Sixty-six chapters and sixty-six books
(please, Catholic brothers – no ***** looks)
were needed for God to make known His plan:
the gift of salvation and future of Man.

Yet sometimes it seems rather cryptically stated;
poor Israel must wait and will wait (as they’ve waited).

Isaiah took sixty-six chapters to tell it;
for two-thousand years has the Church tried to sell it –
must Christ and his teaching thus languish in mystery,
waiting offstage in the wings of His history?
(Wings of the cherubim, angels, and vultures
now beat down upon us, uniting our cultures
while tech surges up in a dizzy parabola
micro in management, global in formula…)

Sixty-six chapters to say it in Greek
(Aramaic – or Latin;  whatever they speak)
while the somnolent audience scrolls on their screens
in apocalypse trance over zombie machines.
The scrolls are unopened, the parchment still sealed
the slot-machine handle refuses to yield;
as the sixes line up towards the threshold of seven
the virgins sleep late in the Kingdom of Heaven.

A regal nose leads down to luscious lips
A tiny waist yields to imperial hips
The wasp-like figure zips past, fairy-fast
And leaves him dangling in her wake, aghast.

"Like young deer on the mountain-top" says he,
"They rise and fall as shivers come to me.
They rack my soul with conquests sweet as wine,
And raise me up to lofty heights sublime."

She smiles gently; wrens tap tiny dance
Upon her gaze, he looks and finds his trance
Her eyes as blackened hazel, all afire
With love and lust and mirrors of desire.

He reaches out his hand to touch her own
As skin grasps pastel flesh, lets out a moan
As softly she caresses him so light,
Then disappears into the dark of night.

i. let us offer each other a sign of peace. you turn and you reach and there is your hand and here is their hand and here is your heart, between. your grip is firm, hands not yet calloused, and the words like a mantra fall from your lips. peace be with you. peace be with you.

ii. the crucifix hangs above your bed, painted gold, and like gold it glitters. you kneel on the floor and the wood is rough on your skin and you clasp your hands and say father, father. you have heard of a war and though it is not yet yours still you kneel and you pray and you think father, save me.

iii. your hands shake.

iv. war has come like revelations said it would and you rub your hands together so they won’t seize up. you thank god and you curse god for the 1A stamped on your enlistment form.

v. you read your bible: do not think that i have come to bring peace to the earth. i have not come to bring peace, but a sword. you read your bible and you think: this is not what i remember.

vi. the war does not end before you get there. it makes you lose track of the days, the weeks, the months you have been in europe and away from home and away from god. you wear your crucifix around your neck but the chain is hidden by your uniform and in the winter of the bois jacques, it burns your skin like a brand. father, father you pray in your foxhole, but the noise of artillery drowns out your words so you stop.

vii. you look at julian in the snow and his arms are spread out like wings. the blood bubbles from his neck and seeps into the ground and you watch and you think, war is hell. you leave julian to the krauts and cannot ask forgiveness because you don’t want this sin wiped away.

viii. on the ground, in the snow, julian was a crucifix. you don’t pray with your own anymore.

ix. father, father you say to the sky. if this patrol kills you, you won’t be going to heaven. your gun is heavy and your ghosts are heavier and you think of a classroom on a sunny afternoon. thou shalt not ****** you wrote in cramped, careful handwriting and you think:

x. i am a murderer.

xi. today and tomorrow and ten days from now blend into one in austria and you want to stay here for the rest of your life. your crucifix beats in time with your heart and you haven’t looked at it since haguenau. you don’t know if you want to. you don’t know if you can.

xii. and then you are home and the crucifix above your bed is painted gold. do you know what happened to me over there, you ask it. do you know what i did to survive. you take the chain of the cross around your neck and unclasp it with shaking fingers. you place it by your bedside. the watch you stole off the corpse of a dead german ticks away the seconds. you watch the hand creep around to twelve and you think father, father. you do not kneel.

xiii. forgive me father, for i have sinned. the words leave a metallic taste in your mouth.

xiv. you read your bible: be broken, o peoples, and be shattered; and give ear, all remote places of the earth. gird yourselves, yet be shattered; gird yourselves, yet be shattered. you close your bible and you think:

xv. peace be with you.

I am not a poet.
I am the air before a storm.
The weak in your knees.
The smile on your heart.
I am. I am not a poet.
I am the aftermath of sin.
I am the godlike sworn into pages.
Scripture is my tongue, to fold like weak genes
That strike to be like matches
I am beckoned fire. I am not a poet.
I am not a believer.
We were raised by the last unfortunately; I do not believe in
“leaders” or “followers”, I do not believe in “society” or “democracy”
This generation is lost.
I do not believe in found.
I do not believe in freedom.
When we are only “free” to be everything but our souls.
The truth is…I do not write poetry.
I birth it whenever God needs a favor so
When my pen bares fruit know it’s divine nature refined.
I define nature. HOLD UP. WE define nature.
Eve am I in the garden of Eden, feeding the Adam in my spirit
That speaks in tongue,
I taste the susurrus sounds swishing like a serpents swearing
Bite into this forbidden, swallow sin, make ink stain of this metaphor
On the fabric of your perception
The truth is, I do not write. I create life that’s been a part of God’s plan
Since sonogram; my divine right.
I am not a poet.
I am a contradiction.
I am everything including nothing.
I am the song the caged bird sings. Once it’s freed.
I am the silence before a bomb.
I simply do not believe.
This generation was raised by the last, but I would rather raise hell
Then praise heaven to be a place where the gates are too white to embrace the black
Of the sin I’ve committed
I am not a poet.
I write because I want God to hear me.
This Chose ink is the closest voice from heaven like, blessed cursive
Curses curved like
Sacred scribble
Revised, I’ve rised, correction, raised.
I revise like rewritten history; I’ve witness lies, yet mystery
Lies within the truth, somehow.
I’m no doctor, but if I were, I would prescribe patience.
I just want God to hear me, I will listen…but for now
I am sincerely seeking the God within self, I believe in
Other.

Noah and his family were the only people on Earth who were doing right.
So God caused a flood that killed everybody in 40 days and 40 nights.
All of the people on Earth were evil, it was a time that was dark.
Noah and his family were spared when God told them to build an ark.

God told Noah to take two of every animal so that all species would survive.
When the flood was over, Noah and his family were the only people who were alive.
It probably wasn't an easy decision when God decided to **** all of those women and men.
He gave us the rainbow which is a promise that he'll never do it again.

King Solomon received a gift from the Lord, the gift of being wise.
He was able to use his great wisdom to see through people's lies.
When a woman stole a baby, she told King Solomon to cut him in two.
The other lady begged Solomon to give the baby to the thief and he knew that was what the true mother would do.
Perhaps God has given as much wisdom to some others because only he can.
If I only had ten percent of King Solomon's wisdom, I would be a better man.

"We come from the Earth and to the Earth we must return..."
In this phrase I found solace and comfort
Until my stilettos sunk into the ground and I remembered

I am only made from Adam's rib

So I cursed the Earth
and ground my heels into the dirt

Man returns to the Earth and I
I am made from a rib...

Suspended in the cavity around the
heart of man
Flittering like a restless bird who
cannot find her perch

Frowning as I fly into the sky which I
do not know and and where I
do not belong

While man builds airplanes to chase after
me
While man hunts the pheasant for
sport

I want to die and return to the Earth
I want broccoli to grow where I lay
and be left uneaten to
flower

I will no longer be the bony protector
of the heart of a man
and maybe in casting away my birthright

I may return to the Earth, once again.

Your spine is a holy place
From the tip of your neck, to the cradle in your pelvis, it is baptized in your waters
Starting with cervical, a lucky number of seven sections
The number of days it took god to create the earth
Greek mythology tells me, Cer is the personification of a violent death
Vic means to substitute,
Therefore this section substitutes itself for your violent death
Holding up an unlucky number 13
Pounds.
Of skull, and flesh and
Blood. Which it facilitates the flow of
It has hollowed itself out for nerves
Hollowed itself out so that you may feel
Everything.

Thoracic.
A dozen protective pieces,like the disciples foundation
Hammered in by thor himself
God of the sky
The horizon within dotted by a heart, some lungs,
Spleen, stomach, diaphragm
Stars in your very own galaxy

Lumbar
Five little graces
Luminary
Holding enough weight so
that the sun could settle down
right between your hip bones
root within your nerves
Apollo has come to visit
Showing you just how much holy light you can carry