Hey watch this
said one of the older kids.
 
We had been kicking stones
and he lifted one over his head
and blithely hurled it
at a painted turtle floating in the lagoon.
The turtle ducked, but too late;
its shell exploded like a paper bag.
 
Crap, I hope I didn’t throw my arm out
he commented.
That sure was something, huh?
 
I looked at the stones near my feet
and then at him, sizing him up.
Yep, it sure was
I said.
                        

“…for he maketh the sun to rise on the evil and the good, 
and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust.”
—Matthew 5:45 from the Sermon on the Mount
 
Oh, Jesus!
Life is hard enough
without your father handing out participation trophies
to the morally malformed and spiritually bankrupt.
Perhaps someone with more sense can explain to me
why we who’ve been given the freedom of this place
work so diligently to take it away from one another,
why words meant to comfort only bring torment,
why the sun’s rays and raindrops don’t recoil in horror
from certain guilty heads they’re about to fall on.
As Mencken said, the problem of evil
simply refuses to be solved.
Maybe Monty Python got it right
and you were actually blessing the cheesemakers.
The holy cup holding your most famous admonitions
has been carried from one century to the next
without spilling a drop.
Meanwhile the screams of the tortured
have died with them behind prison walls,
unremarked, unremembered.
The jailers, the same in every time and place,
wipe the blood from their hands
and the sweat from their brows—
it’s tough work after all, though rewarding—
and stroll outside to stand in the noonday sun
and share a cigarette and a joke.