Thoughts, Prayers & Art

By the fire of justice and the breath of hope

 I stood in the marrow of midnight,
in the echo of drums made of broken bones,
beneath a sky that forgot how to pray.
And I saw America
not as she paints herself in glory,
but naked in the mirror of the Most High.

She wore a crown of corporations
and drank oil like communion wine.
She had hands stained with the ink
of redlined maps and detention orders.
Her prophets were gagged.
Her poor were priced.
Her gospel— privatized.

And the Lord
Oh, the Lord did not look away.

The ground split like it remembered
every lash laid on backs in the cotton fields,
every treaty torn with a politician’s pen,
every mother wailed into her hands
when ICE raided the dawn.

The rivers ran thick with mourning.
The birds refused to sing.
And even the sun turned its face
as tanks rolled through streets
where children once played jump rope.

The wrath of God is not a lightning bolt.
It is silence
when the prayers are cruel.
It is the mirror turned back to the empire
until she chokes
on her own reflection.

But listen

Amid the ruins,
where marble idols fell and
megachurches cracked like clay,
there rose a sound.

Not loud,
not polished,
but true.

It came from the alleyways
and borderlands.
It came from queer sanctuaries
and mothers’ marches.
It came from those left for dead
who sang anyway.

A song of the stone rolled back.
A song of chains snapping like dawn.
A song that said: We are not ashes,
we are embers—still burning.

I saw the dead stand up,
not from tombs, but from systems
that declared them disposable.
They walked barefoot through Wall Street,
fed the hungry on Capitol steps,
and anointed the forgotten
with the oil of gladness
and gasoline-soaked truth.

And God wept.
Not in grief.
But in glory.

Because love had survived
even this.
Even genocide.
Even gerrymandering.
Even white hoods
and red hats
and blue silence.

This is the hour, beloved.

When wrath kisses the ground,
and it quakes open with hope.
When judgment is mercy with a scalpel,
cutting out the rot,
but never the soul.

Let the Empire bury its idols.
Let the war machines rust.
Let the flags fall into silence.

But let the people
the trans and the trafficked,
the farmhands and felons,
the truth-tellers and tear-gassed
Let them rise.

Let them rise with tambourines.
Let them rise with teeth clenched in praise.
Let them rise with justice in their mouths
and resurrection in their bones.

For there is a fire coming,
not to destroy,
but to purify.
Not to shame,
but to resurrect.

And when the trumpet sounds,
it will not be in the halls of power.
It will be in the streets
where the stone was rolled
and the tomb left open.

Ashes to alleluia.
Wrath to wonder.
Death to dawn.

The kingdom is not coming.

It is already
rising.
From below.