The before and the not-yet
Become the metaphysical geography of a mid-afternoon discourse-
What is the last holiday of a person’s life?
Passover? Kwanzaa? Thanksgiving? Cinco de Mayo? Christmas?
Christmas-I know you love Christmas!
As do the trees
Poised as they are, impatient,
On the far tether of human reckoning
Waiting for the signal
To clap
Clap before their King
After giving the human mothers ample time to choose
The-would-be-has-been-will-be-stone-mover turned to this sea of
quiet rocks
Paced among them
Raised his arms wide
And spoke words of life over them-
Sing, cry, stomp, holler, embargo, resist, advocate, articulate…raise
these your newborn voices
for all these
very little girls
curled without defense-
half-a-billion muted, crucial
Question marks
as each loses
one simple, brutal
Round of rock-paper-scissors
in this place we have marked “private”
then left alone.
You wake up after
This utterly life-altering event
Dressed in your wedding clothes!?
In a TSA-ish place
Long lines, blue gloves, weary travelers
Only the music is surprisingly good
Break-up songs
Break up songs for people
You did not actually want to
Break up with
Break up songs for old bones
Rough joints
The fear of falling
But also the grandkids
And the possibility of
that elusive die-in-your-sleep-ending
Standing in line
Somewhat dazed because the
Last thing you remember was planning
This church thing
Windy road…some singing in the van
The trip Home is always just
A normal day
But getting there-
heartbreaking
somewhere in the bowels of the NIH there are tiny, fragile pig-children
Spun from the DNA of “us” and “them”
Which reminds me of a story—
Once there were these two guys
Who let iterations and outlines of darkness
Into every corner of their very own souls
(Whatever that is, right?)
Only to find their place among the dead
Until…
Love walked in
Dispelled the ghosts of men into the
Real and understandably alarmed
Sea of pigs
Who then chose death over the dark wraiths of men
Sometimes I ask myself
What happened to those panicked pigs?
Did they find the eternal?
And what about these new unconsenting
children of a lonely room
Half-pig, half-child
Will they be allowed to
Escape the grave
And, with no help from their human side
Find rest for their weary souls
What if the universe was actually
Trying to get your attention?
You know, metonymically speaking,
Where “the universe” is a beat-up van
Driven by a pretty
unassuming God
And you were one of those garden variety types
unswervingly ignoring
all the signs:
Birds singing
Lovely sunsets
Oddball prophets
Always making the assumption
Who would want to get in that old thing?
Mistaking stellar lights for cosmic accidents
And personal missives for junk mail screeds
thereby missing
The extraordinary, temporal
Vehicle for undying love
As it slowly passed you by.
Comfort girl myself
I rifle through the postcards from
The places you have been
Looking for things you loved
Always people, always broken
Then strain to hear your voice
As you tell them about the Luke 13 people
All dead, all tragic until you
direct our eyes into the deep
Pool of Siloam, reflected the tower before it fell?
Did the blind man know it was there before he could
See you standing there
Across the street from all my loneliness
Beckon me come close
Brace yourself, Love
Last spring I sheared my own crown, playing both the sheep and the shepherd in a one-woman show about redemption.
The thing is:
You can’t redeem yourself, no matter what lovely poetic last
Name you have been given.
I see the boy you used to be
I see the lost in your eyes
Playing both sheep and shepherd in your own one-man show about…
I will always love you.
Who says that and means it?
Not me. I am a coward who cannot handle her always
Ten years since he died
And I stand in the dollar store conjuring up themes for a party girl
Bikini contestant party girl
Written in permanent marker
The lost in their eyes, the voice in my head
Man who played both the sheep and the
Shepherd in his own one-man redemption show
Thorns for crowns/ Paper crowns/diadems, tiaras
For the children we will be
At the wedding feast of the Lamb.
Tell the inhabitants of this broke-down place
new sheriff in town…
who so resembles the
wise child posed
Years ago in a picture
Beneath this ink-blue-night-sky sombrero,
Clark Gable mustache, glint of forever in your eyes
As this endless tide rakes an uneven shore
As words fail to form the adequate cup for sorrow
You go on-
Unstoppable heart.
Boy with the unstoppable
Heart.
So close
to a reclusive keeper
of memories, of wrongs
Shuffling among the forgotten objects
Placeholders for the barely living:
anonymous empty
water bottles, hollow and crumpled
Become the jury
Old newspapers still swaddled in
Their plastic rain protectors
Told to be
Witnesses or spectators
Instructed to rise
As a one-armed nutcracker assumes the bench
Rag doll court reporter records the proceedings
Mr. Vinegar prosecutes while
the defense attorney was appointed from among the
A pantheon of generic
Happy Meal toys.
But the victims are living songbirds
Twittering in the disheveled
cage of my heart of course
Always re-animating dried bones-
Off-kilter, neglected, wrongs
Will inexorably be
Radically, fundamentally transformed
When the true King
Calls them back
To life
in the space of no more than
Half-an-hour
someone steals his little shoes
dear to him/dear to us
Still, just shoes.
At the scene of the crime we
Call their names
Thinking whoever did this has to love them
Must have loved them
Oh. This song I know the words by heart
Sang it all those years ago
With all the other sodden
Unbearable
Break up songs for babies.
Carrying Light 