so many poems tell you that you have to fill
the first few lines with a lot of ******* imagery
to fill the stanzas before you hit one or two lines
that actually mean something: and by that heroic
couplet, or whatever the english teachers say these days,
the whole ******* poem is redeemed.
I don't think I should have to write sixteen stanzas
for the sake of the last line, but here I am
so I might as well elaborate a bit on the rooftops
and the moonlight on her hair and the fact
that I cannot love her as I wish I could and
I never dreamed of Paris like other women always expected me to
the smell of baking bread and the Eucharist
hurts my knees and heals my soul, thank God
for God, but it seems unfortunate that we as people can't just
ignore the existence of our Creator. Something calls us back
something hurts us in desperate moments when we've
written sixteen hundred stanzas and none of them meant anything
and we're afraid to show our faces to a priest or our mother
when I drifted away from certain shores I thought
I wanted to inhabit forever, the cross I clung to
led me through sunny and tumultuous waves
I always did like being on the water. I always did
like salt and water and earth and wine and I am
a child of the Church- my Church that tells me
there's nothing wrong with being tender
nothing wrong with having a soft heart-
you see, our God's heart bled out
and He never concealed His tears.