{instead of building an arc, I write a poem}

really? did I REQUEST a transfer to Seattle weather? every day I think I will wake up and there will be sun. is this a hex of some sort? anyway, poem. if you don't know who Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez is, look him up.

St. Oliver to President Hugo Chavez

in the end, it doesn’t matter how they do it, only
that you are ash and martyrs are easier to dismiss
than bishops or presidents. the drama of drawn
and quartered, of entrails torn out in front
of your about-to-be-severed head versus
the lonely shot from a sniper rifle, the plane crash
on a clear day, et tu Brute, the way it’s always been.
only once did I wish for a small life, a cottage
in Glendalough or An Daingean with sheep
and a daughter with her fine shoulders. but that life
has its own deaths, and we will martyr ourselves
one way or the other, in the field or at the stake,
we burn somehow.

what a glow you set, Hugo. the cross, the microphone,
the vows of cheap oil and literacy, Che’s breath,
Martin’s hands, your bodyguards shine with it
in their beige jackets, their jackal eyes, do you call
one Brutus, one Judas for a laugh? do you know
the translation’s flawed, that Christ was not betrayed
but handed over, that he knew as we know that sooner
or later the only one the people will follow
is immortal and the only road to that title is paved
with your intestines? this is why women
martyr themselves so seldom. to live, they say,
to make life – it is an optimism of the uterus,
which is another kind of spine. I have no advice
for you, Hugo, except that should you visit Drogheda
do not go to see my head, the jeweled reliquary
could not hold me, I envy your light left, it is
creosote black here, I can hear the keeners praying
and if I knew you leaning so close I might have
to borrow back those eyes.

*