We'll make this country great again!
I'll build that wall up high.

Climate change? Economy!
It's great! Don't wonder why.

I'll take care of all your needs and get you jobs you'll love.
Raise your right hand for the pledge and pray to God above!

Do your duty as a man and grab her nice and tight!
It's OK if she fights back, they like it rough, alright?

Civil liberties, really, who needs 'em?
Burn the flag? I'll just hang you for treason!

This country is first. To protect it is best!
Whose up for a fun little nuclear arms test?

Capitalism? Yeah, I'm the money master!
Pipelines! Who cares about ecological disaster?

Gays? Girls? Abortion? WOE!
If they want that, send em' down to Mexico!

I'll rule with blood and honor too!
I'll tame this crazy, jobless zoo!

I'll fight for you and family rights!
(Mostly for rich and mostly for whites!)

Minorities? No, I'm not a racist.
It's an alternate fact: Totally baseless!

America the great. America the free!
Put a bigger pair of **** on old Lady Liberty.

Goodbye all you immigrants!
All you do is steal and loot.
Leave a couple of 'em behind:
Someone's gotta pick our fruit!

Thank you all for choosing me!

This is very great and swell.

Prove that you will follow now:
Let's all go straight to-

Heil!

Hospitals:

The smell of stale ***** under antiseptic. Bland steamed food and pills the same color as candy.

Latex gloves and discharge papers.

Medications. Cheerful pats on the back by friends and neighbors; as if one simple smile and it gets better could cure a decade of empty. Anxiety. Manic highs and suicidal lows.

Go to school, go to work. Get a job. Have a wife, have some kids and a house in the suburbs with a white fence and a dog.

"Get over it. I've had it harder than you. You've got nothing to worry about."

Were they right? I had a roof overhead and food on the table. Maybe they were right and I was wrong, wrong, wrong. I could get over it!

What was I missing all along?

Just. Be. Happy.

But not too happy.

"Don't do that. They'll think you ain't right."

Was I ever right, mother? Did I come out of your womb silent and somber? Or did I claw my way out with your blood on my gums?

A textbook case of this and that. Far too skinny, an inch too fat.

Bipolar. Anxiety.

Three years of ****** sobriety.

"Your life is easy compared to mine. You haven't been what I've been through."

Suffering ain't a **** competition.

Am I not sick enough?

Will I ever be sick enough for you?

We were boys, once.
Our mother liked to dress us in tailored suits and leather shoes.
Every Sunday morning. Ready bright and early for mass at 11.

We'd sit in the classroom at the back of the old church hall.
After mass. After the chatter of voices hushed down to whispers; virtuous gossip.

Our teacher fed us images of hellfire and brimstone.

*** and sin.

Satan in a red cape and Halloween horns.

He didn't always look like that.
Oh, no. Mother said that he'd come out all dressed in a suit like mine.

He'd be handsome! His voice would be a choir of one billion ****** souls and once you'd hear it, you'd never want it to stop.

In my eight-year-old mind, I wondered what he did and what he felt when his own father cursed his name.

Did he stare at his dad with his thousand-eyes? Did he protest?

Did he laugh as he fell? In a cascade of feathers and blood.

Maybe he was better off without him.
He'd spend the rest of eternity trying to prove his father wrong. That he was worthy of his love:

That he would be the only son to grieve for the mistake of humanity.

The holy adversary.

The one who would shout his love for The Lord until his throat cracked dry and his chest ached. He, who could see the suffering of his father's own creations.

He, who tempted Eve and proved God wrong and we were flawed from the very beginning. Did he watch Eve eat the apple and savor every bite?

He loved his father.

Did he deserve it?

I stopped going to church on my eighteenth birthday.

What kind of parent would **** one son and praise the other?

Who would let one son be nailed to a board and the other to rot in flames?

Even as a child, I knew.

Through every slap, scold and bruise.

I would never bow.

They called us names on the playground.

We were small. Cherubim-faced terrors with bruised knees and perpetually greasy hair.

We dreamed of our lives after college. After our first cars. Our first houses. Our first jobs. Imaginary model wives and spoiled children. The All-American Daydream.

We didn't know what college was. We could barely see over the dashboard on Auntie's old Cadillac.

We grew up.

You became a man. Good-looking, strong, covered in tattoos. Scars on your chest and scars in your head because they called us names on the playground and those curses stuck with you.

Through every needle, every pill and every doctor's visit.

It was worth the pain, you said.

You'd do it all again, you said.

Live through the taunts. Live through the nights spent screaming up at the sky and asking God why He made you that way. Why He didn't make you a he and gave you ******* and hips instead.

They called you names on the playground. They called you something that you never were and never wanted to be.

Now we've outgrown the passing fancies of shiny trucks and four-bedroom houses in quiet suburbia.

Given up a life of apple pie to live between paychecks in a ****** Brooklyn apartment.

You're happy, now.

Happier than you ever were when they called you girl as if that were an insult.

As if they didn't understand the contempt they parroted; spat, hate.

They called you a name.

Then you changed it.

Became it.

Then your name set you free.

There never was a face as fair as yours,
A heart as true, a love as pure and keen.
These things endure, if anything endures.
But, in this jungle, what high heaven immures
Us in its silence, the supreme serene
Crowning the dagoba, what destined die
Rings on the table, what resistless dart
Strike me I love you; can you satisfy
The hunger of my heart!

Nay; not in love, or faith, or hope is hidden
The drug that heals my life; I know too well
How all things lawful, and all things forbidden
Alike disclose no pearl upon the midden,
Offer no key to unlock the gate of Hell.
There is no escape from the eternal round,
No hope in love, or victory, or art.
There is no plumb-line long enough to sound
The abysses of my heart!


There no dawn breaks; no sunlight penetrates
Its blackness; no moon shines, nor any star.
For its own horror of itself creates
Malignant fate from all benignant fates,
Of its own spite drives its own angel afar.
Nay; this is the great import of the curse
That the whole world is sick, and not a part.
Conterminous with its own universe
the horror of my heart!