Just an ordinary looking guy with an odd refugee backstory who comes along, works with wood, talks some smack, heals the crowd, dies for all, inexplicably
Rises again.
The end-the beginning
for all of us.
Elevator Pitch Savior
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Primate Love
The monkey tribe grieves
over the prone body of what is actually just
A robot baby
while across the globe in human cities
woman rage and tear
Euphemistic offspring from their own
wombs
Run, human child, to the relative kindness
of other mammal mothers
who would never, ever
do these terrible things
to even the semblance of
their own young.
Our Lives As Fiction
I can no longer go
to the places art hangs out
Flea-markets-yard-sales-estate-sales-heck-mid-scale-hotels-sometimes
without taking…
… surreptitious snapshots
of all the oil-based-still-lives
water-colored sailboats
and occasional knock-off Mondrians
by the hands of amateur strangers
Because you won’t let them see
These masterpieces:
The one of the Russian sub disaster with the crazy dark blue you invented
floating downward
Only a house for a boat
Lit from the inside
Slow diagonal slide
Or that same impossible blue
Night this time, rising with an arc of lights
Rivaling the stars
“There’s no base!”
“there’s no base!”
Exclaimed the girl–green shirt, tiny dog resembling a toy…
only real in the crook of her arm
And suddenly I get atheism–
Darwin shouts in the schoolyard–
no base!
And unhinging the game from…
well, base-
Another name for
The trunk of the branching oak
we rest beneath
breathing hard
before someone says
One, two, three, get off my father’s apple tree
Not to be confused with
That one inimitable player who says
One, two, three, base all over me
And somehow, miraculously
Means it.
Cry Fire
her voice is metallic-insistent-succinct
Fire! Fire! Fire!
Thank God she is there
10 dollar angel
suspended above us while we sleep
…when we sleep
You know it took me years to know You did that
And then years again to know few others did.
Vigilant love, calling us out of darkness
where angels who watch over us if we
had eyes to see
Always resemble the Firstborn
Fill the sky with light
Ring the children with wings and eyes
And teach them how to vanquish
Implacable darkness
with words of supplication
to the fierce Unstoppable
God of Light.
The Distance Between Us
Bet everybody loves a good
love story
Boy meets girl or something…
Only that is not enough
You once asked me if there were monkey bars that went all around the world
Could you do it?
I could do the math
24,901 miles around
Oddly specific last mile the hardest
Arms tired by the miles of
Arm-swing-leg-swing-hang repeat
131,477,280 bars
Feet
Hands and arms so tired
After an eternal day in the sun
The girl is such an ordinary thing
But the boy is one-of-a-kind
Worth looking for
The man who could, would, did and shall
Make this love story
Luminous.
To the March
In deep winter
she chooses to suspend
All the ordinary chores
Drags a heavy fishing net to the belly
of this man-made stream
Feet first into
cold deep
Swims upstream
where they wait for her
bobbing on the water
snagged by the naked
limbs of winter branches
An old oil can, adorned with red duct tape,
several empty beer bottles,
torn flotational device,
And a veritable tableau of shirts and trousers
Snagged on naked limbs
then animated by the wind
Once carefully extricated
she lines the children up by year, gender, alleged disability
Names them back to life
So they can indeed
Fly, flock of winter birds
to inauguration.
Katydid
Sit with me
On the bench in the park
In the imaginary world where
Children are always
safe and well
In the heart of the tribe of small
voices call out
hide-and-seek–freeze tag–the ground is lava
As If I could still draw you close
Say I am sorry
say I know you tried
Perhaps in every way they tell you to-
Words written and spoken
Smoke signals and semaphore
Emptied root beer bottles corked with words of loss
Come to a premature
Conclusion.
Fragile Splendor
I passed you in the parking lot
of the big-box store
as you walked closer
Depth-gauge transforming
as you came close enough to touch
pale skin, piercing, faded tattoo
blue outline of a bird
etched between shoulder blades
And the adjectives I use in my head change with each step
Young, thin, pretty become
Fragile, luminous
The mortal turned into the eternal,
vessel or spirit
Poured out light
over us all.
How safe is abortion?
Years ago I did an informal study of the language associated with the debate over abortion.
At that time, forty years ago, both sides of the debate referred to “the contents of the uterus” as babies.
This is indicting.
In the 1970s we knew and articulated a simple fact: the contents of the uterus during a pregnancy include at least one human being.
I say all of this because…
Socrates is immortal.
I know, seeming non-sequitur as well as a bit of a hijacked syllogism. But if you think about it, that is exactly what abortion apologetics is about–hijacked syllogisms.
Track with me here.
The original and better known Socratic syllogisms run like this:
1. All men are x
2. Socrates is a man
3. Therefore Socrates is x
X could be mortal, animal, sentient, mammalian…
You get the idea…
But what if men were immortal? Then Socrates would be immortal. His life would be defined by more than the hemlock, the sham trial, the bad marriage, the stopped heart. He would be out there somewhere, forever, thinking, feeling, real forever.
So what does that have to do with the safety of abortion?
What if we substitute human fetus for Socrates or men?
1. All human fetuses are…
Half of all abortion patients die. Those patients are the children of the other half of the patients.
Anyone who says abortion is safer than giving birth simply has the math terribly wrong.
Imagine if this math applied to all medical appointments: half of the people who went to the doctor on any day would not only not leave the clinic alive, they also could have their remains given to research concerns for money.
Still, what does that have to do with Socrates being immortal?
If Socrates is immortal
Then Someone or Thing has made him so.
A Word perhaps, an eternal Word.
Born into poverty, at risk of being the victim of infanticide, not because of who he was right then but because of who he would be…
Who they would be…the millions of would-be people.
Who like, Socrates, deserve true logic, not faulty syllogism.
Carrying Light 