I could never tell
if it scared
or comforted me
every time I looked at you
and thought to myself,
I could so easily love you
forever.

Now, I know
it was both
fear
and warmth
simultaneously.
Love rarely speaks
the word
or.

They do not worry.
About food.
They do not worry.
About clothes.
They aren't afraid.
Of being abandoned.
They know.
God will take care of them.
They know.
Their Creator will feed them.
They know.
The One who cares for them
will never forsake them.
They know.
His eye is ever upon them.
Oh, may I learn how to live.
From watching the birds.

.
Still pale grey earth is turned,
Deep is the loam moisted,
Lone by the Ploughman.

The rows of the brushed patches,
Sweating the breakneck blood,
Are painted by labours.

Messiah doors out cathedral,
With iron plod anoints the soil,
Exposed unto mercy sun.

His hands are knobbed in stone,
His eyes searing of the star,
His face dark as deep loam.

Each day ablutions of sod earth,
Heaved out tilling unfree wills,
Burdens of harnessed beast.

Dark is the turned loam moisted,
Water flame heat of veined mist,
Seeds sown explode to bloom.

After thorny works, crowned blood,
Sun leaves to wine red fruition,
Ploughman maker is done.

Passed the time searching,
Tracing the circles
Of this tired path I’ve worn in the soil.
Eyes touching faces,
Skimming the places
The crowds that have swollen and roiled.

Red brimming eyelids,
Sleep stolen violence;
I’ve curled up with nothing, away from the light.
Drift off to no where-
Found you were somewhere,
Sought then to flee there: off into the night.

She’s more fun when she is drunk
At least…until she’s not
Because she’s puking in the toilet
And regretting her last shot

She’s more confident when she’s drunk
Gorgeous and ready to score
Until she looks in a mirror
And feels even uglier than before

She likes herself more when she is drunk
Until that feeling goes away
When she is so far beyond gone
That her self-hatred comes out to play

She’s happier when she’s drunk
All her issues leave her brain
But they all come crashing back at once
And cause her so much pain

She likes the world more when drunk
It’s filled with so much good
Until one little thing sets her off
And she hates it all more than she should

She likes life more when she’s drunk
Her mind for once feels still
Terrified of losing that feeling
She soon wants to end things with a pill

But she can stop any time she wants
Or so she’d have you believe
Because alcohol makes her seem so happy
That is, until all her friends leave

There she lay, naked and restless.
Ground crawls in the hours of twilight.
A change is rising, she can sense it--
Like riderless horses,
                 She flows.

Raging, thrashing, she growls and groans.
Tremors of emotion, ripples like the cold.
Keeping it together, the cells vibrating,
The tempestuous mounds roll.

In the absence of her violence;
Once the turmoil has tired,
She lay in a green valley filled with wallflowers.
        Here is where she sleeps.

Alas, the peace never lasts.
In the stead of a victory,
The lesser lay in shambles.
  Oh how glory has fallen.

Read me, Hear me.
I am existing somewhere
Strewn between each letter that
Your eyes caress.
I'm mingling with the meaning
I've chosen to impart
With riddles, with metaphors,
With everything but
The truth.

I'm tangible.
Whisper my writing and know
That I am a scrawled sentence
Of desperation;
A Vagrant, caught wandering
In the downpour
Without the language
To capture the way
The rain smells, or the wind tastes
Or the earth sounds.

Oh read, and know
That I am crying out
Along each line to the seraph
Of a letter that I've struggled with
To grant a modicum
Of the nonsense left in my heart.
I've cried out
Thousands of words;
Screamed them until they furrowed
In paper, in computer screens
Into the faces of hapless lovers
To no such avail.

At the end of the day, read and know
That my writing is as futile
As loving a dead man,
An errant, wandering heart,
And a depth-less, angry river.

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.