Sinners

A river runs through it

May 10, 2025

There’s a hole in my heart and a river runs through it.

There’s a scorch on my brain and a river runs through it.

There’s a core to this pain and a river runs through it.

There’s a birthing place where They laid waste and the West was crowned in its place.

A river of time connects me to the Romans who forced Jesus on my pagan ancestors as they ground my grandmothers down with an open palm. Stole their medicine while they extolled their psalm. Smacked them into the earth like a wooden peg and forced open their legs for a song.

A river of time connects me to the Englishmen who stole the land of my Irish ancestors. Who pillaged and defiled and named their plundering a famine. Who civilized my people with brutality. Creating a culture of calamity under the guise of conquest.

There’s a rot in my bones and a river runs through it.

There’s an ulcer in my belly and a river runs through it.

There’s a shamble in my home and a river runs through it.

Wood and iron turned to mildewed mess in the homes that they burned. In the towns that they cursed. In the hate they rehearsed and taught to my people through pain. Carved into skin like their name.

“Let us teach you the tao of blame.”

And they took that blame to distant shores like a virus. They bled their hurt from lands that knew no God, they carved their shame into skin that knew no rod, they wrung their pain from the hair of a people that gave no cause.

They cut that hair and they sang, “Let us civilize this mane.”

There’s a hole in my heart and a river runs through it.

There is life in this wound and it flows like water.

There’s a knife in this loom, heirs unbroken

but outcast from the ways of their moon.

Estranged, their new earth now a tomb.

And they tally their blame and fill holes with hate and dam up the fount of their pain.

They bar up the river with watertight hands and they suck up and spit out the leaks.

They pretend that their leaders aren’t thieves.

For the one psalm they know is the one that was broke over heads that once knew they were free.