i am a beautiful bout of starts and sky
compiled into a confounded heart, left
reasonless in the dark so many times

hold me gently, like you promise now, when
we finally form a union, beautiful motion
scrubbing off the dirt and rinsing off my feet

hear me, my tired soul
hear me

forgiving the unkind parts of me
and respecting my needs,
recognizing the demon’s sins
seeing my ardent potential
chaining up my loose lead mind
promising a golden future for no one else
but me

if i sustain this pain
one more night and day
i can manage being the martyr
in our picture-book plot.

if it costs all
of my heart's savings
for you to lick your thumb
and tab our page, i'll sign it away,
like that,
gone

please hurt me in
the ways you'd hurt
yourself. i am no
friend to your ground,
no faction to your
brotherly causes. stay
a while, listen. soothe
me with the burn marks
you give me. i cannot bear
the idea that you love me. i
cannot fathom any real
feeling you would have for
me as being worth more than
a strand of your broken hair

falling, surmounting distance,
or electric brazen fences.
listen.

you, of all things,
tested my immanence. you
cannot think, after all
these lives, i'd live to
tell my own story?

you relinquished your chains.
i didn't realize the alloy
turned your wrists green
and soured the feeling.

    i didn't realize you viewed them
    as shackles, and not the comfort
    endowed to you when i vowed
    to protect you just two months ago.

    i don't blame you.
        no, i can't. delicate birds
    don't like the clanking of cages,
        no matter how intricate
    the bars are constructed, and
how beautiful
the permanence
of a lock is

this feeling is not
symbiotic: you reduce
my core to nothing

i worship an empty god
who answers no prayers.

a mono-disciple tapered
to heavenly threads without
ever bearing wings of my own,

i have no convictions except
the idle ones he tethers me with:
our shrine is gold and red.
(sometimes i think it is pretty.)

i will follow him with blind eyes,
for there is nothing more sweet
than to be loved for merely existing
and reciting his gospel to the ground.

i grow under his sunlight.
he waters me as he pleases,
but my petals will never be
the colors of the church flowers
from his childhood,
(he doesn't realize they are fable.)

my mind will never be his steeple.
Nazareth needs repairing, but
scripture ordains i cannot bear
the burden of fixing something so bloodied and broken.

i will bleed red wine for him,
i have no doubt he will finish
the glass.

it stains the page. i smile,
yellowed crumpling page.

i write the next verse, in pencil,
heeding my perpetual mistake:

          i am immeasurably incorrect,
          and no one needs repentance but
          the sinner, who is I tonight,
          and all nights.

i close the
        book. i lay down.

Nazareth
  is dark.

so i pray my
bedtime prayer,
that i wish
my god wakes up
with a clearer mind
and a learned heart
tomorrow.

(a fool is a follower,
a fool is the man who
absolves the snake for the sin
and punishes Himself
for not seeing clearer.)

you’re ugly
under the
harsh light.

you are not
mystical, nor
fantastical, like
in my dreams:

you are a child
with the hands of
a God,

an uncontrollable
force with the power to
hurt me