i fish it out of the no-man’s land
beneath the back-back seat
momentarily mistake it for detritus
before realizing
it is the smallest boat in the world
dime-sized fighting ship
speculate about the shipbuilder
know the whole
time the real problem
yet to be addressed-
was it always this small?
life’s work of tiny men?
or was it once a real boat
whittled down to this diminution
by years and years of sturm and drang
in this teacup full of sea.
What are you doing up so late, little one?
Awake among the Petri dishes
No place for children
Where is your mother? Your father?
Do you mean to tell me
These nice-looking men in lab coats
Are the only parents you know
As your filigree DNA unfolds they peer
Into this sterile womb
Strain to catch a glimpse of
Your nascent primitive streak
Unwilling to admit it is theirs
We all fear
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
on the day I tell my daughter it is
mourning dove with a “u”
I remember you are gone
And count the things I used to say
About your father, your brothers
All named the same
(Like all those George Formans)
I still do not
Know which fight you lost
Left to
Cut through the jungle path
To the sea, to the sea serpent country
where we were young
all together.
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.
somewhere floating in the ether of souls there is
another us
Without the inevitable entrapment of self-preservation
-The pig mom and the human child
I use my truncated vocal apparatus
to try to warn you you are
– not safe here
among the scientists
With their crisp white coats and syllogistic rejoinders
They count pieces of us
Placing animal in one
category
and the human in another
Bone-bone-bone-
Spleen-heart-cornea-
Never question whether we can
see color or
Feel pain
Confined instead to
Diminished souls jarred by
All the words for
monster
She folds the old court room,
kangaroo judge, too-
chatty DA,
disembodied victim’s advocate
Into a single square of
pressed paper
Mama’s voice cracks over the
willful substitution
rendering mandatory sentences into a
Chain of paper doll victims
flattened easily
Into origami anger
….funny hats to
fragile sodden boats
hit by each percussive wave of
Shouldn’t-‘ve-been
Shouldn’t-ever-have-been
Done-to-us folds
Carrying Light 