Why do I Grieve the Rise of the Phoenix?

Cold foreboding I had of it

Just the worst taste of the year

For the desecration, and such a profound desecration:

The wounds fresh and the minders sharp the very end of summer

And grief is bitter, vanquished, vasectomy

Smoldering in the unforgiving gape

There were times I rejoiced

The panic of the mighty, the desperate

And the heavenly virgins brandishing men's vulnerability

Then the oil men sobbing and frantic

And flying away, and wanting their fixes and crucifixes

And the hell's-fire blazing, and the lack of reason

And the city inquisitional and the skies unfriendly

And the coffee franchises filthy and charging high prices:

A crude time we had of it

At the end we preferred to trade in liberty

Freedom in snatches

With the evil screeching in our ears, saying:

That this was all Godly

Then at dusk we came upon a treacherous pit

Shadowed by a fractured skyline, reeking of burnt flesh;

With a bloody stream and a toxic smoke disguising the darkness

And four cardinal points on the sacred sky

And a shiny black hearse raced away in the madness

Then we came to a white house with spilled oil covering stained blood

Corrupt hands behind bolted doors divining for politics and profit

And mouths wording the empty promises

But there was secret information, and so we demurred judgment

And arrived at hell, a day late and dollar short

Finding the place; it was (you may say) predictable

All this was a short time ago, I regret,

And we will do it again, but it rises up

This rises up

This:

were we led all that way for

Oligarchy or Oil?

There was a Tragedy, certainly

We had trickery and truth. We have seen truth and treachery

But had thought they were different; this Treachery was

Hard and bitter agony for us

Like Truth, our truth

We patriotically ascend from the flames of our complacency, this Complacency

But no longer free here, in the new Justification

With a deluded people clutching their sentimentality

Why do I grieve the Rise of the Phoenix?

The following poem, based upon T.S. Eliot's The Journey of the Magi (who in turn, was said to have lifted and modified the first five lines from Lancelot Andrewes's Nativity Sermon of 1622) was written to accompany an image, Phoenix Rising -- a response to the second anniversary of September 11, 2001. The image, which resulted in hate mail and threats, is perhaps the most misunderstood work of my art career.