Well of Unfulfilled Wishes
I’ve never given blood, but I’ve donated hours
to strangers as an ear for trauma.
Isn’t the adage:
Blame others before interrogating thyself?
I eat a bowl of Lucky Charms
to stay in touch with my Irish heritage.
Listen to Cat Stevens
to better understand Islam.
At university I learned
the “Book of Revelation” is Science Fiction,
which translated into Latin means,
Liberal Arts is the work of the Devil.
The only way to truly know any story
is to take a minor character out for beers.
Some days I question my morning hit
of serotonin.
Other days I buy a lotto ticket
and sit next to a well of unfulfilled wishes.
It’s easy to fall in love with an idea
after reading 20 pages of self-help.
More difficult to prostrate at the feet
of uncertainty. What I mean to say is,
before you walk a mile in someone else’s shoes,
make sure they fit.
Swiss Army Saviour
God is who you turn to in a storm.
Or when you can’t pay the rent.
Or if your football team is losing the Super Bowl.
Even if He is high staring at supernovas.
Read his biography. Not a people person.
Evicted His first tenants
for picking apples in the backyard.
Drowned a lot of haters in His bathtub.
Once I thought I found God
in a jar of glue, but it just didn’t stick.
The genius of thoughts and prayers
is they don’t cost you anything.
Bored? Trade in God for a dog. You can bark,
I rescued him, but really he rescued me.
Open Prairies of Whispers
The walls are painted cowboys
and perforated with bullet holes.
I sleep-in to hide from my tears,
the double-barrel lens of waking.
A soft violence of light uproots me.
Morning ritual: a kindling of lead
mining the blood buried in my gums.
Prayers rise like raptures, settle
the eyes’ flickering filaments, pluck
hostilities splintered in the mind.
For a rider, absence is a horse
on the open prairies of whispers.
I move through this world as absence.
Diagnosis galloping through me.
