulls, horse mounted police trampling protesters carrying nothing more dangerous than cardboard signs, riot squad officers firing pepper balls at reporters and cameramen, firing tear gas and flash grenades into the crowds to provoke them to violence.

    “Jesus,” said Matthew. “I’m so sick of the division and the strife. Can’t people just get along?”

    Jesus turned off the television and scolded them, “You think I’ve come to bring peace? Do you think that’s why I’m here? Shit no. I came to start a fire, and I wish to God it were already burning.”

    “Burn it down!” whispered Andrew beneath the keffiyeh he already had wrapped around his face, and shook his tightly clenched fist in the air.

    “But,” Matthew objected. “Destruction of property isn’t a valid form of protest.” 

    Jesus laughed. “Just wait a few chapters.” He laughed again.

     “It’s going to be divided houses from here on out – three against two, two on three. This is the uprising, the struggle, the intifada. It’s the end of traumatized truth and tortured dreams, but the end falls hard. Fathers and mothers against their children. Children against their parents. The world upside down until all is made right. Till one can walk on through without feeling like they’re in hell anymore. The roof is on fire, but we don’t need no water. Let the motherfucker burn.”

The Stand and The Politics of Jesus

I’ve read Stephen King’s apocalyptic magnum opus, The Stand, repeatedly. More than half a dozen times. It’s a powerful piece of work. Maybe he does, as he admits, have a case of “diarrhea of the word processor,” maybe 1141 pages (in the uncut 1990 paperback edition) is going on a little long. Maybe. But the book affects me; I am hung upon this “long tale of dark Christianity”.

I've also been reading John Howard Yoder’s book The Politics of Jesus and it strikes me that there is some significant overlap. Absurd, I know, but it’s there. 

As the book nears its climax,   Stu, Larry, Glen, and Ralph (along with the dog, Kojak) set off on foot from Boulder, Colorado - sent out like the disciples of Jesus (“go in the clothes that you stand in. Carry nothing.”) - towards the Dark Man and his legions in Las Vegas, and the threat of death by crucifixion.  Before leaving, Larry Underwood asks, “Do we have a choice?”

Their spiritual guide, Mother Abigail, says, “A choice? There’s always a choice. That’s God’s way, always will be. Your will is still free. Do as you will. There’s no set of leg-irons on you. But...this is what God wants of you.” (King 905)

It’s a foolish quest. But they go, and willingly, towards an uncertain end. 

Yoder writes in The Politics of Jesus: “The key to the obedience of God’s people is not their effectiveness, but their patience. The triumph of the right is assured not by the might that comes to the aid of the right, which is of course the justification of the use of violence and other kinds of power in every human conflict. The triumph of the right, although it is assured, is sure because of the power of the resurrection and not because of any calculation of causes and effects, nor because of the inherently greater strength of the good guys. The relationship between the obedience of God’s people and the triumph of God’s cause is not a relationship of cause and effect but one of cross and resurrection.” (Yoder 232)

A great combination of thoughts in this time of plague and quarantine and Easter. 

Love Your Enemies – You Don’t Need Me To Tell You This (A Sermon)

Matthew 5: 38 – 48
Psalm 119: 33 – 40
1 Corinthians 3: 10 – 11, 16 - 22


No one here today (or anyone reading this sermon later online) needs me to explain today’s passage; the meaning is relatively clear (and I don’t often say that.) You don’t need me to define obscure words or to explain difficult concepts. I might be helpful in fleshing out some small nuance, or perhaps to dismiss a few misunderstandings relative to this passage, but you don’t need me to explain it. Jesus’ words are easy to grasp; his message is not difficult.

Not difficult to understand – perhaps – though it seems to be difficult, if not impossible, to put into actual practice. (And indeed, many theologians have suggested that the whole point of the Sermon on the Mount was to set up an impossible standard that we could in no way meet – as a way to shatter our self-reliance and to awaken us to God’s grace.) (Jeremias 12)

Jesus said, “Love your enemies.” We might do some hair splitting, quibbling about who exactly is our enemy, or what it means to “love” them in day to day life, but we know what we’re being told to do. We understand the general intent. We just don’t do it. We don’t want to do it.

The psalmist wrote, “Lead me in the path of your commandments, for I delight in it.” (Psalm 119: 35 NRSV) But not this one. We don’t delight in this particular command. It strikes us as foolishness. “Love your enemies;” we sneer that “that’s a damn fool way to get ourselves killed.”

You don’t need me to explain this passage. You don’t need my sermon on it. In fact, I’ve been half tempted to forgo my usual sermon preparation, and to just read Martin Luther King jr.’s sermon “Loving Your Enemies” instead of trying to saying anything new today. But I won’t do that.

Jesus begins this passage with a reference back to the old standard, the Lex Talionis code of the Old Testament: “An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.” We should maybe point out that this was not a bloodthirsty, barbaric code of law. This was, in fact, a limit and a check on violent, bloody conflict. It was a restraint on wildly escalating blood feuds. (Albright 64)

He then offers his own antithetical – not that / but this – teaching, which does not contradict or abolish the old code, but goes further than the law. Jesus says that not only are we to give up the vengeance of escalating blood feuds, but we are to put aside even a righteous tit-for-tat, eye-for-eye, tooth-for-tooth reciprocity. It might be acceptable according to the old code to hit the one who has hit us, or to gouge the eye of someone who has gouged out our eye, but Jesus says, Do not resist an evildoer…if anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also.”

The German theologian Joachim Jeremias has suggested that this blow to the right cheek “is not speaking of a simple insult; it is much more the case of a quite specific blow: the blow given to the disciples of Jesus as heretics. It is true that this is not specifically stated, but it follows from the observation that in every instance where Jesus speaks of insult, persecution, anathema, dishonor to the disciples, he is concerned with outrages that arise because of the discipleship itself. If you are dishonored as a heretic, says Jesus, then you should not go to law about it, rather you should show yourselves to be truly my disciples by the way in which you bear the hatred and the insult, overcome the evil, forgive the injustice” (Jeremias 28 – 29).

We spoke last week about not calling someone racca, fool, heretic, rebel because of the hatred and disunity that kind of insult creates. Here, we are further enjoined to not respond with vengeance to the insult of being called heretics ourselves. Personal vengeance is removed from our hands, and from our fists. (Robertson 48). But you don’t need me to tell you this. 

Jesus goes on to give a second antithetical statement. He refers first to the old law which said, “Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.” And here it can be remembered that while the first clause of that statement, “love your neighbor” is found in Leviticus 19:18, the second half, “hate your enemy” is not found in the written scriptures – though it may have been a part of the oral traditions and interpretations of the rabbis of the day. (Albright 69) Jesus, again, does not abolish or contradict this law but calls us further. He says that not only should we love our neighbors but that we are to love our enemies and pray for those who would persecute and hurt us.

He says that if we greet only our brothers and sisters with the prayer and blessing “Shalom” – peace be to you – which includes prosperity of every kind, material and spiritual wellbeing (Johnson 301) – if we only greet the brothers and sisters of our theological tradition, or the brothers and sisters of our racial or ethnic group, or the brothers and sisters of our country – then how good are we, exactly? Even the perpetually despised tax collectors and heathens can do this.

But you don’t really need me to explain any of this. Jesus message here is relatively clear.

This passage goes against our natural instincts and inclinations, goes against our customs and traditions, and even contradicts some of our Christian teachings. When faced with an enemy or a conflict we, by nature and nurture, react with either a fight or flight response. But love goes further than these limited reactions. We are not called to fight, to strike back (and definitely not to strike first); we are not called to return violence for violence. We are called to love, and to respond with love, not hate.

And neither are we called to run away from our enemies; we are called to love and love does not run away from conflict or danger. We’re called to give more than is asked of us, to go further than is demanded. We are called to love. But you don’t need me to tell you this.

We called to love and to love everyone – friends and family and foes. We are called to love those who are amicable to us and those who are hostile to us. But love is hard. Love is hard and we don’t want to accept the challenge that this represents. We want an out, an escape, a justification for our inability to put this instruction into practice. “[L]ove in action is a dreadful thing compared with love in dreams…active love is labor and fortitude” (Dostoevsky 50). Love is hard and dangerous work. Love kills us. But it is in that dying to ourselves, to our own desire, is how we learn to truly live.

Love is how we become sons and daughters of our father in heaven. Love is how become what we are created to be, how we reach our end our completion, our goal. “Be true, just as your heavenly father is true,”(Albright 71). We are to be straight and square – sincere and constant and candid in our love, not turned aside toward vengeance no matter how great the provocation. (Johnson 47).

This command, “be perfect just as your heavenly father is perfect” is not just a command for us, but also a promise to us. It is written in the future tense – “You shall be perfect.” (Buttrick 304). We shall be perfect and made whole when we know how to love even our enemies.

But you didn't need me to tell you this.

Albright W. F. & C.S. Mann. Matthew: Introduction, Translation, and Notes. Garden City, NY: Doubleday and Company, Inc,. 1971. Print.

Buttrick, George. “The Gospel According to St. Matthew: Exposition.” The Interpreter’s Bible Volume VII. Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press. 1951. Print.

Dostoevsky, Fyodor. The Brothers Karamazov. Translated by Constance Garnett, New York: Barnes & Noble Books. 1995. Print.

Jeremias, Joachim. “The Sermon on the Mount.” University of London, 7 March, 1961.

Johnson, Sherman E. “The Gospel According to St. Matthew: Exegesis” The Interpreter’s Bible Volume VII. Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press. 1951. Print.

King jr., Martin Luther “Loving Your Enemies” Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, Montgomery, Alabama. 17 November, 1957.

Robertson, Archibald Thomas. Word Pictures in the New Testament: Volume I. Nashville, TN: Broadman Press. 1930. Print. 

If the Sermon on the Mount Doesn’t Apply Then We Are Not a Christian Nation

It is true that I identify as a pacifist (but not passive) and that I try (though struggle sometimes) to live up to that identification. It is true that I believe non-violence to be the ideal and find that ideal described in the teachings of Jesus. I believe that the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5 – 7) enjoins us to forgo retaliation, to set aside vengeance and anger, and to practice a radical, extravagant mercy toward our enemies – personally, communally, and even nationally.

But I know that this issue is not clear. The Bible is rarely as clear and unambiguous as we might like it to be.

It is often pointed out to me that Jesus’ words are applicable only to the individual; “it belongs to the sphere of personal behavior (Bruce 70.)” And I recognize the truth of this observation. Jesus’ “Sermon on the Mount” was not addressed to political groups, or national entities – it wasn’t even given to the crowds at large, it was given to his disciples, which at this point in Matthew’s narrative numbered about four (Matthew 5: 1)

But IF it is the case that these instructions (and, by extension of the argument, all of Jesus’ instructions) apply only to the individual and not to communities, or nations – which are composed of individuals – then there can be no “Christian nation.” If Jesus’ instruction to “turn the other cheek” and to “love your enemies” are not in any way applicable to nation states, then we must stop attempting to say that America is a Christian nation. 

Bruce, F. F. Hard Sayings of Jesus. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press. 1983. Print.