A Heroic Feat

"And when the children raise up a giant shield of laughter,

 it's like they're fending off death" - Ani Difranco

In between hacking out his left lung,

he wants to know if he can see his pictures

he wants to know 

(cough cough)

what this button does

creating shadows with his fingers in front of the light

(cough)

wants to know who would destroy who Aquaman

(cough cough cough)

versus Magneto, you know, 

(cough)

like in real life.

I want to know how someone so sick

could be so happy.

What strange strength, what bionic force

coursed through his blood?

Carried his brain away from his body

so that he was not really in the Emergency Room

at all, but 

knee-deep in some creek bed asking the tadpoles

why the sky was blue.

I want to know

 Can I come too?

I have seen tiny smiles cracked from the corners

of the face that hours earlier had been mistaken

for punching bag.

Have watched the terminally ill transform into comedians

while Mom and Dad feigned laughter

for sorrow.
And who is this Tomorrow?
Who looms an omen over their beloved's bed. I have fled the hurried hands of death
While a baby girl curled quiet at its feet,
Cradling my sweet to sleep, I thought--

One thing I absolutely do know:
These super-humans are my heroes.

ABOUT: working at a children's hospital is as satisfying as it is heartbreaking
 Postscript: dialogue and details have been altered to protect my patients' privacy

Revelation 21:3, 4

What Pain Gave Rise to & Thought Cancer

I. Thought Cancer

Miasma, she spread.

Lead an army out to war,

Bore death by dozens.

About// You ever meet someone whose negative energy personifies a cancerous tumor?

II. What Pain Gave Rise To

I heard his laughter

Let his mutilation know:

“I ain’t scared a’ you.”

About// how beautiful it is when we don’t allow our imperfections to get the better of us.

postscript: still working on my haiku, one of the hardest poetry forms, in my opinion.  (a haiku: 5/7/5)

The Good, The Bad and The Unbearable

The good part says that when you are flailing in the middle of it,
the end is a tangible object, just out of your reach.
The bad part catches you jerked from a shallow dream,
fists clenched full of not-the-tangible-object.
The unbearable lack of faith lurks wondering
What object?

It is a good thing our peach-white moon
is tucked so deep inside the blue velvet night;
I want so badly to grab even the fruitskin of its labor,
chew myself incandescent to what must
be a seed waiting.
Unbearable to think a thief has been
nibbling away at our waxing gibbous and
spitting out the stars in mockery.

Desire, an intangible wave of fruitless energies,
is, in theory, better than it is bad
And somehow, most unbearable.

ABOUT: the subtle danger of wanting

The Dollfacade 3000

Ladies and gentlemen,
introducing the ancient and devolving concept of beauty:

Just look at those legs, Bill!

Stretched-thin dragging across
millenia of theoretical claptrap.
Bearing the brunt of our wildest dreams
and without any kneecaps!

The Dollfacade 3000 is a trim slimmer
than the logic she was built on;
Waist wasting away in defiance of
her own livelihood.
Subsisting on the breadth of
our junk hypotheses.

Push her buttons and listen as she spews
out one canned apology after another:
My thunder thighs would like to apologize
for their nature
My kinked crown would like to apologize
for its nature
My thin lips would like to apologize
for not opening wide enough
to swallow your bull whole.

The best part of it all, Bill?
There is no heart pumping between
her large breasts
to possess the personality we refuse to
adorn her with.

Character, self and other accessories not included.
Reality sold separately. 

ABOUT// The impossible standard of beauty no one can live up to.

Invertebrate

In the movies,

The coward typically has lank arms,

He’s got this pallor to him, 

Like maybe he’s afraid of the light,

An irrational fear of what light through yonder window breaks.

Blue veins popped through bright white skin,

so pellucid one might mistake him 

for transparent— an air through which you could walk
without consequence.

Isn’t it funny?

You can’t tell much from the heart of a man by looking at him.

But a coward?

Come close. 

No.

Closer, until you can see the whites in his eyes.

There is a lank limb there in the iris 

Of which even the sclera is ashamed to speak;

It cannot withstand the weight of verity nor reason,

(A flabby incompetent muscle, at best).

At the first pinkblue kiss of burning sunrise,

He shields himself from its surmise,

Too afraid of what might materialize

from the previous night’s shadows— 

A replica of Himself? A six-headed monster? Or worse yet, nothing?

And so it is; the coward is tripped up and trampled on,

An air through which truth could walk

without consequence.

ABOUT: this isn’t a racial poem, contrary to what the ignorant might want to believe. It’s about cowardice, an ugly trait, but invisible nonetheless.

Post Script: I’m not really a big fan of Shakespeare or the war veteran, William Prescott, but their quotes were fitting.

Verb and Reverb

 

10 Lessons I’ve learned about Love

1. The first bird, baited and hooked by a crooked conman, understands her cage, but cannot hear how freedom rings with freedom wings. The second bird, spurred by a relentless wave of succor and salve, understands her freedom but refuses to take flight. Both birds will stay, but only the latter one will sing.
2. Have you ever begged an ass to budge, and on the third try he finally listens? Yeah, neither have I.
3. The musicmen bank billions off of our heartache. Not every love song makes a killing off a birdsong that was willing. Listen to what he does not say.
4. Even the best salesmen dance around the byproduct of the lie he just sold you. Listen to what he does not say.
5. A skilled thief takes his time with it; studies his Pearl incessantly before pick-pocketing a woman he can not afford to buy. Pretty girl, watch who’s watching you.
6.  But once you have been bought, pay all that love back. Shake, ratttle and pour his hands clean with all that loveback. 
7. I mean, stack his rooftops high and overflowing from all that golden backtrack.
8. I imagine love a thunderous boomclap— terrifyingly able to move mountains.
9. Or humble those mountains into molehills, because forgiveness be an action word, a moving verb, our singing bird.
10. Yes, the battle has been won. But baby, this is my warcry: whatever has drifted let it stray, whatever God has anchored, let him stay.

about// We're bombarded daily with what love is supposed to mean or be or feel like; it's literally enough to give me a panic attack. This poem is my way of sifting through the madness.

A Breathing Thing

Something about the way she spits “stories” out

When referring to God’s Holy Book

Elicits a distressed damsel
on the horseback of her beloved knight, moments

After slaying a saw-toothed dragon

or something equally 

Entertaining, fabricated, fictitious.

I can see bible characters dancing a two-step

Around her mind’s eye:

Noah and his dove chirping its newfound canticle;

Baby Jesus tucked into the manger;

Baby Jesus babbling bubbling bobbles of knowledge;

Baby Jesus Always Mary’s Infantile Miracle 

Always. 

Baby. 

Jesus.

But what ever became of his breath or blood?

When the serpent seduced the woman

(Bowing to her sweet altar of fruitless sin),

Were my own two feet not driven from the 

Flaming swords of fire at the garden’s gates?

And how many miles I have sprinted alongside Jonah!

His hand in mine,

Each footfall and burning gush of lung 

in sync with the other.

Together we feigned escape 

While the weight of responsibility kicked at our heels.

I can still feel his eyes burning into my own

As we crouched gutless inside the whales gut:

Even here, the eyes of God are alight with glory.

And what of my fellow poet and bleeding heart, Jeremiah?

Real mantears soiling my skin as we mourned the

Loss of Motherhood.

Did he not- with his own aching lamentation- teach 

Me how to cry loudly into one palm
while still cradling hope in the other?

The woman who wept at our Lord's feet,
a harlot among The One hand-cut of heaven
Saul, the killer of Christ's brothers
And I, a sinner if ever there was one--
We have pined and repined at our unworthiness,
all the while throwing our arms up to the sky in gratitude.

Or as the Tempter taunted Jesus to kill himself
Were my own wrists not minutes away from the blade?
A beckoning to let go of a burden
that was not mine to bear.

If all you hear are vowels and nouns,
characters stuck in an ancient fable
and not the voice of God Himself,
I challenge you to peer deeper.

Scriptural references: Genesis 3:1-5, 23-24; Jonah 1:3, 2:1-9; Lamentations 1:1, 16; Luke 7:37, 38; Acts 8:1-3; Matthew 4:5, 6

About// "The word of God is alive and exerts power and is sharper than any two-edged sword and pierces even to the dividing of soul and spirit, and of joints from the marrow, and is able to discern thoughts and intentions of the heart." -Hebrews 4:12