Around the Square

A vampire walks every night past the inns in Savannah's Lafayette square, rumor says, down the sidewalks looking for its pray each night before you go to bed that you are cleared from any darkness and recreated with light weights can't be balanced any more than the heavy ones. We all do our best to walk the line hear the sounds of the man with the briefcase as his footfalls sound on the pavement. He works over there at the courthouse, and he knows he's

A Deliberate Love

Yours is a deliberate love,
No frivolous flirtation,
But premeditated conquest
Based on my need
And Your autonomy.

Before forever on the landscape
Of my sin—the valleys and the canyons—
Your blueprint was formed,
A detailed drafted redemption.

Unlearned knowledge of my soul’s texture,
Felt with each caress made—
Sometimes tenderly, sometimes severely—
Frightens, Costly Lover.
And the ignoble pursued kneels to cry.

When Love Was Scratch and Sniff

There was a time when all was instinct,
Chemical responses firing like gangs in the night
Not caring who was bloodied by savage passions.

And there was a time....
Much later…
When he coveted the sparkling rhinestone,
When the pretty box with its shiny foil papers
Still meant more to him
Than the present.

He met three people who changed his life:
A woman, 40, who thought she was 20;
A man, 95, who was happy that he was;
And a boy, 5, enjoying pretend.

Tired of pretending,
Tired of breathing in past normal inhalation
To reach his unattainable youthfulness,
He bought a size larger pants.
Just one size so that they could devour his waist
Rather than nibble at his hips.
He wasn’t really fooling anyone anyway.

When love was scratch and sniff,
Sonnets were used as bargains for sex,
Tin was worshipped as if it was silver,
And plastic was praised for its strength.

But soon the tastes advance
Far past the fast food arches,
And life permits us moments,
Just before the end,
To sit and sip our tea.

For Sean

There he bows,
Weak from his fast,
Dressed in white,
And soon the colors of blood and earth will follow.
His life from this point is the honor he keeps
And the purity he holds is the banner with which he leads.

The games of the pages are over.
The servitude of the squire is a recent memory.
Now the battle is his.
There will be leading by a hand on a page’s shoulder,
Or a quiet ride on horseback.
There will be leading by battle, too:
The grisly severing of tendon from sinew.
The dreaded orphaning of the unseen.
The armament dreads the inevitable.
The knight must swallow the fear.

As one whose sword is tarnished
From blood of battles long forgotten,
I pass these words to you:

A soldier is a soldier until he retires.
A knight is a knight until he dies.

A Request

Unlike me,
I am begging forgiveness.
I read Romans 1,
But did not go on to Romans 2.
I danced judgmentally on the grave of your sins
While resuscitating mine until they lived on infamously.
Wiping the slate clean for myself,
I kept record of your wrongs.
I did not believe all things.
Now I beg for grace.

You would be within your rights—
Rights I took pride in denying you—
To judge me by the same standards I judged you.
I deserve to have my sanctimonious hands nailed
To the cross I hewed myself out of pew-bench pine.
And I would not voice a defense if you brought my offense
Up on judgment day.

Gracious, He forgives us both,
But it was I who splashed in that grace
While assuming you had chosen the shore
When actually you had learned to swim.