Sometimes it’s hors d'âge
cognac
in neat round crystal,
pinned back and
twisted perfectly
to complement
this uniform.

But he prefers it as
amber lager,
spilling over in rich
loose curls,
filling him up
and making him
tipsy.

When burning spices mingle with the prayer
of heavenly voices, holy scents arise,
and toward the East are turned my open eyes
to look on Christ's ascension painted there.

The censer’s smoke swirls up as embers flare
an offering of Earth’s treasures toward the skies,
while, sweetly sung, a hymn that glorifies
the Holy Spirit fills the fragrant air.

This adoration rises to the ceiling,
and lingers there in humankind’s defense.
My lips, and now this church, are cleansed by coal
that burns in tongs and censer’s bowl revealing
that sweet as odor spilled by lit incense
is grace poured out upon my errant soul.

When man fell, he saw a constant
downward acceleration of
nine-point-eight meters per second per second
over a time span of approximately
eternityinaninstant
until his speed caught up with
the subatomic particles that challenge light,
and he became subhuman,
challenging Light.

The pit of my stomach
won't let me forget you.
Every other fiber of my body
can't even remember your name,
but my stomach--
****** stomach--
sinks and reminds me all day
that my lips once felt your kisses,
my hand once held onto yours,
my cotton heart
once wrapped itself around
your chilly brain
and loved it.

But now I want you gone.
Out of my dreams,
my thoughts,
my stomach (****** stomach)
knowing full well
it's all out of my hands.
Most of all
I want you out of my poetry--
how dare you intrude
on this most sacred utterance,
this holy expression of myself.

What a shame--a ****** shame--
that since I once loved you,
you're now a part of me.

“Nikki was, not Nikki is, Nikki loved, not Nikki loves”
came with protests, cries and noise
but how much grammar can you expect
from little girls and boys?
Who gets to illuminate
to kids of two and five and four
that death requires past participles
and sister is no more?

Well that was the longest August ever has been,
like too many hours made up each day.
The songbirds quit their singing
and the kids forgot to play.
Sluggish minutes oozed on by
in the heat like sticky tar
while her heart and hands and mind
passed to were from are.

But we’ll still wind that watch just to let it stop
at five o’clock in the afternoon,
because that tender, spiteful hour
will always come too soon.
Time will stop each time it does,
just like it did that day
when she wore her mother’s watch
and time took her away.

When did she move from is to was?
Was it that August day
when all we could do was pray and hope
and cry and hope and pray?
Since when did cold verbs bind a life,
active and passive combined,
and when did she trade present for past
and leave alive behind?

Justin understood it best,
I say in his defense;
he was the one who had it right
when he spoke in the wrong tense—
She didn’t go from is to was,
She went from did to does.
What Nikki was is sick.
What Nikki is is better.
   Remembered.
  
   Eternal.

What I’ve learned is this:
when you’ve loved someone—
I mean really loved—
like ******* crazy loved,
I’m talking seeneveryinchofhisrottensoulandstilllongedformore loved,
known every glimmer of his shifty eyes and what each one means,
shared every bare ugly bruise of your past and let him heal them all,
peacefully slept with complete comfort and security in his arms,
danced at the thought of his name and grown
every second you spent with him or near him or thinking about him,
and yearned for more time to show him
your love and could never believe
for an instant
that maybe he loved you as much or
as deeply as you loved him,
like your insides could just burst
and your blessed little heart is liable
to explode at any instant with the
sappy mushy love
that looks ridiculous on anyone else
kind of loved—
when you’ve loved to the point
where you don’t watch your back
and never think he’s watching his,
where you don’t look to the past because there isn’t one,
only a wide, shiny future,
where you fall in love with every word that
drips from his mouth to yours
and every thought that materializes in that
beloved skull,
where you lose yourself and everything
you thought you knew only to realize that
you are
refined
and more you
by his side than you are alone
(and that stupid little paradox doesn’t sound ridiculous to you),
where you can sit in complete profound silence
and still manage
to know each other better for it,
where imagining life without him is a hilarious extravagant absurdity,
where you are certain that other people just will
never know a tenth of the love you have,
where waking up and driving and lunching and chatting
and the most mundane
aspects of your mundane
days make the most tender moments of your life,
where you’ve never been so content to be so vulnerable—

when you’ve loved someone like that—
completely—
the tears taste a little sweeter.

“Is this what we’ll be like in twenty years?”

A hint of sarcastic laughter sneaks through
your voice as you mock our Saturday night
of quiet conversation
over brimming cups of tea.
The secondhand table wobbles a little,
and the spots that last year’s tenants left
on the carpet match the breakfast
still stuck to the tablecloth
(at least there’s now a tablecloth).
The dishwasher hums between discussions
of the fall of man and the filioque,
a feather of steam curling up around
your face, like sweet sticky incense prayed up to heaven
on the tail of a tenor’s vibrato.

“I hope so.”