By: Mel Mancheno
Children learn their way around bedrooms on i9 delta core processors.
Glass cigarettes, lord, break and remake themselves into administrative roles.
So too have we stolen
fire from the heavens,
let iron roses crane their backs from Japan to Jerusalem.
I have used my Yale JD to argue with God
that we can manage civilization.
That acid painted on a virgin’s face
for not letting her heart be swallowed
is merely a signification of a more sociological issue.
Perhaps a class struggle, decadence, colonialism, 2000 AD Christian ideals around gender roles
and sexuality. Maybe—
God told me he was a textualist and he doesn’t believe in any of that babel.
He stops at stop signs, doesn’t read into what isn’t there, and
our hour is over– he’ll bill me tonight.
At my hanging, I click my tabi heels together, say God,
If I wore my heart on my sleeve, would it make the truth
any more bearable? I mean that
to say, if I can still form surf clams from Arrowheads, spot rams
among the stars like Ptolemy before me, or if
sometimes
Shit just isn’t right.
That these are my excuses. Not to be bloodied. My dreams/life/childhood, these glowing
institutions, and good friends. A priest told me that
Before the revolution, stained glass could be
replaced with concrete, that exceptions could be made, cuts in the line
And about me?
God insisted against vanity; God insists he’s not a catholic;
not in this project called civilization; in this little booth in a castle built on myths. God:
I know this never works. God:
I am listening, the hero, where you are,
repeating
divine violence, well, that is your truth:
The syrup in the blood, the suppleness in a baton kissing knees, freckles of the sun and
Truth writes books, and embraces, and tears open the sky
and I am a liar.
There is no conversation. There is no compromise.
Get on the ground.
Mel is a human being, an honors student at Middlesex College studying psychology, a Princeton Transfer Scholar, a National Network for Youth Council Member, and potentially something else.