I want to follow.
So I can lead.
So I can encourage.
So I can
breathe
and show the way
to the breath of life.
But the words
seem hollow
and my works
are like the products of inept inventors
falling apart before inception.
They tumble from my mouth
and rattle through my brain
never reaching my hands and feet.
My heart
still healing
sometimes flutters with doubt.
I try to shut it out....
but, God, please!
I'm not asking for easy
for less pain
or more progress.
God, I just want to know you.
Don't let my sometimes hollow
plea to follow
betray my plodding feet...
If I should stumble,
let me stand again!
With you, I can.
My life,
so short,
so miniscule,
but not meaningless.
Your plan is too complex;
the jigsaw of your perfect work
the infinitesimal steps
leading
one by seeming insignificant one
to the final future for us all
where we will bow before you!
Crying out praises!
Singing Hallelujah!
Let me be that small part you have for me.
I want to follow.

I have a blue blanket, it looks corduroy but it's synthetic polynesian cotton.
Considered by some to be polyester. After the ninth year of ownership I started
Telling house guests it had always been mine; but secretly knowing it came from my
Ex Kristina who left it with some of her other things in 2005 in my grand deluxe Evanston
Apartment. In like some really awesome way, I could fold the corners together to see little blocks
Of the Universe form cubes in the fourth dimension and gain a better understanding of my own
Little black shmata. Top drawer, white dresser, in the back with the leftover girlfriend underwear between
My first ever stuffed animal dog/rabbit.

Amazing how these thinned and frayed azure threads had held so many midnight conversations Together- maybe fifteen other girls had nuzzled with Kristina's blanket. Last year the guilt set in. You Watch a girlfriend, say, ratchet through your room naked for something soft to put over her to listen to
Some half-stanza from the new Yeats critical and that, do-I-tell-her feeling comes over you. Blue Polyester really had a way with women. My last serious crush, the one of six months, the one from the place that was close to where I worked six days a week, would you believe, she had not interest in that heap of thread, under my pillows spying on us sleep for twenty-four long weeks.

"Drop in the bucket" the sixty-year-olds say. I say, bring me my ******* fourth dimension blocks and cubes *******. I want to visit the existential, I want to experience the hoo-ra and Ga-Ga those kids throw around on Milwaukee waiting for $150 NBA slippers.

Wednesday is my day for telling the truth.
2:00p.m. sitting in the front of her alizarin El Dorado.
"I have something I have to tell you,"  I said, my mouth practically filled with marbles as I barely could Utter the words: it's not going to work out.