Black rosary beads
Holy prayers uttered to God
Penance for my sins

i've always written poetry
with the passion of a preacher to sermon.
i experience for literature feelings
which i imagine others to offer religion.

i've never been spiritual.
full stop.
my cynicism denies me wonders -
tired tale, sure, true as any other,

but poetry evokes the holy ghost
a being more skillful, more elegant,
setting my mind's eye alight with
saintly delusions of grandeur

it curls from my pen, bleeding fire into my notebook
if there is Elysium, it is in
the private Eden created between
my mind and my notebook.

if there is peace, it is in libraries,
eyes poring over words pouring over
life, utterly human life, told in a
way that is raw and violent and righteous,
connecting one's private introspections to words.

if religion has a purpose,
a redeeming quality, it is
community, connection, consistency.
God Is Always and Always Has Been and Always Will Be.

the great human collective,
the experience of poetry, of life,
the art of internal monologue,
it persists. it persists.

no, i am not spiritual -
it does a disservice to us.
it unjustly ignores the
holy human hand in our history

time is a chronicle of the messy
affairs of human choice and experience .
it seems unfair to me,
to pin all the blame on a

convenient
divine
deux ex machina
slash
scapegoat.

don't give the big guy all the credit!
the exhausted masses had a hand too!
take some responsibility for
humanity's divine man-made persistence!

so, yes, i experience poetry
with the rapturous fascination
as sinner to saint -
yet there is no sin in poetry.

by nature it is a
narcissist's and hedonist's pass time.
so there is only wonder
and childlike curiosity,
and the slightest sliver of hope to move forward,
which, really,
what else is religion good for anyways?

In the morning I rise
With a sun lit sky.
I turn my face to the east,
Oh holy Compass.
I take a moment to sit
In still silence.
As I listen within
For sacred knowledge.
This avenue of affirmations & prayer
Love and gratitude
Lead me there.
I take my sweet time
Learning the rhyme.
This message Divinity sent
Holy, holy, holy
Am I, and We, all One.
©KSS 3/2018

Your love is of a sacred kind, that leaves me basking in the afterglow of your longing embrace.
There I find myself alight with emotions so radiant that their golden rays burst forth from my ribcage as if holy arrows have pierced my very soul.
And it is in your divine light that I wish to remain ever more.

There was a war within me
A ****** terrible war - of deception - and lies - of hurtful ties that became knots in my belly and threatened to end me
Darkness clouded over - a hundred wails rang in my ears
I lost my sight - I lost my mind - only my soul remained
A soul that knew only your name - it invoked you - again and again

You arrived
like a knight
a brilliant blue light
in all the darkness
to lift the veil
The masks fell apart in your presence
And I saw your face, pouring with unending love, so holy, so pure

The war turned into a dance
An eternal dance of us
My war cries have become songs
They flow like rivers into the ocean of you
Beloved

Looking down from over their bodies - I count them.
My split mind at once rejoices in and recoils from that counting.
Peering back over my shoulder I make
dark associations.
It’s as if I was afraid of becoming lost
the way the bodies made a trail like bread crumbs,
leading back from the places I had been.
I walk with the Holy Light.
I walk with my dark companion.
I walk between the spines of the body shrikes.
They harvest all my crumbs and remind me I am lost.
They hook the bodies high from spikes
so I look up to make the body count.
I can see the Holy Script
but I can’t seem to find the way.
Red and gold beacons in the dream,
flickering off and on like syncopated declarations
as if saying:
Here I am
Here I am
Here I am.
All elbows and knees I slip between the webs of the
orb weavers and the cactus spines of the butcher birds
while they count the bodies for me:
Here they are
Here they are
Here they are.
Hang-dog and hard of breathing  I have my medicine.
I’m hanging from the sleeping cliffs over
hell’s half acre and the high deserts.
I remember my brother flying me to California on a great olive branch.
He fed me sushi and smiled while he watched by brain heal.
But I was coming for the bodies.
My count was smaller then, but it was high enough for him
and his hands were the keepers of the flame.
The fire there was exiled and quietly he laid it by.
My brother spread out over the carpet of time like
the faithful departed with the weavers and the shrikes and
mounted bodies in the sky.
A child appears before me on the walk - eyes like a baby deer.
His mother is two blocks behind, so he asks three questions while he waits:
Why are you smoking?
Where are your hands?
Is it getting dark soon?
He leaves me to wonder where my hands are and where the dark is,
the Holy Sage smoking at my side.
Like some dark sabbath.
Like some reading of the will.
Like some dark and holy delta sleep in a crib of red clay.
I have a feeling I have been gone a very long time and I
want to be home now,
but there is buzzing and chirping and a red light and
Saul of Tarsus holds a great tome before me and with my hands
I hide my eyes.
I am the dreaming of the world of dreams.
Therein the Holy Light rages like the flare of 1000 suns
while my eyes are shuttered tight
like old memories all gone beyond the sorrow.
The old oath keepers are all plates and screws.
The golden woven orbs and cactus spines are all empty on
the altar like a decommissioned slaughterhouse.
So I go and make a body count.

She is the sea...
Ever deep and cleansing...
That when people who stand by her shore...
Are driven into contemplation by her lapping waters...
The hearts rejoice the cool breeze which she radiates from the ***** of her sacred land...
She makes the people feel the sea within themselves...
She presents memories in the form of shells for people to take back home her essence...
And sand castles fashioned by tender hands are always embraced by her infinite boundaries...
She and her lover sky,ever entangled in a kiss, plants the seed of love even in spirits of frail lovers...

She is the sea...


And ever thus she remain an unforgettable experience in the life of every soul who visits her sanctuary!

i remember you whispering in my ear in mass when we were meant to be reciting our hail marys.
and daydreaming during the homilies of how dangerously strong our love may be if it was let known,
reverberating over holy lands,
overpowering the sounds of church bells.
but only the walls can hear our words over the loudly sung psalms
and only a god can see in the dark.
your love was architectural.
your love built me cathedrals,
your love built me empires.
the soft vibrations of your sweet love words bounced off the stain-glassed windows and silently drew an echo over the room,
through the pews, up to the sacred altar, presented as a gift to all.
a poet you are, my love,
a goddess, even more so,
with your words, you have the power to create
and with your love, you have the will to sanctify.
for churches are divine, and gods are ancient,
but you are you, forevermore, every century.


©L.F.