I don’t have faith.  
I just know that I belong to my Savior Jesus.  I met her once when I was 11, at her humble single wide in a cramped trailer park and she made candied walnuts on a hotplate.  I didn’t find out until years later that she paid for my scholarship.  She had passed on by then; I wish I could have thanked her.

He arrived at Juvenile Hall at 7:00 pm looking like Mrs. Santa Claus, to take me into her home for a year.  I made some sarcastic teenage comment about the stupid country music on her car radio, and she tolerated it with a smile; saying ‘its not stupid, its simple.’ She showed me what a caring family looks like and didn’t kick me out for being a smart-***; gave me chores and a curfew to show me I belonged.

When I had no family or boyfriend in my life, I lived in a maternity home until my baby would be adopted.  Jesus was the stranger in the hushed hospital room holding my hand, after the medics couldn’t find the heartbeat in the ambulance, which was confirmed on the maternity floor, and I was taken to another floor so my crying wouldn’t upset the other mothers.  The room was small and dark and alone, and the clock on the wall took an eternity to move two minutes, for the entire night that I was in labor, the longest night in my life.   I didn’t remember someone holding my hand; I was so drugged for pain.  She showed me her arms two days later, so bruised because she didn’t leave me.

Jesus was the woman from Planned Parenthood on the other end of the phone, listening to me when I called the Women’s Clinic asking how I could find a doctor.  ‘ I just moved here, and I work at a minimum wage job, and I lost my baby a month ago, but how do I get a post-partum exam when I don’t have a doctor, or any money, or insurance?’  I was very matter of fact about it, I mean this was my circumstance and what to do?  She arranged a birth control exam because the state would pay for that, by a doctor who would give me the post-partum.  She also referred me to a support group.  I had been alone but she found me people who understood and could sympathize and help me accept grief.   I look back on that now; there were no sign-carrying Christians or Churches arranging the adoption who helped me, she was the only one who cared.

Questions are often asked
about my optimistic smile,
the happy-go-lucky personality
and unwavering confidence.

The most common question:
How do you know
these things?

I don't ******* know.
I know nothing.
I have no ******* idea
where 73% of my thoughts, words and ideas come from.
I don't even feel like it's "me"
speaking/typing most of the time.

Sometimes I have no idea
that i'm telling you
It's going to be alright
because the words just
charge out of my mouth.
But I'm saying what is inside my brain.
I don't think about it.
That's my reaction.

Confused yet?

In the end
it's all going to be alright
cause we'll be dead.
Either our conscious ceases
or we are reconnected to all things--
that complete warm one-with-all feeling
some call god or heaven or nirvana
but we're going to forget all this stupid **** anyway.

I have no clue what I do or don't know,
between your volatility of perception
and society trying to hypnotize me
into complacency while it slowly burns away,
I'm lucky to know my own ******* name.

If you want answers to life's questions,
stay away from me.
Ask someone shrewd enough
who pretends to know.
Personally, I don't think there are any answers
because they are whatever each person
wishes them to be.
I can only tell you
what I feel and see in each moment
as it's happening.

Ask allah, preachers, Zen, astrophysicists, philosophers, Reikis, dictionary writers, lawyers, mathematicians, astrologists, Buddha, Industrial engineers, the ******* guy who delivers your food (or anyone really) for answers
and more than likely you will have different kinds of **** answers.

But if you ask yourself,
you will find truth.

Tell me please
does the grey granite faced
northern heather scarp
or the smooth enchanting
Carrara marble cherub
move you to awe?
Does nature only
wintered weathered
sheer and simple
eclipse the man made
man handled
alabaster angel?

Bleak beauty

Tell me my friend
does your head turn
as the high cheek-*****
short haired
practical passes
a flash of scarlet
lipped?
Or do you arrest
as a foundation creation
glosses across your horizon
loping on heels and too knowing?

Bleak Beauty

I must ask you
my brother
When you cause to sleep
does your angel
appear
and does
the gentle
perfection of her
supra-sternal notch
ever stay with you
til morning?

I counted all the times I should have kissed you,
With your own fingers, rugged and perfect,
And plucked a kiss on every callus.

One on the thumb for the last time we met,
Two on each pinky for the time after breakfast,
And five on each finger for the eternity
We  thought we'd never realize.

Slip down into the
temporal lobe of my
aching brain,
crescendo of *******
organic effects.

I draw the shades and
hold my head in pale winter hands,
allowing oceans of cerulean sorrow
to fill my lungs,
and you say what you will,
and you say that you're right,
and I fold
beneath the weight of
your shadow.

exhaust’d thru months of
stress’d quandaries. have
clear’d the worst. and
i ripped through older
pages, stealing the words
that sound’d best. the
only ones
able to fluidly
patch fragments. brake.
been a long couple day(s);
singular, i guess. and
the sassy black chick,
she doesn’t give a ****.
never did. and friend is
asking why, asking
questions of the sky.
  - what if what’s complicated
     is so because we never
     let it be easy?
infectious thoughts of
what to do to complicate, or
of how we might proliferate.
and ringing:
  - why not just be easy?
and ringing:
  - you’re just going to have to
    stop having fun for a while.
and ringing:
  - i mean, not quit, but
    ease up. don’t spend
    your money.
knowing is ninety-percent
of the problem with
stubbornness. and remem-
bering when first told
to get on with it –
to let go –
the other ten-percent.
and being one day closer –
to be one minute closer –
brings restlessness. and
i lay my head to rest, if
only to pass time as lids
squeeze light from eyes.
and thoughts, peaceful a
moment prior, begin to
rage. to thrash and stomp.
to draw from dead qualms
and questions. and past
turbulences become reali-
gn’d.      yet,
most were left behind or
under the Pinelawn.
something missing,
memories of how her
**** were like tiger claws.
brake.       get on with it.
and the vessels of my eye
throb in ticks. forcing
metronome. and i count the
seconds, the seconds
on minutes
on hours
on eternity. and if
i were here – if
i were awake – when
the sun came ‘round,
then perhaps the metro-
nomes tick would cease. or,
let it go, get on with the
passing of time.
getting on with it, to
force the dawn sun
to rise of me.