God is in the shadows
deep in the pocket of that rose
an impossible color, beyond crimson, the epitome
of crimson, so crimson tears spring forth
This is where God, silent, drunk,
on vacation, slumbers

God is nowhere to be found
not in dead fathers
not in demented mothers
not in fading ex-lovers
not where spiders lurk
not in the boom & beat of adolescent children

It is the sorrow lodged somewhere between
breast bone and lung, sorrow the size and shape
of an island, a mountain,
the texture of wet sand
the weight of wet sand
It is this that snatches away my breath upon inhaling

A life-long sorrow, sealed to skin
as surely as metallic paint to a pan -
It hangs on with a cage fighter’s tenacity
locked in fierce embrace
sorrow coppery tasting
sorrow flaked in my hair and

Draped over the sofa, cat-like.
It just hangs around -
changing to heat, radiating at a dangerous level
nuclear, capricious, then, as time passes
just a presence one becomes accustomed to,
like an aging dog or webs above the bed

Its cousin, malevolence, its twin, melancholia
family to my family, blood to my blood –
dropping down from the shower head as I bathe
sorrow becoming holy, beyond flesh
It holds hands with the musician I’ve known all my life
and dines regularly with that other writer

We speak of transformation, you and I
of becoming other than ourselves,
as though we can unzip our flesh and find a whole
new identity underneath, throbbing, pink, blood-pumped
and with this, go forth into the same old world
that remembers transgression and forgives nothing