Jesus reigns

 You hear, you see, you reign, and you will judge

When men oppress the least of these, the ones you made--

You hear, you see, you reign, and you will judge.

When nations rest at ease, feast on fat meat, sit

on the bones of these, the ones you made,

and say "peace! peace!", knowing the bones

beneath them cannot speak--

You hear, you see, you reign, and you will judge.

When the little, brittle birds limp, untended,

shiftless, and spend our pennies on their sins--

You hear, you see, you reign, and you will judge.

When proud men preen, and vomit lies, and call it truth,

and fools leap up like dogs to lick up what they spewed--

You hear, you see, you reign, and you will judge.

When greedy priests would weave another veil

between your spirit's power, and their flocks,

Or teach their sheep to heap self righteousness 

around their shame like dragon hoards,

or walk in judgment, blinded by the white boards

of painted over shame they cannot, dare not see--

You see, you hear, you reign, and you will judge.

And when still we go on stepping on our children's backs

to keep our ease, to keep our ease, to keep our ease:

You hear, you see, you reign, and you will judge.

The marriage of the Lamb has come; his bride has made herself ready

We sell our souls for privilege and power;

the church is no less guilty. An hour,

an age, God curse it. God have mercy,

we're worse than we believe. The curse we

bear we carry in our bones. We can't 

unknit it from our breath, it's printed

in the wrinkles of our brains. Stains

like commandments, God-engraved.

Our bread is poison--we consented

to eat, we called it sweet. How pure

the saints shine forth, unstained--

how full of shit. We eat the shit

the world sells, call it sanctified.

Was it for this our Lord was crucified?

When will the earth, revolted, spit

us out? We've sold the cure

for our disease for "peace," for princes,

for appointments. There's no salve

to stop this rot, this bleed. We need 

amputation. Christ, will this branch

that bore me burn? 

When will you, awful God, return

to judge your church?

God curse it, God have mercy,

who will pay for this unfaithfulness,

when your bride's idols splinter? 

Will you, in mercy, burn them

in our bones? Burn in the midst of us?

When will we tear out our eyes

that make us sin, that cannot see

past lies that were our parents'

inheritance? or are these lies

as old as Eve? When do we grieve?

Oh my mother, my brothers, 

when will you grieve?

 

daily

Alternate title: let's pretend i'm sixteen again. It's 2020, indulgence is survival.

 

I meet my dying every day,

going my way to work. She stops,

sometimes, to say hello, or raise

a hand to wave. 

No need to grab my wrist

for attention. She can wait

the years until I settle down

into my grave.

We'll have time, then, to 

get down to it: the conversation

we delayed, the real business. 

No rush.

She'll be familiar then

already, a face I've seen

daily, a white face, her eyes

a dark smudge

I can't read, though she seems

friendly enough.  Some days

I think, looking in the mirror

I'm becoming

less myself. My eyes less real,

like hers, my skin less flesh

and blood. She waves.

One day my heart too will

cease drumming

my blood cells on their tireless

rounds, it will all be still,

we will sit down

together

and she will put her arms around me

like a friend.

 

october scraps

Most people on our street greet Fall with pumpkins

and campaign signs.

Someone's planted

MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN

--just like it was, I suppose,in the fifties,

when men were men. We knew then 

we were fighting the right wars.

Next door they've fenced their yard with flowers,

a bright thicket fence, dense with yellows, purples, reds  

humming, bee visited. 

From their power lines birds sit

and comment. It's not political, just

a place to perch--

to pour, fall voluble, their calls 

on repeat. Some bird version of

KEEP OFF MY LINE,

my branch, my bit of street.

 

September pieces

We live our days' work;

the sky glares down: blatant,

vengeful, orange

with far off fires.

We crawl through our days' work

like unwinged flies,

soapfooted, 

honeystuck,

besmeared with lies.

I'm piecing quilt blocks:

calm blues and greens,

right angles meeting 

squarely, where they should.

 

Outside the sky glares at us.

Our little screens blare at us,

promises, compromise,

thick with lies.

There is no peace,

no clear blue in us.

Things I put in my pocket

Most days we walk. The baby

picks up little precious things,

acorns, fallen leaves.

There is a dead bird on the sidewalk:

once it was a mockingbird, but

it does not say anything now.

Ants have eaten its eyes,

they seethe on it busily

packing away little parcels of flesh.

Next  door Miss Dorothy

white haired and stooping

pecks her tentative way

behind her little dog.

At the end of the street, 

across the road,

the middle school looms

crumbling red brick

and cardboard covered eyes.

Into its mouth

brown children go back and forth busily

it swelters and chews them, but

they get free lunch.

My great grandmother gardened

My great grandmother gardened

her suburban yard: unlawned it,

planted it thick with beans, tomatoes,

peach trees-- an unruly, fruitful sprawl.

Indoors, she coddled shoots and starts

in yogurt pots. 

I remember how she filled all her windowsills 

with aloes and with wandering Jew.

She lived alone, green framed,

I remember how the quiet filled my ears.

She served me tomatoes, ripe and sliced

thick, dripping summer--she poured me 

sweet tea, thick with honey, fruit, and mint.

I watched my manners. I asked

the names of plants. I did not know, then,

how hard she was to love, 

that woman who made her own way, 

who divorced when women didn't,

who cherished no one. 

When I was grown, I heard

her children, dutiful, call her Mother

with no tenderness.

I remembered

she could coax new roots from a dry twig.

 

blues

I know at some brown

brink a sun's up

rising 

but 

Lord

some of these days--

 

It's not just my blues

on my back

Lord 

you know it's 

generations

have trod have trod have trod

when will we reckon

the weight

of generations

 

Lord you know

I got my own blues in my pocket too

and all that on my back

it ull press a man down

till he leaks oil like a seed

crushed

 

this boot on my back

can't press me deep down 

enough to that 

dear freshness sprining--

it's too deep 

beneath this dirt in my mouth

got this knee in my neck why

do men not reck God it's not just

my blood in this dirt in my mouth

that can't cry 

 

God do you hear 

these rocks

 

it's not just

 

 

 

ship, version 1

You were longboned, then, but lanky still,
an unbuilt youth. You'd be a solid ship,
I thought; your will
a worthy captain; through whatever ill wind
might rise, you would hold course.
And so I chose my ship, signed
the life I left away, to snug
myself into your path.
No mate, I hid me in your hold, and slept,
your arm embraced me.
I could hardly hear your heart,
dreaming,
And when an evil wind
whipped up the water at our heels,
ripped through our sails,
tore boards,
at last unshipped us into cold, violent sea--
There in the dark water your long arms
held me
as a man might hold his friend
not knowing whether they'd find some plank,
some help,
or drown together.

doggerel

Have you tried to write a sonnet, while a child fussed at your arm,

Or tried to tell you all the different kinds of Pokemon?

Have you rhymed a little quatrain--have you even turned a couplet

With a baby at your elbow saying Mom, can you just stop it?

There's something about writing that makes children need to snuggle;

Their plumpness is a pleasure, but it makes the task a struggle. 

I will write poems one day, I say, to the wiggler on my lap,

But today I'll scrawl some doggerel, and then I'll take a nap.

harvesting sunflowers

We tease the black seeds
from their spiral nests
like little teeth,
the children's fingers nimbler
than mine. These smaller
circles recall
the first faller--the great
moon face, pie wide.
When it died
the thumb thick stem
green as a lime skin, grew
fingers--unfolded
new small blooms
palmsfull of darktipped seeds
compact in spirals
soldiers surrounded by double
ranks of petals bright
and soft as mango.
We cut the elder sister
off her stem, scraped
the red filaments,
unpacked the dark seeds
to keep, to plant, to toast
and eat; we cut
the first two sister faces
too, propped up in a glass
jar with water.
For a week there they reproached us,
then their bright petals
unpacked themselves
and dropped, puddled on the bare
table like yellow tears.
Just so,
once, I left for the evening
and returning, met my
littlest, her legs
curled beneath her, baby
face pressed to the wood
floor--she'd cried,
her father said, until
she fell asleep.

bequests

TO my children, let me leave
my love of beetles, their bright backs
gleaming, God's little gems

and of fungus, diverse and startling
in the world's damp places

and of words, that bubble on your tongue
that turn flips, that warp and warble,
bright gigglous things.

Let me bequeath
a chain of prayers, precious
to the God of beetles.
Prayers he gathers up
and stoops to bless
as they trundle over his palms.

Let me teach you
more than any thing, this
that your words too
are dear to him.

My children, bring him your prayers
as you gave me dandelions
and bruised mushrooms:
never doubting my delight
you pressed them eagerly
into my palms.

i do this badly, check back in two years

The myrtle's pink silk frills, that bow
its slender branches to the ground
then drop, and blow in drifts around
Sing praise

The unhurried travel of the vine
that climbs the gate, and steady, winds
its stems, and opens green leaves wide:
Doxology

The yellow shiver from the trees
where the shrill cicadas scream
to shake the air, scraping their wings
Sounds praise


The bright sweet waft of fragrant mint,
rosemary's pungent piny scent,
and savory thyme like incense lift
Doxology

The mockingbird that shears the sky
like silver scissors, with a liquid cry
flowing to harsh laughter, dry
Sings praise

We however wall ourselves up in thick metal,
swaddle ourselves in treated air and the stereo sound
of popstar inanities, idiotic anthems that drown out
the engine's roar. So insulated do we rush
on thick paved streets from box to windowed box

through a world of praise

sunflowers

Three's turned herself

upside down again,
she crows, she kicks
her heels above her head
merrily, her legs long now,
summer brown stems,
and her feet are like sunflowers

(how i love the round
proud bowl of her belly
flipped now over her dainty chin,
over her grin, wide
over her teeth)

three is a fierce season,
an age of fists and teeth
into the world
(such tiny perfect teeth,
like white pebbles)
she shrieks, she crows,
peremptory, jubilant

Daughter, don't ever give up kicking your heels.
When you change your thin chest
and your round cheeks
for a full size set
keep on insisting
keep on crowing,
shriek your need.

Sunflower soul, keep
turning the world
around your bright wide joy

Covid July

After the long flat months
trapped and masked
day after day the same: manna
again
we make a little room for
little sins
longing for cucumber
dust on our tongues
a long walk still through
how many months
or years
in the same damn sandals
and manna
just enough
again

Reading the Elizabethans, 1

I am
a catalogue of parts: a master's list
of lustering gems. A casket full of pearls
and sapphires, faceted, that flash
love's image to their lord.
A green wild world
to be dug up and treasured as a hoard.
I am
a glass, a stone, a form. Galatea,
warm figure, who can moan, can sigh, can kiss.
Or scribed and served up on a silver plate:
two breasts, of such a whiteness, such a size
to press. A narrow neck. Perhaps two eyes
to gaze on love with love. Two cherry lips.
A stomach, maybe, quivering and sweet.
A space between two thighs, white tender meat.
So the poets carve, and plate, and serve
something like a woman to the world.
Come, admire, eat.

cicadas

In the morning they begin
their shrill scream, trill
from every tree till the day
shakes with it--

Chew jagged great bites
of bean leaves, leave
vein laced rags
that yellow on the vine--

Leave their cast crisp shells
behind, backs split,
the empty legshells grasping
still--

The bugs themselves, dropped
beneath trees, a green
gleam fist big,
and glassy gold laced wings

doxology

You who are the word waiting
behind our monkey chatter
the slivers we cast up and grasp
the scraps we paste onto the great
deep space where you eternal
Are, and were, and will be.

Confetti, tesserae: our little
square minds weave little
webs. You who resolve
the pixels, zoom out, who hold
the little cells that fizz
and fade--Who sees the plan

imago Dei, we weave flat
ikons of your will, with our small wills,
we retell that great dark Word
with little scraps, that flash
and fizzle. Map data points
with neurons, bright, like glass

mirrors, sliver small. And you whole
skinless vast and frameless All
who waits behind our words
wore cells. Divided, multiplied,
housed parasites, grew skin,
grew blood, grew brain,

saw through two eyes. You walked
bone, muscle, skin; you died.
Whom we throw silver pins at,preserve and classify. Unheld
by ending, you rose, you opened
into Are. You go on being:

burgeon, bloom, divide, diverge, adapt, diffuse, direct.
You were, and are, and will be;
this little praise, pinned up
on endless word--

You, always, Are: purpose full
and thick with power.

I hate spring

April, you're the cruelest:
you flirt your frills at us

your daffodils, your narcissus,
your tulips. You sweet lipped

sass. We've had enough of
you, sprinkling your glitter

threefully, gleefully,
our eyeballs itch with it

you giggle at our sneezing, you
slip breezes at us sweetly

as if we'd smile through our misery.
You tease. Too fecund

floribundant. Spring is
tyranny. We itch and weep

admire your ruffled twirls.
We've had enough of  this

soft torture, this lovelines.
Of all the spring months, April is
the springiest.

i feel

snakes in my throat,
their muscled thickness warm
in my mouth, pushing,

i will spit out snakes

my snake full throat is
revolted
like when a foul
sweetness curls
its thick self
back
behind my tongue

I would gag if I could
close my throat
but there are snakes
in my throat. I could
open my mouth
let them slide strong and
smooth scaled
out

i could
open my mouth

glass would fall out
and cut up
the world into
thin slices

i would taste my own blood:
metal, electric

my mouth is slippery
cut up
i could spit glass

at

glister

Maybe I’m too old for this

glitter, false lashes, but

I’d rather be a fool than

dull.

Sprinkle on some dew
fresh perversity

it lasts a little, till
the glitter 

rubs off, beneath
it's the same old--

overdone.
It gets so 

every fresh wet gleam 
looks greasy,

stale edged.

Take the edge off.

It's the ad age. I
buy it

all.

I’d rather be a fool

than

see

After the flash and bang fade

take a little ease

a little slide

away

don’t watch the edges

legs 
scurry

Don’t

see

teeth with holes

holes with teeth

beneath

sic transit gloria.

Monday. Let's

live large, die young

contra mundi

Don’t you dare

see the cracks

in my eye crease--

Let's

live forever. Let’s die

young

Kyrie eleison

I guess I’ll paint more glitter on

my eyelids. Come on,

let’s beat the old drum

one more night again

Christe eleison

one more night

it's Monday night again

Has it been a hundred years asleep

a hundred years backdebt of grief--

I don't think
about it. See,

it's Monday,

time 

for one more kiss

with teeth

Sick sick sic

glitter it thicker,

gloria let's

transit

one more night
again

it's like this, see?

cicadas

The cicadas are shrilling. They are casting
a great yellow net of noise
around the town

treetop to treetop
and pinned down
to earth

to crisp, hooked little stems
--each wing shriek and scream
intwisted to the web--

We giants roll and lumber
thick fish, our thoughts and chats
caught in the strings

our world of meat and bones
enclosed in yellow scream