I'd like to say you're in this three-foot cell
For your beliefs, that would be easier
Than the facts: you let indifference get to you.
And I'd like to say that soon you'll be released,
When your senses return, and time has had
A go at painful wounds, but, as you know,
That's not to be, you tried to kill your family,
Who could only respond to your pleas for justice
With worry.
They'd been warned about you, yes, that you'd get
Violent was a given, from the daily media spin,
That you'd become unhinged was apparent
From the terms you used, which came, they were told,
From terror cells. And when you vanquished Satan
Their saner minds failed to imagine what
Compelled you to concoct in such detail
Such a garish allegory of evil.
There will be a reckoning, you are right,
For all they could not see, the people shoveled
To the side, at the very least.
It was a steep grade of hatred for our
Wheel to shoulder against, my brother, or
Brother enough, at least, for me to be
Kept in the family fret, of theories too extreme,
Delusions too uncomfortable, passions
Stirred up by the wrong kind of news.
Yes I made friends with the outraged, who shared
The latest hidden-in-plain-sight affront
As it went like a droplet in a well so deep
It never made a sound. The sound was of
Our fury, always too small, always too loud,
Always outsized, as victims' cries must be,
For those who can live without knowledge
Must not be let off too easily.
Yet they slipped, again and again, the noose,
As if God in Her infinite mercy knew
How they needed protection from the truth.
No proof was enough to get them to see,
To think, when in conflict with what they believed.
And yes, it's a story as old as time,
The facts on the ground v. dogma,
But when it gets inside of your home,
Infects your room, and sends its eerie singing
Through the air, your last refuge, it burns.
And I suppose I should be concerned
At the lengths they will go to keep themselves
Enslaved in their preferred illusion,
But I don't have the luxury, the way
That they brood, how I came by my beliefs;
What voodoo took me in? The eyes of pity,
Fearful silence, as if the angry bear
Had ripped away his shackles and ambled
Away into the dark grove.
It's pointless to say I did this for truth,
How could such a nebulous feather
Hold such power? Even a butterfly
Chaser knows how strange they appear to those
Not of their kind. The world is not as I think,
They say, it is beautiful, and it is,
And the people in charge do the best they can
With flawed theories and imperfect wills,
And they do, but the thought that there's some ogre
At the center of the labyrinth
Who exerts unholy control!
The madness that is my reality
Must become my own, entirely. And I can smile,
Share copious notes on the weather,
Serve my family, my county, my tribe,
Without a thought that it is wrong
That I've been ignored the entire time
And am only allowed to play by a set
Of rules that are rigged to keep all the lies
From being known, for at every moment
There's the threat of something getting through
And that's too risky.
But there is no risk in waiting out
The return of the prodigal, for the warmth,
However wrong, is preferable
To what can be seen when one is alone.
Will the bird fly back in the spring? Or is
This finally the year, where there finally is
A lesson, of loss, only?
