the gods demanded sacrifice,
and so we offered
tolerance
it’s not like anyone
was using it
that much
for what you can’t destroy,
you still can
lock away
we do that now, in every manner
those words can
be stretched
and how we torture words, to make it
seem as though we mean the
things we say;
but we do not. at least we do not live
the values we espouse, nor do
we really want to
and spiders – there are spiders in the halls,
the webs are everywhere —
we call our hate self-love,
and turn our self-love into
candy-coated knives
with power comes
nobody’s peter parker;
the price is right, but we
have got no barker
the song of houston, but
how will i know?
we stowaway what we should never
stow
the bars slam shut, because we
close them down;
don’t know your name, you’re just
some damned pronoun
the skittish horse may try
to flee the pen;
but hunted down they are,
always
again
when semiotics tells us to,
we stop and genuflect:
the dog-whistles that really
guide our lives —
the empty hallways do not mean
that all the ghosts have left;
the blood is in the pipes,
not in the water
and the pipes
go everywhere
There is certainly plenty of unused tolerance to spare!