Did someone scatter cornflakes
All over the ground?
Or some kind of cereal
With a crunchy sound?

When walking on the grass
There's a snap, crackle, and pop,
The dry summer's drought
Just doesn't seem to stop.

Lawns all around
Look about the same,
All turning brown
While waiting for the rain.

August 21, 1993

I've been curing my loneliness
with solitude

talking to myself
instead of somebody else.

I've been spending days
staring at the ceiling
dreaming myself to outer space
or New York

instead of leaving my room.

I've been writing letters
whose length would make Anna Karenina blush
all tucked into the curves of my cerebral cortex

instead of sending

"hey, hw r u?"
text messages

I've been curing my loneliness
with solitude

if you call crying alone
with my own hand patting my back

curing

I have a hunch
that it is eternal
and infinite
although I don't
know it
and I have contemplated
these things
deeply
and when I do
I get frightened
so there is big eternity
and big infinity
and there is small eternity
and small infinity
and what is so surprising
is that we
are all part of it
and are it
so I can say
that me sitting here
in a suburb
of Detroit
is eternal and infinite
and that's
far out.

When human hearts come to collide
The flaws of each are hard to hide.
And harder still each passing day
Till every block is thrown away.
We come to fear this truth so much,
That we flee the slightest nudge, the faintest touch.

Thou our fears may be plain and true.
You could hurt me; I could hurt you.
We tend to only see the person standing there.
The color of their eyes, their clothes, their hair.
We see the flaws: both on the in and out,
And some times our own merits do we doubt.

Yet this approach leaves out a vital part.
One we didn't finish, and one we didn't start.
It has to do with one mans death upon a cross.
Who couldn't bring us in without so great a loss
And rose again to name us all His own
And will have through our broken lives His glory shown.

So fear not when heart collisions come!
They're founded now, soley on what Christ has done!

Where the slow river
meets the tide,
a red swan lifts red wings
and darker beak,
and underneath the purple down
of his soft breast
uncurls his coral feet.

Through the deep purple
of the dying heat
of sun and mist,
the level ray of sun-beam
has caressed
the lily with dark breast,
and flecked with richer gold
its golden crest.

Where the slow lifting
of the tide,
floats into the river
and slowly drifts
among the reeds,
and lifts the yellow flags,
he floats
where tide and river meet.

Ah kingly kiss --
no more regret
nor old deep memories
to mar the bliss;
where the low sedge is thick,
the gold day-lily
outspreads and rests
beneath soft fluttering
of red swan wings
and the warm quivering
of the red swan's breast.