Don't tell me that you love me
'Till you find a way to hate me
And still like me all the same

I don't want to sleep tonight
so we can hear the rain,
and watch our memories slowly spin
like whispers in my brain.
You say forever feels like love
and death is but a day.
But little help that offers me
when you're a world away.

So I don't want to hear the rain
if it will wash you out.
But someday soon we'll find the tune
our life can sing about.

I had forgotten—
Laughter, till her, she's gone now,
Forgotten again.

It's been so hot these past few years
my sweat drips off in beads
Sometimes it's mixed with salty tears
I'm tasting all my needs


     This tongue is apprehensive now
     but tries to keep the peace
     Until its chant becomes a vow
     and mumbles without cease



  I wander down a curvy path
  while talking to the air
  I feel like I should take a bath
  but first I'd have to care


    Such filth I've known and come to see
    all over my own flesh
    The heat hits an intense degree
    and I begin to mesh



   Encased within a tangled knot
   The vines are getting thick
   I finally know what I am not
   and try to get out quick


It's then I hear the strongest cloud
forming from my pain
My silence grows to very loud
and welcomes latter rain

My smartphone got an upgrade,
now, between us, things are tense:
Siri, knowing she's superior,
has abandoned all pretense.

I asked Siri to hail a cab
when I was in New York
She told me I was getting fat,
and advised me I should walk.

Often Siri drops my calls
proclaiming I'm a bore.
(True, she's heard me tell that tale
a dozen times before.)

I wrote a "*** text" to my love
while walking in the park.
Siri sent it to my mother
and thought it quite the lark.

I bought this phone because her apps
are very useful things,
Now I live in constant dread
each time the **** thing rings.

My Smartphone got an upgrade
and, between us, things got terse,
but we're married by the contract
for better or for worse.

I should have bought an Android phone-
I'm sure we'd get along-
My iphone's much too uppity-
something's Siriously wrong

My soul saunters in a separate way,
yet and gone,
Way into the wilderness,
where my heart always hunts;
Seeking for a Footstool,
for my maimed feet of my childhood,
Upon falling into the cold fire of wrath;
I misconstrued.

My soul saunters in a separate way,
yet and gone,
Distance may alter me,
but of becoming empty and alone;
Be home after that Spirit of Forgiveness
will be regained,
The war has left my mind,
but I could not still find the ending.

My soul saunters in a separate way,
yet and gone,
I pray. I call for Jesus for saving me
from this poignant Poison;
His amazing grace will evermore
stand against all the waves,
My soul saunters in a separate way,
upon leaving my destined grave.

When my hair is short and my face becomes coarse from days' age,
I cannot tell myself apart from my father.

In mirrors and photographs and the eyes of who I love,
I see my father before I see myself.  

My father's dimmed reflection through mine;
my successes, failures;  
these my father make with me.

I see my father sick in his son's cigarette smoke.
I see how my sleep makes him healthy.

I feel my father's calm, honest tremble at the animal inside of me.
My father's stillness when the glass under my skin breaks.
My father's smile beneath mine.  

I speak and it is my father's voice.
My father's voice of reason, my father's desperation.  
My father's voice under mine speaking to that missionary:

            (I cannot trust conditional morality as an absolute truth)          
            (I won't trust ****** even if it calls me friend)
           (I know love happened before you invented God)  

Beneath my laugh, the echoe of my father's joy.  
Beneath my violence, my father's fear.
Beneath my awe, my father's humility.  

I see my father with me,
I see
me,  
my father's son,
my father's son,
my father's son.