Trucks rumble—the hustle and the hum
Of gears gas engine exhaust choke POTHOLE and there’s a cut on the forehead,
Red over the white frightened eyes in the dark.
She bends down over POTHOLE her baby
And she knows what’s coming next but it hasn’t happened yet,
So she cradles and coos and tries not to think
About the kennel they’ll put her son in,
With the chainlink door and the concrete floor and the ugly foil blanket made for an alien.
And the dry road south is all sand sand sand POTHOLE sand,
Back down to Sinaloa, the land of the rattlesnake,
Sand in the hair the mouth the eyes, like an itching thirsting disease.
Turn your bodies against the drums, boys:
It’s I.C.E., it’s the Committee of Public Saftey,
It’s Herod and he means it this time.
The trucks aren’t full of people.
They’re full of MS13 monsters like her,
They’re full of sluts who wouldn’t get an abortion like her,
They’re full of cost-benefit ratios like her,
They’re full of huddled masses like her,
They’re full of not our problems like her.
But her eyes are two thousand years old
And the message of the angel still shines out of them
The mystery the plea the glory the warning
That this is an ikon of the all-consuming Fire.
What will you do when that Fire falls on you?
Turn your bodies against the drums, boys:
It’s I.C.E., it’s the Committee of Public Saftey,
It’s Herod and he means it this time.
So pick up your ploughshares and your pruning hooks,
This is no time for passivity, it’s time for pacifisticuffs:
If what you want is peace then go be peace’s power,
Lift up your voice, your open hands to that White Tower
And cover it with brown sand.
Hate burns white-hot—don’t be fooled by its easy appeal:
Love is brown like earth and wood and dried blood and Jewish skin
And the eyes of the baby that pilgrim woman is holding for the last time.
Call on the mountains to fall on us, the hills to hide us,
For their earth is full of love
And perhaps thus we shall learn to love our brother.
Turn your bodies against the drums, boys:
It’s I.C.E., it’s the Committee of Public Saftey,
It’s Herod and he too will die.
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