Monthly Archives: August 2017

One Thing

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The lady in the picture is a fraction of her whole-a bit of glasses, hair like mine.  Did she shape the assignment or was it the Wizard of Oz for freshman comp?  I don’t know, but as with so many words shaped into injunctions it sticks in my craw–pick the one thing?  Not a good thing?  Not one among brothers? I suspect literary ambush, which then feels like literary paranoia, but I kick around/go into the weeds with this one thing-

You.  You are the one thing.  The voice in my head steadying my coward’s heart. My man, Jesus I tell Madeline about that universal division of time into before and after You.

Like if you believed in evolution it would be 50 billion, million zillion years BCE, and those sylphish, wispy 2000 after.

After you.

Let me just

Tag along after you

Big brother

Strong tower

Never-leave-me God

Calvarium 10

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I once read about a woman who believed she could dissipate 

…the clouds with her mind

but after much thought I have decided I do not want them to go

I see all their stories

As though God Himself were

Finger painting sand art

Casually insinuating angel wings here or the mirror reflection of the map of China in fluffy white

Clouds like babies come and go

Maybe they too grow up 

Go to college, stop needing us anymore as we gaze up at them snow-globed in blue sky beneath inky infinite wonder, fields of burning stars, 

Called all by name.

When words fail

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Poetry or prose.  

For the last three weeks I have had hives. Still have hives.  I have sifted words in and out of how this feels and each time all words have come up short.  They do not stop the itch. Like quack doctors, snake oil salesmen, or phone-a-gypsy psychics they play at reading my palms then leave me with no…

Balm

No remedy

No salve for my slowly metamorphic 

reptilian skin.

So I threaten them with silence or just undoing their fragile orthographic pieces unbending bes and esses into straight black lines

Because from geometry we know

Lines go on forever (in either direction)

Moving away from the itchy round helpless

Woman who once loved them

Out to the ends of time and light

To the place where God 

hears our wordless

Supplications.