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Religion always seems to excommunicate those
Offering a wider, gentler stream to baptize in;
Border czars of heartland-heaven’s hellish gates.

Bemoaning blasphemy over quizzical queries—
Enforcement of rigidity never truly succeeds—
Literalists and legalists cut the lede and lose.
Letting them know that is the real challenge.

Poet’s Note:
An acrostic Scorched Sunday poem. Part of my Scorched Strays series. This poem critiques religious gatekeeping and the impulse to police belief rather than nurture faith.

Yeah, not the border czar you were thinking of. But with federal agents in Minneapolis fatally shooting a Minneapolis ICU nurse — the third such incident in weeks — there’s a lot more coming from me on this. Stay tuned, but for now…

~~~+++~~~

god bless—who?

god bless—who?—america?
too many words come to mind,
but how many will be heard?—
how many will change a single

heart

that seeks its own bloodstream
at the terrible expense of itself?

anthropophagus res publica

devour to declare divinity
while dutifully defecating
on the very one deemed

divine.

“america’s chickens have
come home to roost”

a prophet, not long ago,

said.

~~~+++~~~

Dedicated to these and all lives lost in this and every era of senseless American authoritarianism—named here not as statistics, but as witnesses to the cost of power unchecked.

• Silverio Villegas González
• Renée Nicole Good
• Alex Jeffrey Pretti
• Ramesh Amechand
• Pankaj Karan Singh Kataria
• José Manuel Sánchez-Castro
• Brendy Yohana Bamaca-Zacarias
• Jhon Benavides Quintana
• Hugo Roberto Boror-Urla
• Cambric Dennis
• Edixon del Jesús Farias-Farias
• Jaspal Singh
• Charles Leo Daniel
• Ousmane Ba
• Geraldo Lunas Campos
• Victor Manuel Diaz

© 2026 Tristan Robert Lange. All rights reserved.

Tittu