As I peered down at the murky
Distance beneath, a stalactite
Scratched my shoulder.

She looked to belong there,
Translucent in her birth suit,
A callous icepick in drag.

I gagged on the still water’s
Stench, hoping for a mirror
To spy on the carp below.    

Strange sounds came from the
Depths filling me with fright,
A white sheet covered my head.

My memories of life before
The well emphasized
My pledged share of crops.

Looking down at turmoil,
A witches brew, a caucus of
Black children as phantoms.

What does the mob spawn?
Down there in the shadows?
Can they sell me again?

My story is growing faint,
It gnaws like a cancer
In line to pay the poll tax.

The terror of being thinned
Out is one way to judge
The faces of injustice.

A leprosy of the soul plagues
Me, this scurrilous writ of right
To cultivate cotton and tobacco.

Two small visages glare up,
The girl has dry hair,  
The boy wears suspenders.

Terrible myths surround
The tales of cherubim
Cursing the walls of mold.

I look down again at
The single bucket, its clamor
Pealing against the bricks.

There is a dizziness about
Staring into an infinite liquid,
Call it vertiginous space.

Consider the opposite,
Gazing up at me, seeing
And feeling raindrops.

Inside this well lurk a
Paradox and an illusion,
Duplicitous evils.

Seeing the faces at the
Bottom is an illusion,
That they exist is paradoxical.

Black isn’t black, but white
Isn’t white, another paradox,
Test them for translucence.

In this day we are challenged
To be just, to hold high
Our heads, never to abort.

The penultimate favor
Is of forgetfulness, of
Ignorance, of mercy.

The only face left is
That of the white sheet
Covered in dust and sweat.

© Lewis Bosworth,,2015

I broke up with God
at our favorite eatery
in our favorite booth.

We settled into familiar creases
and asked for the usual.

My eyes lazily staring at fingers
stirring the straw around the ice cubes,
God cautiously spoke up:

“Is something wrong?”

“Nothing.” (Thinking about the dormant phone
concealing behind the lock screen
the open Facebook tab
lingering over the relationship status section.)

They silently mused over the laconic reply,
til the waitress showed up with the food.

“Thank you!” God blurted with agonizing alacrity.

I received the sustenance lifelessly
and aimlessly poked at the burgers and fries.

The waitress eyed me with vague inquisition,
popping a bubble in the gum between
big teeth, refilled my water
and pirouetted hastily.

We ate in ostensible harmony,
the silence gripping like a chokehold,
the visible anxiety and subdued resolve
settling like a stifling blanket
over the child waking
from a nightmare—

Til we couldn’t breathe,
and I ripped back the covers
and looked into the eyes
of my tormentor.

“It’s not you, it’s me.”

God, taken aback by the curt statement,
dropped their burger with shaking hands,
silently begging with wetting eyes
a greater explanation.

So I elaborated:

“It’s not you, it’s me.

For your immaculate conception
was created by human hands,

your adages rendered obsolete
by human words,

your purpose and plan for us
distorted by human nature—

I cannot hate myself any longer.

I cannot pretend to know you at all.

Who my mother and father say you are
is not who my friends think you are,
nor my teachers, my pastor,
the president, Stephen Hawking,
Muhammed, the KKK, Buddha,
the Westboro Baptist Church,
Walt Whitman, Derek Zanetti,
******,
and Billy Graham.

I am told you care who I bring into bed (and when),
and what movies I watch,
and what music I listen to—

I have not heard what you say about
child soldiers, the use of mosquitos,
or the increased destruction of the earth
which you proudly proclaimed your creation,
or the poverty and disease and famine
which has ridden so many of your children—”

God interjected,
“But you’re chosen!”

I snorted,

“You say I’m chosen
to spend eternity with you—
why me?

Why’d you pick me among
thousands, millions, billions?

I’ve been told I’m ‘chosen’
since birth
by others like me—

those with fair complexion,
blue eyes,
blonde hair,
a firm overt ****** attraction towards women,
and a great big house
with immaculate white fences
delineating their Jericho.

I’ve already fabricated eternity
here among the other ‘chosen’
and there is a world of suffering
right outside the fence
and I see them
through the window of my bedroom
every day.

Am I chosen,
if I don’t vote Republican

Am I chosen
if I am Pro-Choice

Am I chosen
if I cohabitate with my girlfriend

Am I chosen
if I never have kids

Am I chosen
if I say ‘Happy Holidays’

Am I chosen
if I don’t want public prayer in schools

Am I chosen
if I don’t want a Christian nation

Am I chosen
if I don’t repost you on my wall
or retweet your adages?

I’m tired
being the ubermensch,
for it has not brought me
happiness
and I blame you.

I will not ignore
the cries of the suffering
believing it is I
who is destined to live
in bliss.

I will not buy
Joel Osteen’s autobiography(ies).

I will not tithe
you my money
for a megachurch
when another homeless shelter
closes down.

I will not tell a woman
what to do with her body,
or a man
that he is a man
if they say they are not.

I am neither Jew nor Gentile,
and I will stand with
my brothers and sisters
of Faith and Faithlessness,

Gay and Straight,
Black and White,

and apart from these extremes
free from absolutes
the ambiguous, amorphous
nature of Humankind
which I praise.

There is much pain and suffering
in this world,
potentially preventable,
but hardly can I believe
it’s part of your plan
to save
me.

I will not be saved
if we are not
all saved—

not one will burn
for my divinity.

The gates will be open to all—
and perhaps you believe that too,
but I’ve gotten you all wrong
and that cannot change,
as long as there is
mortality, and
corruption, and
power, and
lust, and
greed.”

God whined, growing bellicose,

“It is through me that you will find eternity,
I am the one true god!
I am the God of your fallen ancestors,
it is because you have fallen short
that you need me!”

I replied, growing in confidence,

“We have all fallen short,
yes,
but we are also magnificent.

We have evolved,
we have created,
we have adapted,
we have survived.

We have built empires,
and we have destroyed them.

We have cured diseases,
and we have created them.

We have done much in your name.
We’ve done good,
and we’ve done evil—

And unfortunately it’s all about
who you ask.

Your name is a burden on the oppressed
and a weapon of the oppressor.

You are abusive, God.

You tell me you are jealous.

You tell me apart from you I will suffer for an eternity.

I’m scared to die, yet want to die,
because of you.

You have made life a waiting room
that is now my purgatory. It is

Hell On Earth.

So you see,
it’s not you,
it’s me—
a mere mortal
who has tried to put a face
to eternity
and it has left me
empty.

And also,
it’s me,
for I have learned to love me,
as I have expelled your self-loathing imbibition,
and the deleterious zeal
I have proclaimed
through ceaseless
trepidation
and self-flagellation—

I have learned to love me
by realizing I am not inherently evil,
that my body is not evil,
that my mind is not evil,
and, ultimately, that
there is no good
and there is no evil.

My body is beautiful,
my mind is beautiful,
this world is beautiful,
and we are destroying it
waiting for you to claim
us.

I leave you
in hopes to see you
again one day,

and perhaps you will look
different than I have
perceived or imagined,

and in fact
I certainly hope so.”

Just then the waitress strolled back up
with a servile smile:
“Dessert?”

“No, thank you,”
I smiled politely.

And with that,
I paid the check,
and took a to-go box—

walked out into the evening rain
to my car,
put on a secular song
that meant something real to me
and drove off
into the night—

feeling for the first time
free
and alive.

I wonder
how our great creator
built a vessel
strong enough
to contain my soul?

Each day my spirit fights
against my skin with violent
jolts as a young bird
seeking exit from a cage.

Unfettered psyche
free from me
bounces among clouds
rolls through deserts,
climbs volcanic ridges
migrates with birds in flight.

Curious instincts guide
my vital force inside and out
like honey bees
scour zinnias in full bloom.

Dare I release my spirit today?

Let's get lost in the grace of forgetting
past mistakes and errors of our foolish youths
and let us live amid the worldly hope
gained from exchanging sentences of solitude
for paragraphs of insight into better days

Let's abandon our halcyon memories along with
our sordid ones eschewing their credits and excesses
and let us eat chocolate cake now while we still
have teeth in our mouths exchanging bites of confection
for those trim waistlines we never really had

Let's play in the fountains like kids without
cares about having kids of our own or owning gardens
and let us plant gardens on fire escapes and in alleys
growing herbs from the soot and exchanging harvests
for wisdom and a proclivity for jigsaw puzzle completion

Let's debate the merits of interstellar politics
without the fuss or nuance of believing we were ever right
and let us pray for our righteous *******
earned by sweat and salt after exchanging fear of rejection
for a fuzzy blanket and a burger on a snowy day

Let's give up on fixing blighted communities drowning
in the pity of their own sacrosanct infirmities
and let us beat our own swords into ploughshares to sell
online if anyone will buy them exchanging broken guns
for cold hard cash that binds better than pectin

Let's sleep all day if we feel like it until
we've slept away all our regrets and fears
and let us awake whenever we **** well please to eat
baconfat and sip bourbon exchanging all the calories
for the lives we've always wanted but never had

three houses
stretching from gnarly bow to
     copper-greenish branch – only
dropping
one or two at a time
     sweet seeds enough to breed

tree houses
a sylvan hotel on the outskirts
     of town looking on the steeple
of a country church – its sabbath
psalms echoing painfully
     on the tympanum in number two

green houses
hidden in summer’s glory
     days to shield the men from pesky
folk intent on taking aim – trying to
test Josiah’s mettle and break
     him into baby twigs

poor houses
in spirit and pocketbook
     yet each armed with steely latch
guarding unknown contents –
at dusk the shadows of one
     candle cannot reveal

light houses
suspended at risk of plunging
     mere meters down – the common
room looking after ill-fated siblings
     huddling together in fear
and shame

glass houses
no brick or mortar – under lock
     and key and susceptible to the raps
of Isaiah the seer’s allegations:  “and what
is it you guard with fastened doors?”
the arborist poses

slaughter houses
tremble at the shock – major
     prophesying at the door’s weak
and rusty hinges now wet with dishonor
     and ruin and guilty sobs making
a last long dirge

           
© Lewis Bosworth, 2013

If you believe in a beginning
And you believe in an end then
I could be somewhere in between—
Laughing in the dusk of first snow
Walking quietly on the edges of some
Murky swamp.
But if you don’t believe in a beginning
And you don’t believe in an end then
I could be nowhere but---
Laughing in the dusk of first snow
Walking waist deep in the heart of some
Murky swamp.