Love like wine
red against your tongue
bitter/sweet, intoxicating
and
less godly than you might have hoped for.

Beyond Love, there is nothing.
So, let us look at that which lies before.

There is a skier on the Rockies.
She is fraught with fear and worry.
Her muscles are fatigued. Below her feet, the oxygen of a stranger runs low.

She is trying.

Sweltering summer heat beats down one billion souls.
Of them, in a small corner of Churu, a man of little faith sits beside a dog.
She is wild and angry. Thirst grates her tongue.

He is giving.

Chicago is alive with nightly clamour.
Friends crawl between bars, *** and slumber on their minds.
The alleyways are familiar. The screaming is not.

They are fighting.

Speak to me of hatred, and all the evils committed in the name of 'love'.
Profess to me your ignorance.
I will gift unto thee a thousand stories as above.

All of them beautiful.

For we are more than diatribe and division or tribalistic cannibalism:
we are firelight intentions, freedom's way and righteous truth:
we are as ever:

All too human.

I: your kin: the sinew sin.

My breath,
                          this spark,
your life,  
                          my flame,
ennobled strife,
                          divine ordained.

The bone cracks; it's a chicken wing-
-a wishbone. A girl whispers beneath her breath:
"Let me find love."

She dies of cancer, fourteen months later.
Sammy was seven.
Her parents still love her.

I do not yet know your name,
though I imagine it pretty or plain:
Elizabeth or Ruth, Amara or Yue,
Claire or Bethany who lives by the zoo.

You'll be seven foot tall, and four foot three,
Stand with bowed legs, and sing in your sleep.
You'll know mathematics, like seven times one;
Add us together, and make for the sun.

Less would be shameful, this we'll both know;
So we'll zip from the ground, fired from bows.
The stars our audience, we'll burn to a crisp,
We, a miracle, sealed with a kiss.