Category Archives: God

J. crashes the party

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If you asked me how I knew it was you I would touch your face and say aardvarks!! Anteaters!! Warthogs!! Your humor as unmistakable as your wit, odd they all refuse to see you, you in the over-sized retro flippers, ducky float ring and wild Hawaiian print crashing the party, the holiday, the cozy churchy potluck making almost everyone supremely uncomfortable.  Everyone except the children who delight in your flamboyant honesty, your failure to adhere in any way to our sheepy ways, shorn and alone

You hand off the flowery shirt, the float, the flippers (none of which you ever needed)

seamless garment to sunblind guards

World go dark, pain and love

Set free

What was it 

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what was it, mute, inanimate object perched on the counter in the messy late-night kitchen as she finally sweeps up the spilled beans, tosses them out into the night, contemplates both what usually lurks there and if they will grow, sprout, tangle up into vines, vines to block the sun, spin to the clouds where the approximate-rhythmic giant dwells, mocking science, mocking long-dead Darwin, Glutton-clubbing, maggot-and-squirrel devouring Darwin whose mortal life has coiled to dust but whose immortal one is hot, vivid, fierce

Survival of the fittest…

A lexicon for grief

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how many words for snow

how many words for rice or rain or storms

We humans and our specificity

Yet no words for listening 

Hearing you

Being there, holding on, loving you 

Looking into….

Oops!  Already well into 

Greeting card territory

When what a body needs is those…those

Ladies in the black organza 

Wailing in the streets.

Where are they?  When we need them so?

All those things we need them to

Do

Be 

Say, not say, feel

a new vocabulary 

Esperanto for grievers

Words for here I am with you (ret)

Just being here for you (ghurt)

You are not alone (hyop)

Breathing here with you (fppt…)

There are empty rooms and rooms for more

Make more. More for all the ways

I will be with you in silence

Letters strung together for the careful listener

Unspoken I am with you

Through the storm.

To my esteemed humanist friend,

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I confess

I was angry at first 

At real atrocities ignored and

fictions so promiscuously embraced

But then I thought heck

So what if she mixes her metaphors? Or fails to tally the cost 

Of a world unmoored by love?

Instead 

I have this one

Abiding, hypothetical

Question-

Haven’t you ever been afraid that this triune omnipotent

God of love 

Might be just like 

Dustin Hoffman in the penultimate 

scene of The Graduate?

Pounding on the outside

(yes, the outside)

of the church, calling your name as you

Marry the wrong guy?

And if you do-

(what if you do!?)

Who will be there

By your side on the bus to forever?

Tree King

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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

Feminism for ordinary stones

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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.

Traveling Clothes

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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

Among the Grave

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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