I cut my teeth on death.
Opened my eyes to a too-tall casket
Filled with the fresh scent of funeral home.
Cried, cried, cried because it
Smelled like my own little hungers.

Time was recumbent and rusting under its skin
From the words beating again and again
In the mouth of the old man from the funeral factory.
They were singing on fleshy metal meat
About what pain cuts like.

Too hard benches and too angry light
Shooting from the many-colored windows
With half-rate pictures recycled
From a time like this one
Hurt like a god to these little eyes.

The beams stretched and grew like a Gospel of Pain,
Eating, eating, eating my grandfather's casket
Into its hour by hour growing light
Like a painting dooming a moment to swell
Into an imitation of forever.

The light was angrier outside when we left.
The old man had banned it from witnessing
A husk and a promise of rot
And every would-be-martyr that had been called
From the depths of just-below-heaven.

It was like a nap, someone said
When they remembered to feed me,
Remembered to answer all the usual questions,
Remembered to tell me that the worst of things
Only happen to the worst of people.

Shaking shake shake quake quaking
Quake
         quake
                  quake

Falling like
         falling like         I’m burning like
                  Alexandria
Gonna lose it all like
         Gonna raze it all
                  like
         Alexandria
Gonna
                  gonna
Gotta
                           go
It’s         an
         act
                           shivering
Shimmering like
Falling stars
                  beautiful like
Burning like
Falling stars
                  we love pain
Like
         we love Jesus
Like
         we love
                  paintings of mangled flesh
and starving bodies like
         Streaming red on white flesh
It’s gotta be white flesh
                           with
                  red
         like apple candy red like
Seas like
                  Wine
Like
                           ****
It’s         an
         act
She said she said
         momma said
                  shut
Up
         shut
Stop up
                  Jesus didn’t cry
He
         Ate bread
                  didn’t blink
Didn’t think
         Drank wine
Burned like a falling star
         Gave up
Shut up
                           Died

We who are the dancing, we who are the free
The laughing singing multitude that bears the song of the earth on our tongues,
That bear the soul of the earth with our hearts
And march to the melody of our own invisible song
We whose anthem christens the sky with the fullness of our boldness, of our voices,
The children born of the song of the spheres
That align with the stars and swim in the moonlight of forgotten gods
And pray to the miracle of the clouds, painted and forever traveling
We who are the awakened many
The harbingers of forgiveness
That do not shudder in the glorious face of eternity
And who wash away our tears along with our fathers’ past sins
We who were muted, who were muzzled and mauve
The silenced, shackled dreamers once hooked to the drug of complacency but
That chose to follow fate’s thread out of Asterion’s dwelling
And wander forever onward into the beautiful unknown

• We declare a peace that consumes us, white hot and burning
Without fear of our waxy wings soaring our spirits into the glowing sky
But with the joys of love and voices lifted in song
• We declare an equalness between ourselves, springy and pure
Without angst over our mortal trappings
But with the knowing in our stardust selves
• We declare a justice pure and blind
Without deafness or a commitment to her own fear,
But with a feather-soft understanding to temper her wrath
• We declare a world clean of human spite and neglectfulness
Without revolting sedation or penurious derision
But with the heart-worn life and long-wrinkled smiles of deep-rooted love
• We declare a dedication to truth and knowledge
Without the cowardice of a narrow, a cramped, a self-hurt mind
But with the mantle of honesty;
A mantle of honesty;

it makes us light as the flutters of butterflies

John Wayne is eying my soul.
He's the American God sent to save us,
And Papa worships him to save himself
From remembering we're the enemy.
It's a tiring chase,
And those movies always use the same old deserts
In a gaunt world set on repeat.
It isn't poetry to say it's a broken record,
But poetry cracked my bones to make a broth long ago.
It steeped too long and my mind is rusty
Like a too long forgotten horseshoe.
I don't know where I came from;
Papa prayed hard enough to forget.
Our creation story is the movies now:
In the beginning was the word, and the word was John.
A script resting on the shoulders of a beautiful new story
Where Papa worships him to forget himself
From remembering we're the enemy.

Today God wears pajamas.
God is world-weary and hides in a fort of blankets.
Perhaps tomorrow debts can be repaid
And everything will somehow be okay this time,
But for now, God could use a cup of soup
And a God of God’s own.
Perhaps a Dog, because this jaded world seems
Like perhaps it was made backward,
Because nothing seems to fit,
Like a stretched knit and square pegs
And a lost sweater God grew out of.
Perhaps today it will rain, reign grey
And align the storms in an angry sky
That’ll smoke out the worms from the mud.

Today God wears pajamas.
God hopes the universe can rule itself this time,
But the world is cruel when its left
With only a mirror and its own whims.
It’s hard not to be tired with
A universe rotting from the inside out.
The worms peak out from their feast.
For a moment, God forgets to breathe.
Does God need to breathe?
It’s difficult to remember when your name
Is Always and your age is Time
And the final stage of Never has a curtain call
For the one-person show made up
Of a God that wears pajamas.

She's crawling these days,
And it's a joyous throwback to
The wordless days, when the
Eye reflects sunshine instead of tonic
And there was someone,
Always someone                                                 up
To take over when it was too much.         up
                                                               up
She's crawling in her own spit-up
And learning how to drown.
There's a certain effortlessness
To a downward spiral
And she's mastered it with the
Dedication of a carnie's mid-night
Reflections in a backdrop
Of cotton-candy and ****** expulsion.

The world has painted itself white
And she's the little blemish
Of hangnails and spilled cognac
When Atlas would rather decorate
With her broken winter smile;
Teeth to match the whites of his eye
And shattered eggshell.

She's crawling these days, amidst
Broken bottles that reflect such starry eyes
The way puddles muddy the sky
And house the most optimistic birds,
Unheeding the poolside signs saying
Shallow end.
The water is dedicated to darkness
And she's dedicated to falling.

Momma can't cry right now.
She's got too many kids that beat her to it.
                                                       beat
                                                            ­beat
                                                            ­     beat
Like the thrumming of her heart.

There's too much poetry for pain
And songs riding the waves of grief.
That's what it is to be human, Momma whispers,
Even if no one hears here, even if her children have g    o    n    e
                                                ­                                             o   o
                                                               ­                             n         n
                                                               ­                                 e            e
Scattered to the winds like her hopes and dreams
And she's afraid she'll never see them again,
That the lump in her throat is cancerous with grief
And it's stuck like she is and she'll choke.
               stuck
               stuck                              fear
she   is  stuck      in       her                       self
               stuck                         grief
               stuck

But Momma can't cry right now.
The tears would splash like broken glass
And splinter like her h
            (beat)                    e                        ­                  (beat)
                                        ­     a             (beat)
                       (beat)                r
                                         ­            t                            (beat)
Murmurs like her soul.

There's too many questions in the dark
And monsters hiding behind words.
That's what it is to be free, Momma whispers,
Even if
      ven if
            en if
                 n if
                       if
                           f
                           You    d  i  s  a  p  p  e  a  r

To be (not) seen, not heard,
To be the silence at a wake.

Momma can't cry.
Momma can't cry.
Momma can't
She
She can't
Can't cry.