Palm Sunday  
Voices bellow loud hosannas; palms wave vibrantly
The gentle humble King rides through the city gate,  
The crowd extolls, not knowing what will come.  

Holy Monday  
He casts the merchants from the temple's court,  
Coins clatter like thunder in the dust,  
A sacred grief ignites within His soul.  

Holy Tuesday  
He teaches truth where traps are slyly laid,  
With kind eyes and a steady, gentle voice,  
He sows the seeds of justice, sharp as blades.  

Spy Wednesday  
He is touched by shadowed, silvered hands,  
One kiss is weighed against the world’s regret,  
The hush that falls before the hammer strikes.  

Maundy Thursday  
He breaks the bread and offers up the cup,  
A basin, towel—He stoops to serve them all,  
The garden waits beneath a sleepless moon.  

Good Friday  
The sky goes black at His forsaken cry,  
The nails resound where silence should have been,  
His cross stands rooted in sacred holy ground.  

Holy Saturday  
The grave is sealed beneath a silent hill,  
No word breaks through the stillness of the dark,  
All heaven holds its breath beneath the weight.  

Easter Sunday  
The earth exhales as angels roll the dawn,  
He rises, bearing everything broken,  
Joy bursts forth—exalt Jesus!  Christ is risen indeed.!

I touch things I’m not supposed to
and call it prayer.
mouth open,
spine bent,
tongue tasting the fence line.

They say longing is holy
if it stays quiet,
but mine doesn’t—
mine breaks the jar and drinks the oil.

They told me I was an open wound,
festering with verse and girlhood.
They weren’t wrong.
But wrong feels a lot like worship
when done slow enough.

They say impure
like it’s a curse,
but all my favorite girls
are made of swampwater and sin.

I’ve never confessed
without turning it into performance.
My mouth was built
for poetry
and plea deals.

I was thirteen
when I learned to ache
without making a sound.
Seventeen
when I turned it into scripture.
Twenty-five
when I realized no one was coming
to carry the body but me.

I keep trying to write
the right-sized truth
but it never fits in a single poem
or apology.

I want back the girl
who ran barefoot into fire
because she believed
it might be heaven.

I want someone to touch me like I’m soft—
even if I’m not.
Even if I bite back.

I want to grab
without apologizing
for how hot my hands are.
I want someone to look at me
like a threat they’d die for.

I want the kind of love
that makes funerals nervous.
I want to be written about
by someone who isn’t me.

And I want to want less.
But I don’t.

You want a softer girl?
Tell that to the altar
I keep burying her under.

Vultures are the holiest creatures,
Tending with honor to the dead.
Bowed low to kiss the corpse,
With death covered wings and bare head.

They whisper to the frigid flesh,
Of words we could never hear, nor see.

“Your old name is not your own.
This dying earth; Not your king.
So forget the seeds that you have sown,
For I rename you “everything.”

Please,

don’t start to believe having a large circle of friends
is the closest thing to having a halo – not everyone
in your life is a holy person. But they love to dig up
something worthwhile out of you; leaving you only
as a holey person.

The Black Knight of the Franks,
He feared no thing,
Except for the hand of God.

With his sword and cross,
He rode triumphant,
Through out the Holy Land.

But once he crossed a monk of opposing faith,
But spared his life,
So his story was erased from history.

If your thought was a sin,
Even hell is heaven to me.

Everything is normal
so not much to sing or say.
No summer thunderstorm,
the snow was magical only for an hour.

Old men
aren’t removing women’s ******* with removable dentures.
A belly laugh now and then,
an empty belly’s holy.

With simple joy
mortals may forget to fear their deaths.
Simply put,
we do not survive. But what an adventure!

I heard an archangel cry
Don’t hurt the trees!
Also, save democracy.
Also, stop barking, believing in that higher power.

What’s Ken doing today?
Watching TED talk lectures,
planning next Spring’s garden.
It’s Death, not the Jewish king, in your rose garden.

As climates change
species escape predators
and predators chase down prey.
Choose sacrifice or blame.

I look at faces
and they look at mine, mute, animated spirits,
black wet rocks,
victims among flames.

I embrace my anonymity,
lost in my own city,
in the shade of a gazebo,
a mosquito’s acceptance of its position among a million mosquitoes.