One Malignant Spirit. A poem by Jennifer Wenn

One Malignant Spirit

Like waves on the ocean
they crest and roll past,
always another in their wake,
tragic echoes of a timeless truth:
just one malignant spirit in power is needed,
       lusting to warp the world
       around hallucination,
       each name a poisonous desecration
       that will not be written here,
just one clawing at all and sundry
       to draw in and corrupt,
       to reveal and empower depravity,
just one to accrete a mob,
       together spawning a
       river of murdered voices
       as singular as bread-line prey of a sniper,
       as multiform as victims in a mass grave.

Consider now that one current driving the deadly flow,
venture upstream in search of the sulfurous source,
follow the meanders and oxbows,
       some fractured and twisted,
       some diseased and septic,
and reach a fault in the substructure
begetting a wellspring for putrescence
to coalesce and ooze into the waters
always questing for release,
       questing for more,
always yearning to dominate and defile;
and when the infernal way is found
lesser spirits are inevitably swept up:
       sycophants, opportunists and true believers;
       blind followers and hordes infected by shadow;
       the fearful and the overborne;
       and legions whose deity is an oath to obey;
all swelling and enabling and reinforcing
the cancerous lodestone devoid of humanity,
       a stranger to compassion, empathy and faith
who sees not people but concepts,
for whom all of us divine sparks
       are merely tools, targets and obstacles,
who would rejoice over Dante’s sorrowful abyss
       that holds the thunder of infinite screams
       but who the great poet would
       consign to torment eternal,
who yearn to play God but
       who channel only hatred and butchery;
one malignant spirit divorced from light,
just one to find the willing and the weak and more
and bind them in Stygian darkness
that floods out bringing death and despair,
yet one more in a ghastly parade, each
fighting Martin’s arc of the moral universe,
fighting its endless-seeming curve toward justice
that we must struggle for with all we are,
striving for a day when 
no malignant spirit can ever again
convulse humankind around their nightmare.

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Jennifer Wenn is a trans-identified writer and speaker from London, Ontario. Her first poetry chapbook, A Song of Milestones, was published by Harmonia Press (an imprint of Beliveau Books).  Her first full-size collection, Hear Through the Silence was published by Cyberwit.  She has also published poetry in numerous journals and anthologies including WordCity Literary Journal, The Ekphrastic Review, Journey of the Heart, Beliveau Review and the anthologies Poems in Response to Peril, Stones Beneath the Surface and Dénouement.  She is also the proud parent of two adult children.  Visit her website at https://jenniferwennpoet.wixsite.com/home

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