we watched the old man
Build his doohiggy in the yard
For a hundred years
We mocked
his talk of “rain”
Unaltering our behavior
To the very end
Through the procession of paired creatures
Too quiet, too orderly, in hindsight
No longer
surprised when he shuts up his wooden spaceship
Seven day still
Then
Come rain
Rise relentless river
Through the rooms of our careless together
Drips, drops, seep, torrent, flood
words we coin
In the last moments of our lives
As the world entire
Recedes
by then their civilization had evolved to ruthless efficiency
Injustice and oppression had been outsourced to less developed countries
Leaving them only to
Eradicate grief
They tried all the usual suspects–
Hot tea, warm milk, kittens
Yet the mothers still grieved
So “They”
Invited the white coats to come
Put their heads together,
build the perfect
Comfort machine.
It worked of course, they were prone not to failure
As they stood at the scene of each tragedy
Bystanders on the side
…the Comfort Machine churned out its magic
Combed out the violence
scrubbed the murder
Bleached out the violation
Unthreaded both deceit and apathy
Established a perimeter of fire
Around self-preservation
Passed a final round of shots
Among the dignitaries-
Bone bourbon, tequila, absinthe
They murmured in approval the way a barkeep might shout
Last call
As the music continued to pulse hard and fast through the crowd
Everyone turned
To the mothers for some final sign it had worked
As the Comfort Machine idled and purred
Over the still deafening sound
Of silenced hearts
thin, dark, pretty girl in the roadside diner
Come away with me…
Crosses by the highway
Words from the language of lost tribes
Speak of both our solitary and communal grief
A crass apparition of the law
Hangs over each of us
Would be angel
Spies the man trudging
along the shoulder
Half-naked
Exile from a violated garden
Fig leaves exchanged
For the skin and blood of
the One who can save us
Along this broken road
We are all
Pilgrims
these ordinary words
Hewn from a tree
To the curve of the foot
Or simply endure
Itself a stone, a hard place
To be in the presence of God
As he dips the bread into wine
Supper of blood and agony
Last…
Supper
Day
Glimpse…
Of who we will be
The first and the last
The last shall be
First.
First you must know
The beautiful feat of God.
you deserve
Truth clenched in both hands
For years I have puzzled
How would she know
“The real story?”
The only “mother” she ever knew kept her locked in a tower
Named her after stolen
Salad greens
Tell your twin
Running to Canada was the
line I could not, would not
Cross for love
Unlike a man we both know
Who crossed lines of law and love
Abandoned wife and children
Hid his treasure
Said he could not pay
No fairytale love-
Story for his first wife
Little ones
there are records of these things
The faces of the abandoned are familiar to you now
Unlike your own mother’s
Who they kept from you
Fear and sin will make an ordinary
Monster out of us all.
Sadie’s foster mother told me once-
They are Christians, you know!
Christians do not steal babies
Live lies
Or put their assets in their girlfriends’ names
But how would Rapunzel know that?
She would have to borrow her sisters’
Plaited hair
A ladder to
Set all three free
Then look for the small stones
Of Truth
Scattered along
the long road
Home.
It has been almost a decade since my father died after his helicopter crashed on descent.
I still feel flashes of pain when I am reminded of that pain.
Ordinary haunting is a longterm normal for we who grieve.
The death of one man changes the world.
Evoking Jesus.
He took every crash, every act of misery and self-destruction. Drained the cup of history to the dregs of genocide, exploitation, war, famine, epidemic, deadly contagion.
Hell to pay for us. The wrath of holy Love, the grief of God poured out.
For us.
To atone for the transgressions of a single garden-variety human would be unwatchable, unlivable, unthinkable, unbearable– awful.
The ransom for all our billions is so beyond reckoning, we do not try.
But we should.
We should at least reckon the cost and the pain, fear, horror and brutality it took to redeem our ordinary wrongs-gluttony, lust, prejudice, and greed.
We should; we shall.
We will either be defined now by our debt to this Eternal Savior or we will be defined forever by the life we squandered at his great cost.
haunts me with her gray
Soul, robbed of light
Too young to ever choose this
She is a ghost
Who in all other aspects
Resembles me–
Breastplate taken in battle.
Which is why I see your face before
Me always
The iron bars invisible to all but
We two
Jailed by men with carved out hearts
I carry you, darling
Close to my own
Beg the God of air and light
To teach us how
To fly
Away from the shadows
Where ordinary humans claw and devour
All but unaware
They have bartered their own
Nearly extinguished
Eternal selves
For shreds of ashen dung
I told you
This was a two-part answer
Ironically framed
By the disembodied voice
Selling cars in the next room
It’s like calling
A cathedral
A room with four walls
And a ceiling
Huh…
I think as I finish
Stuffing variegated laundry
Into the high efficiency machine
That is true
You my darling
Are no mere room
With four walls and a ceiling
You are a cathedral
And should be treated as such
Tear down this temple
And I will raise it again in three
Days
He said
Evoking all
The foundations in the womb
Baby pictures and toothy grins
Girls whose smiles light up the room
Do not be content to be
Measured the way a man will
Span an ordinary room
Know instead
It takes a lifetime and a fortune
To raise the extraordinary
Cathedral
Flying buttresses
Stained glass windows
Columns and impossible
Arches
All to the altar
Rising incense
Gaze of the Infinite
God
don’t need to tell me
Time travel is real
I have stood in the room with you
When you disrobed
Mixed the paint
Self-portrait, pitiless and true
You weaponized unsparing
Light for me-
hair cropped close
Seemless undergarment
So that I could know
Exactly how to strip,
Bear cross, and follow
You to the last breath.
first, he corrects the misnomer–
“Body image contest!”
Still, sly words written on the human body
Numbers, he corrects again
Pointing to the charcoal digits written
on their extremities
So close to the branding iron or…
The shadow of all his gone siblings
Fall ash across our faces
his once-alive sisters would have had
A string of dark
Numbers tattooed on young skin
Which is how he got here in the first place–
I remind him of my own
Memories from The Penal Colony
How do you
“Be just”
Without piercing
The heart of every man?
I ask. Brush his beautiful dark
Hair back
How young you look, darling
He flinches as we almost touch
Ghosts at the bikini contest
Carrying Light 