Rhymes With Magic

Rhymes with Magic

Pews, baptismals, pulpits, hymnals,

Bathed in tears, in blood:

Washed in the blood of the Lamb,

Raised, beheaded martyrdom.

Johnly, submergedly.

Where love and hate converge,

One built to exclude the other,

And inviting in the other still,

Making brothers from Sadducees.

Temple-testingly.

Lyncher’s ropes re-mediated,

Knocking on doors, received

With trust and hope and for 

Transformation, Salvation:

Caused politically. 

Angels made eternal for humanity, 

For causes beyond instinct,

Against the basest failings of progress

In the hearts of slain students:

Weeping, breathlessly.

Tell us about guns.

Tell us about mass destruction.

Tell us about insanity.

Tell us about vast instruction.

Tell us about the failings of

Neighbors and rigors.

Fighting, yet, against institutions: 

Against precedent and past,

Dred, Plessy, Brown, Loving, deciding still:

America’s conscience tested.

Betrayed, Jim-Crowedly.

Politics, faith, elected, chosen, burned,

Clinging to the ever-broke promise:

Equality in the eyes of the law, of force,

Equality in the hearts of neighbors.

Failed, disappointedly.

On the cross of purpose,

On the Cross of Christ,

On the convergence:

Tragedy and magic:

Magedy.