"Do you rulers indeed speak justly?
Do you judge people with equity?
No, in your heart you devise injustice
and your hands mete out violence on the earth."
(Ps 58:1-2 NIV)
When a cop kills a black man and the nation riots,
where do we go from there?
To a public flogging?
Strip the guilty,
splay him,
and let the angry strike
Until he bleeds,
until he weeps,
until he apologizes,
until he begs to undo what's been done,
which can never be undone.
Where do we go from here?
Pulses quicken and muscles contract.
Sweat beads and hearts pound
protesting power misused
adding another to the abused:
rulers to subjects,
rubjects to travelers,
travelers to wives,
wives to children.
On and on
passing this baton
like an echo down a tunnel.
"Someone must pay!
Must pay!
Must pay!"
But no one does.
Rather, they increase the weight
of the unbalanced scales
while claiming, “God sits on his hands
refusing fire from heaven.
So suffer the song of us angry men
having wrest power from rulers
and now enslaved again?
For the beating of our hearts
echos not the beating of God's drum,
and that life we wished to start
vanished when our turn came.”
Where shall we go from here
but rage against the maker,
searching for a payer,
with infinite credit
and judgement even-handed,
who can allocate blame
and allow the angry mob
to strip him
and splay him
and flog him within an inch of his life
until he proffers the apology
able to right all wrongs.
Then God himself,
not sitting on his hands,
will deal the death blow from heaven.
Where shall we go from here?
The scales have been brought to balance
by his blood.
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