On The Birthday Of A.A. Miller's First Son Poem by Matt Mullins

The week you were born
eighty-some people died in Waco, Texas
the wrong finale to a long stand-off
between Branch Davidians and the ATF
a siege of 51 days ending only when
the entire compound went up in flames.
It was the middle of April and here
in Michigan, the climate of contraries
we've grown so used to carried us
through the cold though sunny afternoons.
We cracked our doors to the hint
of a spring breeze and sat in front of our TV's
shaking our heads in disbelief and waiting
for news of you. Your dad was out drinking
because you were late and your mom
and he had issues-as they still do
as you know, which might say something
about why I imagine you crowning
just as someone whipped a pyrotechnic grenade
through a slot between the boards nailed over
the Koreshan compound's nursery room window.

What did not ride in on the wind from Waco
was the sick-sweet scent of that burning
human flesh. All we smelled in our thawing
Midwest were daffodils pushing their heads up
through the rich, moist dirt. Such parallels
are not lost on you, now a teenager, stealing
your dad's Playboys and teaching yourself
the ways of punk rock defiance on his old drum set.
Daffodils and your soft head pushing its way
along the bloody walls of womb
as a woman on fire explodes from an inferno
running away until the screams of everything
she believed in made her turn back and throw
herself into the burning once again as if burning
to death beyond the flock wasn't burning
well enough. You asked me once
when you were five or so what the sticker
on my guitar case said: Question Authority
I told you, and you didn't ask what that meant.

So I'm telling you now: the week you were born
eighty-some people died in Waco, Texas.
Unquestioned authorities wearing bullet proof vests
opened fire with tanks and guns and hand grenades
on Christian fanatics who chose to die rather than
deny the apocalyptic prophet they'd empowered.
Tanks smashed into buildings. People were crushed.
People shot their own children in the head
then themselves in the head. Everyone involved
did what they did in blind service to the many
ideologies man sees fit to invent. This is
what was happening in our world just as you
were being born, just as you were giving living proof
that the inevitability of our own becoming is more
necessary and true than all gods or governments.
You pushed your way through and they cut you free.
They held you up naked, bawling into the light
of this world, which filled you and grows in you
and in all human beings who would do more
than curse the darkness by setting fire to reason.