"Bring Me The Heads"

In honor of National Poetry Month, I am posting work by myself each Friday. This one speaks about a world in turmoil, suffering inequality and injustice and violence, and a fracture in the ways of living in such a world.

Bring Me The Heads

Plates below us moving, grinding.
The earth is alive, serious, means business.

One city is underwater, another is underground.
Two views of the same world.
Neither of them have a chance.
This has nothing to do with myth or fiction.

I beg you to do something,
to create something, to step in,
slough off ribbons of time, of truth,
slice into our awareness, and if need be,
separate us like fighting children.

Of those who live above,
who would boil us, rip us apart,
make our hearts stop beating:
you send me to their cathedral
with these orders:
“Bring me the heads—”

©JEF 2010