Don't bury children in suits
Let them wear their favorite clothes
Let them wear their favorite basketball jersey
The sweats from the college you can't stand
That **** sweatshirt that you can never get clean
The tire-tracked underwear
Let them wear it all
Let them wear the clothes you could never get them out of
The ones they slept in
Played in
Dreamed in
Just don't bury kids in suits
They're not going to a job interview
They aren't atoning for a lifetime of sins
They're going to the great playground in the sky
They need to be able to run around
Bury them in overalls
In the baseball hat with sweat stains
The pants with holes and grass on the their knees
The shoes with the souls that flap when they walk
Let them wear the straps that the Velcro keeps falling off of and you keep having to put it back on
Put it back on
Put them in the casket
And make them smile with your thumbs
They didn't do anything wrong
We did
We let them down
Don't punish them
Don't bury them in a suit
This is our last chance to do something right for them
Bury them with those candy necklaces they used to shoot across class at the girl they liked
Give them all their Halloween candy back
Fill the grave with hundreds of melting dilly bars
Slip them a ring pop
Please don't bury them in suits
Don't comb their hair
Leave the dirt under their finger nails
Don't fix their collar
Or shine their shoes
Let them wear their Victor Cruz jersey

And for those of us lucky enough to live in one of those small towns the whole world doesn't know how to pronounce yet
Lucky enough to not live in a dangerous city
Lucky enough to trust the locks on our front doors
To trust the bus driver
To trust our neighbors
One more cookie before bed.

In every moon there is a man
And in every man there is a heart inside of which lives a woman
Who doesn't clean
Who doesn't cook
Who doesn't serve him
Only lives within the walls of his heart
And within every woman living in a man's heart
There is a desire to be free
It is not odd to imagine her leaving
Merely odd to see her go
Riding on the back of an elephant
In high heels
With a bottle of Chateau de Michelle
And weilding the sword of a swallowing minstrel
Drunkenly yelling songs of a time in which she never lived
And that will never leave a man
Whether the next woman comes in riding a golden chariot pulled by blazing reindeer
Or mounted on a shark wearing a cocktail dress
And while he laments her going
She regrets her ever having left
So she turns around
Looks into the vast nothing behind her
Trampled under the weight of the elephant
Cut down by her drunken fit of rage
Burned and eaten by the coming and going of others
And she sees
That beyond the husk of the home she once knew
Lay merely arteries and valves
And no soft place to lay her head
So she dismounts her companion
Lays down her sword
Crashes the bottle upon the rocks
Tears the heels from her shoes
And limps into the desert
Looking for that which she had already found
While he lie
Filling the emptiness of his ravaged heart
With the tender touch of fleeting acrobats

It's a weird feeling, being in love and lonely all at the same time
To put your whole heart into something you can't see
You know long distance relationships are tough
But what's hard is looking across the room at the eyes you love
And feeling every inch like they were miles
Seeing your cheeks turn to stone when I try to make you laugh
Feeling every could-be-kiss like a character from a book
Reading their stories
Making my heart race
Leaving my lips as dry, chapped, cracked as they always are
I sweat in my sleep from your body heat
While my veins freeze over from the warmth of your affection
I keep looking at the thermostat because I don't want to be cold anymore
But we're already sitting in our own *** sweat at eighty two degrees
And I can't make you care enough to smile anymore
But apparently I'm trying hard enough to get you to stay
Or more accurately hard enough for you not to leave
Leaving is hard work anyway
And feeling loved is nice
I imagine
At least that's what I've heard.

This morning I woke up intent on living morally
I had pizza for breakfast
I then took ten minutes to decide if my diet was part of my morality
I am clearly not ready for this conversation

In the family I come from God has only ever been the fastest way to count to twelve
In the family you come from God has been a source of peace, joy, love, purpose
My sense of purpose comes from Regina Spector’s voice
And my peace is in Amos Lee
My way is not better than your way

Let go and let God
Or as we call it Step Two
Is scrawled on so many scraps of paper
Half started journals
And carved so deeply under my fingernails
I’ve made letting go an art
I just haven’t got to letting God
When I was in pre-school my teachers told me how impressed they were with how quickly I learned to count to twelve
I told them I went to church a lot
They were confused

My dad likes to skip steps when he counts to twelve
My mom is really good at two through twelve but can’t really remember how it starts
My sister has counted to twelve so many times she forgets how important it is to go slow
The only reason I’d ever have to count to twelve is to feel apart of this family

It has been seventeen years since I have last said the name Jesus with ants in my pants sitting on uncomfortable church pews with my mom’s hand on my shoulder
And since then I have only ever thought to go to church three times
Twice in Memphis when I was trying to find Al Green
And the third was the first real conversation you and I ever had outside of Mrs. Kidwell’s class when I briefly thought if I found a way to go to church you might go out with me
However, I quickly came to the conclusion that if that worked I’d have to continue attending church to keep going on dates with you

When I was twenty two I tried to read the bible
I never made it past the begetting
That’s not a joke
So I tried to have someone explain it to me
That plan failed

Most days I can get by
I can be happy
I can turn the radio up and dance myself into peace
But on the days when I lock myself in my bedroom
Grey sweatshirt and basketball shorts
Tubs of Ben and Jerry’s all over the place
And The Spill Canvas at eleven over my stereo
I sometimes consider turning down the music
Getting on my knees
Putting my hands together and giving it a try
But I always get tongue tied just thinking about it
So I make a playlist full of songs that have the word God in them and hope that counts
Because some days you just need help and no one is answering their phones
But I don't think that's how God works
So I text you about your day
And you say something about a movie,
Book
Song
Something some little kid did to you
And I swear I might as well be in the front row of the First Baptist Church of Macon Georgia
Because I am filled with the Spirit.

Not every text message to you is a trip to church
And you’ll never know which ones are
So please don’t worry about it
I’m grateful to know that when I can’t figure out how to talk to God
I can find a way to talk to you
Because in the seventeen years I’ve been forgetting hymnals
I’ve come to one conclusion
Salvation, Heaven, Faith
They are where you look for them
They are what you want them to be
They are yours when you call

Sometimes I make myself imagine a world in which I was the kind of man, who could imagine, being a man, who could dream, of having the guts, to possibly, one day, be the kind of fella who would make the kinds of choices that would eventually catch your fancy
It is hard to do
I am not that kind of man
And that is okay
I will never be that kind of man
That is also okay
This is more than okay
I'm not here for that
I'm here for me

Tomorrow I will attempt to live morally
I bought Honey Bunches of Oats so hopefully I’ll make it out the front door
It seems I may never be ready for this conversation

I will kiss new days with the same wonder I always have
I'll just be doing it before I brush my teeth
There is no one left to impress with minty fresh breath

Sometimes when I forget hand lotion
I run my fingers through blades of grass
I rube the dew into my pores
Long blades of grass smell better than short blades of grass
That's why I never like mowing the lawn when I was little

When a baby cries an angel gets their wings
When little kids laugh our cat runs and hides
When I blow bubbles little kids laugh
My cat is very good at hiding

My mom thinks I listen to my headphones too loud
I think if I blow my ear drums listening to rock music
Then I'll never have to hear anyone say good bye again
That doesn't sound bad at all

I will stare in the mirror with the same discomfort as always
Only this time it will be after my shower
I still have someone out there to impress with my unassuming good looks

I don't always get dressed
But when I do
I prefer to wear clothes
I don't always wear clothes
But when I do
I prefer clean clothes
My iron broke

It takes a village to raise a child
It takes a city to raise a Gaga
It takes time to heal
It takes a clock to see that time
It takes a man to build a clock
Therefore it takes a village to tell the time

I wash my sheets every time I cry
I am very sad about you leaving
But I'm out of Tide
And I can't afford another bottle
I'll cry on pay day
It's just not in my budget to cry today

I am six inches taller than the average American male
In the summer I tan quite well
And with a few extra minutes in front of an ironing board and a mirror
I clean up nicely

So marry me now while I'm still desirable

I am good at cooking in fact I can make a safe assumption I'm better than you
I enjoy cleaning especially vacuuming
oh and I'm great with kids

Please marry me now while you're young enough for those things to still impress you

I will impress your parents
Your friends will ask how serious we are regularly
I will make you blush from the volume of compliments that you receive from me

So please marry me now while those are still things you want

I want to live on a beautiful island
Where it's warm all the time
And on this island I want it to snow
Three months a year
And I want those three months to be
November, December, and March
And when it snows I need it to be seventy seven degrees
And I want the snow to stick
Here I imagine Jack Johnson, Jason Mraz, and Zach Gil will sit around playing music
They'll play from noon to around ten
That's when Kwali the local pool boy ends his shift keeping the oil out of the ocean
Kwali he plays the Ukulele and sings about beaches no one's ever been to until around midnight
When the perpetually burning bon fire dies down and the island falls asleep
As for the rest of the music here on the island
Every morning there's this old steel guitarist
He's from just south of New Orleans
A place called Under Pressure
Really it's just the hull of the broken fishing boat he was born on
But he calls it home all the same
And a kid who used to play trombone for the high school jazz band
But he picked up the harmonica after he found out chicks don't dig trombones
And the two of them sort of play old dixie
With a steel drummer who never seems to find his shirt in the morning
But you never really mind that
And on Sunday mornings this really old woman
Ssays her mom was Harriet Tubman
Which we all know is a lie
But she's got scars from head to toe so you might as well believe something
Man she wails
For two straight hours
She wails
Wails to God, to the heavens, to Jesus, Georgia and the first row of church
And when she wails her tears are a lost language from the tower of babble and we all understand it
And on Wednesday
Wednesdays
We waltz
We waltz to really old records
That we play on the only turntable on the island
That Mr. Lee drags all the way from his house to the community center with no walls
And the whole island shows up in summer dresses and Matthew Mcconaughey shirts
Even the one we call grandma
And her husband who everyone calls Uncle for some reason
Come dressed to dance
And we all leave our slippers at the door this place doesn't have
And the sand warms our feet while we waltz
Sometimes it's the Tennessee Waltz
And sometimes it's the Viennese Waltz
But most of the time it's just the waltz we all learned in eighth grade
Either way
Every Wednesday there is a beautiful girl
She's five five, maybe, five eight I don't know
I've been lying on my drivers' license since I was sixteen so I don't know how tall people really are
She's got south pacific features
But with my track record by the time I actually make it to my island she'll probably be a red head
We waltz
We waltz until the records skip
And our legs turn to Jello and all we can do is collapse in each other's arms
While the ocean tickles our toes
Our finger tips tickle each other's palms
And we let that guy in the moon do the rest
So when you see me set sail
If you can catch me you can climb on board
And if you can't
Then
Wave goodbye