Quit Trying to Harmonize Every Gosh-Darned Thing

by Stephen Kampa

These Christians shell me with apologetics,
Their moral mortars whistling through their airs
With disappointment’s low diminuendo,

That falling pitch reserved for falling

In someone’s estimation—namely, theirs.
What are their proofs but an attempt to thumb
The ousted eyeball back into its socket,

To smooth and refold pain until, behold,
How perfectly its truth fits in their pocket?

* * *

I say this: one false premise, one bum term
In your philosophy, and you can’t live it.
A melted hair-thin copper wire will halt

A motor: one lax line loops program

Code: aircraft carriers sink for one loose rivet.
Remove one insect from the ecosystem
And watch a fish-filled pond depopulate.

One chromosome can discompose the body.
One senate vote can spin the wheels of state.

* * *

I’m tired of those avowals turning grief’s
Pure vowels—ai, oh—to a song and dance,
A humdrum little tune. No: let hard sayings

Be hard, grant adages their edges.

I praise not consonance but consonants,
The plosive interruptions, the constrictions,
The hissing fricatives, the whole array

Of obstacles and stops by whose obscure
Resistance we can say the things we say.

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Stephen Kampa is the author of three collections of poems: Articulate as Rain, Bachelor Pad, and Cracks in the Invisible. His work appeared in Best American Poetry 2018.