Lament for the Human Race

Great Mercy, Ocean of Love
Abide in sorrow of dreams denied
Defied by pride and slicing violence
Of those who despise

Loathing is destroying us
Deep inside, eliding all inviting
All healing repeating flowing
Instead blocking, instead mocking

Tears flowing filling rivers
Oceans poisoned by grasping
Blind to the gasping, the gaping
Wounds inflicted and given title

Our humanity scarred, scared
Barred, bearing the weight
Of some primal cry
For a way to feel safe

At home with violence
Swaggering, daggering, daring
Staring, watching, surveilling
Reveling in the affliction of fear

Dear Spirit, living, breathing
We evoked you
Choked you, booked you
Took you away so far

Away in a desert
A closet, a house
No one goes anymore
Found, lost

You to the saving
The blaming, the shaming
The naming of sins that
Committed the crime

Destroying peoples and cultures
Takes time and then
The blood-soaked ghosts
They finally find

Back into roots
Down in the soil
Placentas and pablum and
Platelets and bones groans

Breakdown through ages
These are the pages
The lament, the mourning
The dancing restoring

Because Love knows
Grief is her sister
Their swaying, their wailing
Is the way through the pain

This lament is more
Than choices, voices
That tell us this way or
The Other

This drum beat
Dirging, purging us on
Into a womb ripe
Ready for Mother

Found deep in the ground
Bound, surrounding
This seed is not His
Hers has bided rhythmic

Timed pathways
Stocked bloodlines and desire
Fires refining reminding
Remembering

Embers of Love never
Overcome, slow burns
Warming and swarming
And now we are here

In a moment
Fomenting Love’s lavish
Reply to the fathers blanched
Clinched from the reach

Over their brothers, their sisters
Their mothers, their histories
And herstories asking
Tasking tooling ruling

Love never dies
That’s how we breathe
And weave threads through
Dread, through those dead

Dark places growing
Showing shadows
Yearning, turning toward
Freedom supple agile and new