when i pass by the lake, i have to stop and stare
how magnificent is it that such a beautiful body of water
is just sitting right there?
whether I'm shopping in Chicago
or hiking in Manistique,
lake michigan is my horizon, its depth is my peak.
i see every shade of blue there has ever been and will be,
i see white caps, forming patterns at the surface.
i wonder what fish are swimming below my feet.
i long to swim in it; to experience it’s vastness; to feel it’s chill envelop my bones
and to feel its warmth guide me back home.
my thoughts are clouded with the lake
and i see it in my dreams.
i think of its wide open rivers and its tiny little streams.
i wish to be near it,
to wake up to its song every day,
but when i rise in the morning,
i’m reminded that i am far away.

when you pass by the lake, you simply don’t stare,
such a magnificent body of water; do you know that it’s there?
if you were in Chicago, would it still be the same?
if you stood in Manistique, would you care that you came?
when you look at the lake, do you see all the blue?
or is every single ripple the same color to you?
do you think about fish, or wish to go for a swim,
or will you stay inside and say “i’ve already been in”.
have you drove by too many times that its escaped from your dreams,
do you find its rivers boring; “it’s not what it seems”.
you’ve seen it all your life, it’s as plain as a tree
is the way you ignore such a beautiful lake, the way you one day will see me?

I can’t say we’re the same but I too have lost large parts of me to greener pastures
Your dark bricks turn to dust and paint the snow a red maroon
“The stories they’d tell”
Says everyone sad to see them crumble but not sad enough to do anything about it
“Someone should do something”
Someone, but not they
Milwaukee I too am a lot like you, if you only knew
How far I slid sickly over the Kinnickinnic oil slicks
Past fallen trees and draining pipes
Until being caught by a shopping cart
Left on the muddy banks by some poor poor impoverished soul
Who also didn’t really care enough to return it to the Pick & Save
From which it was taken
I’ve sure seen better days and I too have come a long way
Like I got on to Fond Du Lac Avenue and kept walking
Until I reached
Well...
Fond Du Lac
Like I ascended Kilbourn Park with a pick-axe
Defeated the yeti on top and shoved your blue flag
Through his heart, cracking it open like a Pabst or Schlitz can
and dropped a quarter in a homeless guy’s jar
And he told me I was just like you
I can too burn bright like the foundries in the valley
Or roar like railcars and rattle the south side
Or be courageous like the captain
Sailing to Muskegon
Over choppy freshwater treachery
I can shutter in peace like your factories when I fall asleep
And never wake back up
I can drive all my loved ones away
Just like you have
For the past five decades
I’m exactly like you
Because I too
Wait for a sunnier day

My heartbeat pulses
like the north star
in my lower lip: I am, I am, I am.

My hair is humid; it curls like
smoke.

I toss Petoskey stones back
to Lake Michigan
where they’ll be safe from
souvenir shops,

at least until they
land on shore again.

I suppose dreams are like that,

washing up again and again
on our eyes shoreline.

Lake Michigan sand rests within my bones;
it slows the timing of my heart
and scratches the vowels
budding on my wet tongue.

I imagine waiting for you
on a bench of ghosts
with coffee and binoculars,
observing the rush of continuous
flutter as seagulls settle
and then unsettle, as indecisive
as the mottled lake.

The afternoon light is brisk,
pulls my breath like a buoy chain--
     my heart sounds like it's underwater,
     its beats drive the tide
     that draws you, like an undertow, to me.

I call for my mother above the rounded crescent hilltops
but she never answers,
only my Biology professor who brought me to this place
so distantly
close to my own heartland.
And my love affair
continues to blossom over every rotten log
with its residing salamanders and larvae.

My hopes is that the Beavers will teach me to saw through trees with such precision and I can then become one of the greats.

Prime Architect,  the absurdity of your art
fills me up like a riddle, bends the bars of
reason I'm forged within. A Byzantine
world - every fold and layer gyro'd in
astronomical administration, the scheming
of cogs clicking perfectly into place:
vast machinations leaving me windless,
birdsong squeezed entirely from bellows. Up
a lonesome trail; steep and narrow,
knowing faith is a sword too heavy to hold.

HAVE FAITH, they told me; prodded me
to constancy as a mother in S. Carolina backed
her station wagon into a lake with locked
doors and two sons inside. Evil has no horns
after all - it's a lozenge the flavor of a kiss,
there but not there, some puff of violet smoke
unraveling from a dancing brass censer.
The lance of Longinus pierces fleece;
the snake encircling the world swallows
its tail once more.

Jesus, be gentle. Come into me,
pop my doubt like an oozing fruit,
harness me to the light so I might saddle
and swing to the sound of your breath as it
sighs amongst the reeds. Test the
limits of my body as I have chewed and
swallowed yours. Communion makes
a cathedral of me, etches shadow
amongst the stars of the vaulted clerestory
as the nave shimmers with the swords
of flaming prayer.

HAVE FAITH, they told me, massage the
qualms from your dark marbles. Drop coins
down the wishing hole, let the godhead flow
through, like ink, to the parchment of you.
Alexandria burns again in the distance,
books yet unwritten exploding within us all
like the floral horror of a supernova.
Arcana lost, arcana found. Meanwhile, reason
and faith explode through the doors of the
friary, grappling like shadows draped upon
the thirsty Earth.

Iscariot, lay me in your bed of thorns and
mandrake, foxglove and myrrh; call me love,
drink blood from me as the moon sets over
Gethsemane. Let the light darken for a bag of
silver, let the bush burn down like a candle
smoldering cold. I've traced upon my bedsheets
maps of the world in its unmaking, lined shelves
with complete skeletons of extinct animals,
their hopelessness; the guts of this 7-day
world, veined with ribbons of gold, starred
by rubies and amethysts of the
deep-down. All of this, man's
betrayal of man.

HAVE FAITH, I tell myself; within the *****
of this bouncy ball clockworked amongst
the spheres, there's a place: vault
of the Animus, where God melts
away in your mouth, where Lady Macbeth
is still wringing her hands beneath
the font and the horses feast upon the
Eucharist of each other's bodies
like they were Easter hams, like their
blood were sweet wine. Where Abraham's
blade still shadows Isaac's binding;
where death has no power over us.