Get to the meat, you'd say.

And so ...
Five thousand people pulverized
and me still alive.
A column of ghosts and ashes
hangs on the skyline
for days. The dead
evaporate in the fall:
taken to Nirvana full-bodied.
And there is now a graceful
sheen on bankers, a halo
on suits, a universal
upsweep of bonding
bled out in red, white,
the blues. Neil Young singing
'Imagine' crowned
by candles on national
TV. Love's out-
pouring like the flower children
couldn't match. And I am terrified
it's taken this

for me to feel I belong.
Here, in a country
reeking from martyrs' blood:
        JFK
             MLK
                 John Lennon ...
We all want to believe
again, like we did once
in mythic time. Back
when we were all free
and loved each other
and ran around naked
in our pre-bodies,
our spirit packs, our
bliss of light and air.

It could be you
were right, all of you,
when you said to write
what hurt most. When you said
to rip the carnal
out by the roots and show
our nipples to the sun.