In my spiritual memoir, Satan will never have A speaking part because it’s Satan who divides The world cleanly between worthy men of God And temptress drug addicts who make them Stumble; the only butterfly who spent all day In my bed was a painter whose wounds Gave her beautiful art and made me catch her When she tried to fly out of a window and when She carved poetry into her veins; was she not my Bodhisattva then? Had... Read more
You are the prophets, not me; I am the encourager; I am the One who puts lipstick on the prophets; I have taken palo santo from the king’s Altar and I have learned how to singe My lips with it without any pain; If you move quickly, then the coal From the altar only stains your lips, But that stain cleanses them because It’s not the actual pain that cleanses us; It’s trusting that we can go through the Looking... Read more
My medicine today is thumb tacks — I threw out every other crutch (Except my breath and my garden) So now I am using the smiles of People who love me and the gaze Of my Mississippi Bodhisattva And black topless Jesus and the Rublev Trinity and the spiral passage And the face of the mother whose crown is Three and seven and twelve And Eazy and Dre and Ice Cube and Che And Lou Reed in between Dorothy Day... Read more
I need to be small right now And hide within your arms; The world of big is bad for me. I wanted so badly to make it big That every day was measured By the march towards greatness. There is no joy in speculation; There is no respite in universes Without touch and smell and taste. I wanted to command the galaxies Which are distant points of light That cannot love me back. So help me find the real-sized flowers... Read more
There are no unimportant stories And when we finally exist In our final form in the field Beyond illusion, there will be No stage. Maybe God will ban Amplifiers and cell phones and All means of talking to people Who aren’t face to face. There will be no fame because Nobody will feel like their lives Are not special enough compared To the people who live in the screen. And when all we can do is share Loaves and fishes... Read more
You have been tuning me into your song, For every time my signal fails to transmit And I feel like the man in the silent movie Who has to pantomine but he’s being shown In a world where screaming pantomine just Bores people into looking back at their phones, You use that experience to help me see How utterly wrathful your love is. Your wrath is so precious and powerful; You will use it to shoot the perfect arrow That... Read more
During the pandemic, I have been having a fascinating and frustrating journey in my various attempts to share poetry and ideas on the Internet, which is always a mixture of egotism and genuine vocation. In the age of social media, it’s very hard to interpret how other people respond (or don’t respond) to my writing. In many ways, social media, especially Twitter, feels like a middle school cafeteria where there is a whole caste system of tables from the most... Read more
I. Bus Terminal There’s a feeling like we’re all Just sitting in a bus terminal Waiting to be called for the line And we’re pretending like each moment Doesn’t have to be the last time We see each other so we tell Silly jokes, but what will happen When my bus is called and everyone I see after that is wearing a hazmat suit Like the scientists on E.T. and I’m Elliott and I’ve got to break out of here... Read more
Holy Saturday is The day when there are no Answers, only waiting In the womb of God. So I’m wondering Whether you’ve already Written the story I’m acting out Because I’d love to know That all the shunning, And the missed connections, The running away from me In the supermarket, The almost crashing your bike Into pedestrians because that Preacher is playing Jedi Mind Tricks again with his free donut holes, The coming the first week But realizing you’re too... Read more
It’s such an impossible Thing to understand that I need to eat magic food To put me in the right head Space to even contemplate Nails nine inches long going Through my hands and ankles; I got a pencil jabbed in my hand In second grade; the lead is still There at about the place The nail hole would have been; Does that count as stigmata? I want this to be yoga; Like you’re up there absorbing All the sins... Read more
Mercy Not Sacrifice
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