7.01.2009

I wish I wish that I could be with someone who uncomplicated me. Who stood in focus when I am fuzzy and flustered. Who sees my lines and curves when I cannot. I wish I wish that I could find a sophisticated soul, a like mind, an easy voice, a breath that blows through me like a breeze and sometimes like whirlwind. I wish I wish I had a friend, a man who holds me as friends do, who cups my face and inquires after my days and storms off in fights but rushes back in the end.

I wish I wish for an easy move to eternity from solitude, from emptiness to, bit by bit, being filled and becoming fit. To circled and confined from being free. To being one whole from being just me.

6.22.2009

From the Daughter He Abandoned, to the One who Called Him to Sea

You called my father to live like a fisherman
And leave me alone with my mom.
He followed you out on the raging sea
As your cause shook the world like a bomb.
As he followed your path, you spoke love.
You said it was all that he'd need.
But at the end of the day, he fell victim like me
To the Man with the mustard seed.

You say your love for him is stronger
Than his love for his own daughter,
So I wait for my prodigal father
To come home.

I think I may have known you once,
And true I left you once or twice--
I chose to live inside a fish
Instead of taking your advice.
So I slept in his belly and prayed for three days
As from your haggard face I hid
That you would cast your net and catch my fish
But you never did.

You taught him how to fish in water
For the souls of sons and daughters.
I scan the seas and pray my father
Will come home.

As you prayed your last in the garden
With the blood flowing to your knees,
He fell asleep and dreamed of heaven,
Dreamed of passion, dreamed of peace.
When they came for you, he fled from them
And left you embracing a tree.
Now was it worth to steal a father
Who betrayed you as he betrayed me?

Those who leave not son and daughter
For the sake of Me and My Father
Will never taste the eternal waters
Of my home.

There's three of you and only one of me.
So tell me how was I ever supposed to compete?
Your loving call drew my father out to sea,
And that loving call made a bastard out of me.

4.01.2009

Lion of Judah

I freeze
As my feet hit the snow-covered floor of the den.
There are lions here,
Waiting to attack.
I feel their breath on my skin,
The pulse of their
Giant lion paws
Padding along the ground
Behind me,
Circling.
There paws that will
Move me
Toward their lion bodies
And their
Great manes.

And I am
Frozen.
Because it is snowing
And there are lions
And there is no place to run.

If I were Samson,
I'd rip you apart
And eat the honey from your side;
Or one of David's mighty men
Who could tear at you
With big bare hands;
And I would pull
Myself from this den
Just like Daniel did.

I
am no Daniel or David, and
I
am no destroyer of columns;
I cannot scale the walls of this den.

I cannot rip through your skin
(As if you had skin)
And eat my fill of the sweetness
From your wounded side.
So I stand here
As you circle me,
Frozen before your
Great padding feet,
And beg you to
Devour me.

2.16.2009

"I used to be a poet,"
she says, tapping
a half-empty cigarette
on the edge of the table.
She squints against the gleam of sun
shining through the smoke
of the second cigarette of the morning.
"It all went up in smoke--
like this smoke," she says,
watching the air from her mouth
float up to her eyes
and become part of the atmosphere.