Blue Ghazal for Ricky Birdsong

Before, we ignore the signs: the screed of rhetoric, the fan—
aticism that manifest the forces that so twist a man.

And after, we cry and wring our hands and ask "What can
we do?" about those forces that so twist a man.

And that's all we do. Ask. Because it's too hard to plan
countermeasures to battle the forces that so twist a man,

and has been since history, no more than
a record of the forces that so twist a man,

began. Crusades, pogroms, massacres, revivals, the Span—
ish Inquisition: all vintage examples of the forces that so twist a man

at work. Our century? No different: the IRA, the Nazis, and the Klan
all flower from soil sown with the forces that so twist a man.

Nothing’s sacred. All’s obscene. The Bible and the Koran
are each used to legitimize the forces that so twist a man

while babies, this one’s skin wan, that one’s tan
are zealously divided by the forces that so twist a man.

Oh, we take comfort to think only pre-disposed monsters can
be seduced by and succumb to the forces that so twist a man

and that soon our science will surely develop an effective scan
to screen for those susceptible to the forces that so twist a man;

but we lie to ourselves. We know every Beverly, each Stan,
any one of us may fall prey to the forces that so twist a man.

We know too the one and only true thing that can
obliterate the forces that so twist a man:

we must, each of us, become Jew, Gypsy, Cheyenne,
gay, black—to feel the otherness that feeds the forces that so twist a man.

It is of course this otherness, this inability to empathetically span
the gaps between us that drives the forces that so twist a man.

If we could just recognize each other as nothing more than human,
we could eradicate the forces that so twist a man.

But we don’t. Instead, we allow one Korean and one American of African
descent to become the latest victims of the forces that so twist a man