I have given
myself for free
warm and unblanching
like heartbeats
or sunlight
far too long
and found myself
dirt poor

so…

I am practicing
being mysterious
cool and uncrackable
like alabaster
or diamonds
or anything else
precious
no one can touch
without paying

Give me a god who is Love

not like pink cutout butterflies
on the sad cinder block walls of
a Sunday school daycare

but like how you can’t sleep at 2 a.m.
remembering the first time you
tasted your girlfriend

or how you run inside during a
thunderstorm because you don’t
want to get struck by lightning or

when your foot can no longer
touch the bottom of the ocean
and you panic because
it’s all Just Too Big

don’t offer me your supermarket
god picked out to match your
buttercup kitchen curtains

give me a god who dances
naked and scandalously
in the rain

I knew true love once
In a past life
As something else
I felt another beating heart
Recognized a scent
A voice
In some primeval darkness
A million years ago
And was safe

Now I am here and alone
Something separated us
Something as meaningless
As not coming back
to the tree that night
A hungry, bigger animal
A hunter and a knife
A rushing river and a last drowning scream
And a thought of me

The memory of abandonment
Must have followed me here
To this world of technology
Ringing phones and
blinking messages
I am afraid of being left
Alone in the dark
At the top of some windy tree
Clinging to a branch
With desperate fingers
Waiting ...