They had death warrants and came for my children,

their infant forms shining inner light in a vision of their souls,

On each tall church door a document denying them life,

went upon the door with long nails through their foreheads

to display the empty vessels, with an added written appendage.

Still they contrast with the black void, a construction

of materials whose cost was life, like their composition.

Such doors remain closed so that they hold our eyes

on their details, crevices, their nearby signs scheduling

us for that eternity at the end of our wait, the way in to see

past their deaths. Remember there was a second image.

It was actually the first, and the one we see, imagery

imposed on our poet to hide the vision he had meant to share.

Society is death. It promises to return these losses.

Belief is death. In the other death there is less pain,

in the next death there is less understanding,

and that hopeful light of infant bodies a destruction of the mind,

disruption of the stars’ movements, simplification

away from truth, into a cold feeling of sadistic greed.

Waiting for a return to that original garden we wanted

to open the gates to, our chains of attachment to sadness,

to that new drawing we produced for gain, to lies about its

seriousness, turn to the iron of determination to pierce

the disturbance, and feel its blood deposited in us working magic

in our abdomens, as we digest the birth, the internal struggle.