Easter Sunday

men tip their hats

women smile demurely

and children high-five

the risen Lord

in passing thanks

for the egg-grace

hidden in the grass

Sunday morning

the chocolate God love

found on the church playground

or at brunch in new poplin

or at golf

in appreciation

for what happened on a hole in one-less hill in Israel.

I sit and judge them,

but is this day so different

from each day I

assume His grace was cheap?

How a Man Writes Poetry

Brutal, barbaric,
twisting beams of language, syntax, and blood
into iron crafted metaphor.
Blundering
over the precision of delicate syncopation.
Fueled by passion,
savage, primitive,
thrusting the seeds of meaning and diction from cradled warmth
where he holds life outside of himself.


Or sometimes cautiously seductive,
careful, tender,
exploring with prayerful lips
and sculpting touch
each ironic curve of stanza which
swells to the touch
in response to his worship.
Selfishly coaxing with his tongue each
letter to perfect form.

Or guiding gently,
large calloused hands
embracing the tiny fingers
of his creation
as it lies in sleep next to his heart.
This is why only real men write poetry.

Stars

When he was a little suburban magi,
swadled in a hand sewn hair shirt of grade school worry,
he listened to the train coo to him in the distance
as it moved, camel-like, brooding with worries of its own,
leaving him to wish upon the stars that glimmered just outside his window,
little silver sticker stars waiting for first grade wishes.

This modern, noiseless world
is not dark enough for wishing upon those stars.
He cannot see them.
He is thankful for the bright city lights of adult joy,
but sometimes he longs for cherished childhood pain
to show him the pinhole beams from infinity.

Sanitized Christ

Give me the sanitized christ
the hands clean christ
the Arian, pretty
not dirtied christ
who smells of clean baby beds
no crying he makes
and starry angels
the flannelgraph christ with his Roman nose
and the palms not showing

because the love
is too painful
the surgery necessary
by hands rough and soiled
is anesthesialess
and I cannot accept
the truth
be told
or swallow the elemental medicine down.

Carnage

"They eat each
other
here,"
I heard the whisper bouncing off
sterile walls,
the sacred walls of orthodoxy and
contempt, and I thought they meant
something like the Lord's Supper or
the Eucharist, if I weren't so better than they,
but that wouldn't be right
--not eat each other, that would be eat Him,
but I distinctly heard "each other,"
and I'm not even sure who whispered it, because no one was looking at me, it was just there, ready to be absorbed in the carpet going down the aisle.

Cannibalism
from Spanish Canibalis, name (as recorded by Christopher Columbus) of the allegedly cannibalistic Caribs of Cuba and Haiti.
Oral Sadism

Vultures feed on the dead,
but the God's children feed on the living.

I took my seat, ready to bend my knees
sure to become one of them
who craves soul, and blood,
and a bit of reputation.