Surfing the News Four Days after Seeing the Dark Knight at Midnight with my Thirteen-Year-Old Son in Fort Morgan, Colorado

for our mothers and fathers

One young man—on every screen in debut daze of ridiculous hair
and smoky dreams of frantic arms in solitary confinement—
couldn’t find his world face. Perhaps exhaustion stuffed it
under his hard pillow, or pills ate it, or sleepless monkeys
of his own dark reckoning hid it in the cell drain.

His mother and father stand behind him like newly born gods,
like your ancient god, they who continue to love,
have learned of their own terrible, unsinkable love
for a murdering son, have shrunk before the truth
that no amount or kind of sleepless rocking baby love
saved him from his shocking midnight burden.

Terrified mothers cast Facebook slurs, wring our faces and shirts
to wrestle the fear he could be our own adorable boy, shuffle
silently through every memory of toy and digital gun, tremble
at the monstrous love we know we’d find behind our breasts
while other mothers dream our sick child’s systematic death.

26 July 2012