This has nothing to do with the Absolute -
     this idea of God.

In childhood, God was the loving
     Father in the sky -
Outsized, sporting a flowing white beard, and
     ever attentive to my prayers.

Now, God is an abstract notion -
     transcendent and immanent,
Infinite, eternal, and
     difficult to embrace.

But all of this has nothing to do
     with God -
All these continually mutating
     mental constructs.



- fr

This is not the mentality
     by which we were schooled -
This sense of nothing
     solid about ourselves -
Nothing permanent, nothing stable
     to lovingly cleave to -
That "I" is only a
     transient idea of "I"



- fr

Intense loneliness
personifies itself
before inanimate walls

With a variety of
empathetic characters
to populate the room

Weaving and performing
an anxious dance
of justifications

For never permitting
vulnerability
to be exposed.



- fr

All matter is fluid
She believed
As she passed effortlessly
Through the concrete -
Then realizing the passage
Was in imagination only
She felt the warm blood pumping
From her skull onto a
Cold factual sidewalk.



- fr