We have never been holy.
We have always been broken.
This was Joker’s revelation.
But we beg for reminders,

too lazy to learn the lessons,

we are waiting for the world
to crumble,
itching for light beyond the smoke,
freedom beyond time — 
each tick on the clock chokes,
tickles the belly of the beast
as he dashes madly toward his final stroke.

And madly he will dash, intoxicated
by the gas leaking from cracks
in the legendary image,
now dysfunctional system.
Issa joke — 
thinking the blackness of the human heart
would’ve met its end by 2017 — 
what time gotta do
with our brand of stupid?

This ain’t a wound,
this the human condition.
Jokin’ like we holier than this
is why the Joker still lives,
and the beast is dying of laughter
and little black children still die of bullets, lead, liquor, and Flint rivers after
anti-abortion (but never pro-life) Christians
drag them out the womb,
and white America still seems confused
by the political abuse of the orange buffoon they used
to make a point,
and We the People of Babylon
may get front row seats to Korea’s new toy,
while we bicker ‘bout what’s appropriate protest
for the appropriated oppressed,
and decide who’s human
and who’s hopeless,
who’s ally, who’s woke, and
who’s whatever-phobic,
all while American Nazis in Charlottesville
relieve us of every foolish fantasy
that we, 
built on bitter, blood-stained shackles
and native bones,
we, the cheerleaders of chaos, the empire
of untreated disease,
with our crushing student debt and
anxious aversion to paid maternal leave
are somehow too evolved
to be suffering from the symptoms of our
own history
in 2017.

We have never been holy.
We have always been broken.
This was Joker’s revelation:
that our pretense has always been
loud, 
and brazen.

Cover Photo by Kayle Kaupanger on Unsplash