I am like
a small dog,
every second
I need confirmation
that I am loved.
Every absence
encases an eternity
of solitude.

Was I
a good boy?
I might have been told so
a few minutes ago
but how about now?
My self doubt
will last forever,
only to be dispelled the next time
you place your hand on my head.

But withdraw your touch
and the next eternity
starts again.

story, after story, after picture
to craft a life
you don't live
to portray yourself
as something you're not
authenticity is of no concern to you
and everyday you do more to confirm
that to nothing
do you stay true

Already buckled in the backseat
I’d want to come to the grocery
And while you’d push the basket
I followed after so closely

We dug up weeds and planted poppies
Gold and vermillion
And I remember I felt my heart drop
When you said you can’t be friends with your children

I remember thinking
If you can’t accept me then how will I accept myself
you taught me everything
If you can’t accept me how will I accept myself?

And I’m not gonna get my confirmation
But I really want to make you proud
I know it’s not what you expected
It’s harder to say some things out loud

I didn’t get the chance to tell you
She told you before I could say a word
And then I didn’t want to talk about it
I ran away, I lost my nerve

You gave me all the space I wanted
That was four years ago
until it seemed like you’d forgotten
Until I moved to Chicago

And I was thinking
If you can’t accept me then how will I accept myself
You taught me everything  
If you can’t accept me how will I accept myself?

And I just want to feel accepted
But I really want to make you proud
I know I’m not what you expected
It’s harder to say some things out loud

Sister Magdalene had her own parking space
in the lot of the church where my grandfather
placed his hand on my shoulder.
Over the other, Joan of Arc whispered a joke
about the Father.
Something about bad breath.
I giggled a fragmented
Amen.

As a young girl I dreamt of the honor
of battle and the burden
of armor. Each morning I’d awake,
my wrist sore from painting fields
menstrual red. My thighs ached.
My horse's name was Gust.
She was the color of overcast.
Once, she got so tired
she kneeled. When she stood
her stomach held the night sky.
I laid beneath her and named stars
from bits of her fur
until the field began to whisper so loud
that I woke.

Sister Magdalene sat in the first row of pews.
Her skeleton hands held a candle. The flame
tip-toed up her habit with the resolve
of a field of corpses rolling their eyes
toward salvation. When the flame
reached her chin I bit my lip.
Joan asked what’s wrong
or what’s right.
My mouth was full.

The flame grew to reach the Father,
kneeling at the feet of a cadaver.

I listened to the church bend
in the heat until Joan begged that we leave.

The coca-cola breath!
Flashing lights, tweetie birds, the rough narcotic stench

The sky is devoid, it is scared of the streets etched in starlight, everything shining-- tangerine and Coit and ohhhh boy
don't'cha know what you're in for?

Twilight and she is a figment on my mind
the bark of cigar is fiery opal on my slender frame
I can hear something along the lanes of love
Echoing behind me, the rising sun

Funny dudes in new suits, pressed, steamed, machine-rolled
pills in the pockets
shipped locomotive
Every etching has its china
every etching is porcelain skin
The fog is a silken balloon, unconcerned, wayward
The men longingly abide in its cool, the breath of an over-excited lover, singing in the showerhead an embarrassing microphone
over the west coast

It's all over! it's the end
the roads are devoid of the things that called you
They are a clarion horn on the Claremont, facades etched with windowpanes
here the americans eat tofu and pretend it's bacon

I am in the rapidly rotating spoke, enjoying the taste of woodchuck, upchucking my guts every Sunday, white knuckle-- praying to god
release
release

what a steal that's a fantastic car for the price!
it is only 10 years of payment
only 10!
House worth 40, kids worth 60, medicinal payments
corn flakes
Fortified iron gates and god says,
naw let them all out until they drown,
I'll never flood the earth but I'll make it puddles
and if they want they can lay face down

I am eating Korean stew and wondering what will happen
when unification builds a railroad from Moscow to Busan
I will travel it and write a novel or two
it will be
"On the Railroad"
and start in San Francisco or a little while outside
on an October evening with not a fog in the sky
Just sky, blue, blue sky
A child on the hillside
blowing bubbles in the apartment complex or the gravel mound
next to new homes, now cookiebread gingerbed frames
Doing tricks on BMX bikes, getting our elbows smashed, a designated paramedic
It's all built up now, concrete streets and lonely streetcorner lamps saying
Hey we're gonna light up this little space
Hope you don't mind
Please don't play too loud

And given that these spheroids are monumentally moving
hurling like a pitched water glass
everything staying put under the motion of it
Such a lovely rooting of mass

I will call alongside it, crawling towards answers etching on murals and on the stamping of curbs
E-5 West main
4451 Lowell Street
554 Happy Valley Road
It's all the fun little tributaries of surface waters
heading with precognition towards seas
roped into it by specific gravity

On the phone i spoke to Mr. Victorious
I asked him about his particular drone
down south there in the more direct limelight of the night
he told me about his uncle, in prose
of course
we just hung our heads over the speakerphone
Not sleeping the way we should
shouldering burdens as ***** in deserted zones
laughing and preaching to cottonfields

Then there was the girl
the one we forgot, truth be told
The one unrequited impetus for all art, all physicality and feeling
loved by god in the corporeal
She is the saffron reed in my eye, the one i forgot to preach Victory to
She that one oblong pebble, rolled by the stream
passing our campgrounds and continuing her journey to sands
small little microscopic tetrahedral perfection
I could get stuck in between my teeth
or perhaps left on the sweat of the skin
the lost moments of beachside living, love for the expansiveness, left in the diner seat of the car, gotta keep moving
Carrying her away and if not careful,
nestling her back atop the summits from whence she came.

it is a cola in the glass on the shores of the bay,
it is a divine moment of contact in the oceans
two sailors acknowledging their vessels
with light shows and the play of eye
off the horizon, a green light o' sprite.

Between circular arguments
and confirmation bias, critics
debate the fallacies of Faith,
themselves unable to connect
to Yahweh via the divine spark
that has drawn us closer to Him;
each individual has been given
a unique measure of Faith; yet,
desire dictates the development

of our personal growth in Christ.
The Scriptures remain available
to those wishing to receive the
fullness of God’s Love or those
wanting to dispute His authority.
Now people choose to search only
for information that support…
their preconceptions; after all,
we’ve the choice of Death or Life.