Goodbye Baby

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If I had the picture still
I would be sure to send it to you
The one that survived the fire, your father’s wrath

I know
It is all mythological
Just Zeus
Arguing about what he had for dinner
Who,
Who he had for dinner

Her first words
Carefully recorded by the state of Pennsylvania–

Charles, I am going to kick your ass

Hardly appropriate words for a lullaby

Ask him how your mother lost her
Teeth
Children, like soldiers sewn in a field

You cannot redeem
Yourself
Your life
The smallest act of violence

The crickets and amphibian victims
Of your pitiless mind

Mind your manners broken boy–

Lung cancer is the last stigmatized
Cancer

You say you smoke too much

Too many
Too many victims

Goodbye baby
Read Dante or John
The Beloved for how this will end

Without me.

Community College

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You used to stand
In the doorway of winter
Receiving the Russian men
With their flowers and words of love
As transparent as their motives

Never letting on
You were a sucker
For their swarthy accents and abundant facial hair

But not that much
That you would fail

To mark each hour of rising light

Not yet
The full Twelve
He speaks of so casually
Before dark.

Unsay Me

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Unsay me
Uncall my name
Unbraid this coil of hair
Unspeak these things
Unspell these words
Untie this knot
Unhand me, fear
Unbreakable Love
Unquenchable fire
Undo this curse
Under this tree
Unbearable pain
You spoke for me.

A Terrible Christian

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The essay appeared to be heartfelt–urging people to brook the barriers of their resistance to organized religion and find a church, any church…because churches do good things.

Do they?

I spent the better part of my (Christian) life believing this. I still do, generally, on principal.

There was one thing missing from the impassioned church essay. One Person, actually.

You should go to church to see Jesus.

You should do everything to see Jesus.

“Christian” means “little Christ.” What happens to us when we excise Christ from our identity? All that is left is the “little” in us.

It is not easy to follow Jesus. Recently I gave a dramatic depiction of Jesus to someone who would definitely identify as a believer. This person rejected my gift with forthright disgust.

Did not actually watch the DVD….

I thought, huh…not an unusual reaction really.

How many of us would dare stand at the foot of his disfiguring Cross? How many of us have the courage to identify with our naked, broken, bloodied Savior?

I am a terrible Christian, unwashed and unlovely. But no one said redemption would be pretty.

Just absolutely essential for life
Eternal life.

The Alabaster Jar: what we used to be

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The story goes like this:

A woman who owes a great debt to Jesus takes her expensive dowry perfume and breaks it, then pours it over his head.

The scent wafts throughout the house. Beautiful, costly, extravagant.

She weeps and wipes his feet with her tears.

Humbling, intimate, kinda embarrassing.

Onlookers don’t get it.

Jesus does. He is the ultimate gift of love, she responds with the next dearest thing she possesses.

Because he has returned life to her.

Because he has redeemed her soul.

We have an impulse to scramble either to embrace or evade the expectations of our “love holiday.”

Perhaps we don’t need to do either.

Perhaps we already possess the most priceless gift of love–a perfume born of sacrifice and redemption.

More satisfying than chocolate, far more enduring than cut blooms.

The cost and burden of love is a Man who pours out the only life he has for us.

I have a theory about all of this–overpriced roses, fancy chocolates, even costly French perfumes are all nice, but the real symbols of love are often more like the tears at his feet–baby wipes, paper towels, mops, and detergent.

Often it is the daily, ordinary sacrifices we make, the humble and invisible things we do without any glory whatsoever, which in the end define love…

in the shadow of his Cross.

Exercising Ghosts

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I often tell myself–don’t write in the wee hours of the morning.

But I still do. Because I am a ghost. I am the only kind of ghost I believe in–a human, ordinary human, haunted by the past.

Losses of the past. No one is haunted by the gains, the victories, the trophies.

No.

We are haunted by the what-ifs, would have beens, and hairpin turns on dark highways.

I have been a ghost since 1998 when I lost Veronica.

I began to rattle my chains in 2009 when I lost a slew of other people.

Also ghosts, all of them.

I say all of this because tomorrow I will exercise my ghost. Myself.

I will run, jump, and glide in order to remind myself of the very most fundamental lesson of metaphysics–

How we live matters
How we die matters more
And how we live again: most of all.

There are no ghosts in heaven
You must wake
To get there.

I bet you think hell..

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Is a place of great
And universally unpleasant activity
A mine of infinite sorrow and regret
Or the ordinary home of men like Stalin and Hitler
Locked in an endless game of twister
Or country and western karaoke

But what if you are wrong?
And it is this instead–
The nightmare we have all had once
We are the supine
We scream
We try to scream
But there is no sound
No noise comes out of our fire-
Parched throats
Utterly helpless
Crave even Hiroshima rain
Forever.

Kayleigh Slusher, Girl in the Refrigerator

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This is a test. Read just the following sentence then follow the prompt:

3-year-old Kayleigh Slusher was murdered in San Francisco shortly after police responded to reports of violence and abuse at her home.

Her body showed signs of sexual assault and blunt force trauma.

Okay. Deep breath.

Now. What do you think?

How long will Kayleigh’s untimely death remain in your thoughts?

I ask because Kayleigh’s violent death allegedly at the hands of mom and mom’s boyfriend coincides with the death of Kevasia Edwards, the death of Phillip Seymour Hoffman, and a flurry of editorial opinions about Dylan Farrow, abuse survivor.

If you want to take my test a step further google each of these stories then scan for how much air each story has gotten.

Hoffman’s death is a tragedy, no doubt, but while police in New York and San Francisco are scrambling to punt responsibility for Kayleigh and Kevasia, people have been arrested for selling drugs to Hoffman.

Don’t get me wrong. People got arrested for the deaths of the two little girls. People who were known to be dangerous parents? People who had already incited the scrutiny of neighbors, authorities?

What should have been done to save them?

And why wasn’t it?

Should a grown man choosing to engage in deadly behavior warrant more intervention than helpless children? Helpless because we turn away.

Forget.

Don’t want to get involved.

Kayleigh was a citizen of Napa, California. Early reportage placed her brief life and tragic death in San Francisco.