I go to church each Sunday,
God warns ‘there’s much to fear,
the world is decomposing,
the final end is near’.

I go to church each Sunday
and taste the wine and bread,
though elsewhere on our globus
raw hunger reigns instead.

I go to church each Sunday,
hear preachers’ words rebuff
repentant pauper’s pleading
‘enough is not enough’.

I go to church each Sunday,
watch candles burning bright
although they don’t enlighten      
the demons of the night.

I go to church each Sunday
to wash away my sin,
while prophets make their profits
with wars that do us in.

I go to church each Sunday,
think thoughts incessantly
of all our planet’s peoples
denied equality.

I go to church each Sunday,  
sit peacefully in the nave
while folks afar seek, grieving,
throughout a boundless grave.

I go to church each Sunday
to view iconic forms
alive in lancet windows
that hide unholy storms.

I go to church each Sunday,
discharge the weekly tithe,
while others pay the piper
when Reaper whets his scythe.

I go to church each Sunday
regard the holy bell,
reflecting on the wastelands
where day and night they knell.

I go to church each Sunday,
hear persons of the cloth
disguise the hell hereafter
with wartime victory froth.

I go to church each Sunday,
half perched upon a pew;
with everything so hopeless,
what else can one but do?

I go to church each Sunday,
and gaze upon the steeple,
majestic as the rockets
that plunge on placid people.

I go to church each Sunday
to hear the choir’s song
keep time with banshees shrieking
within a world gone wrong.

I go to church each Sunday
(above, doves fly in flocks),
while far flung realms are flattened
beneath the wings of hawks.

I go to church each Sunday
and pray so oft for peace,
but still the death continues,
it never seems to cease.

I go to church each Sunday
to sing sad psalms of praise,
while distant drones are humming
o’er bodies burnt, ablaze.

I go to church each Sunday,
a quest to save my soul
’gainst warfare’s pride and plunder -
prayer never plays a role.

I go to church each Sunday
my errors to confess,
while countries keep on killing
and suffer no redress.

I go to church each Sunday
the future for to see -
a man-made Armageddon
that ends humanity.

your presence lingers
not in grand gestures
but in the spaces in between

your smile filling my kitchen
with a warmth that remained
long after the coffee grew cold
and my cup was empty

the place still set for you,
as if you would walk in, sit down,
and make everything
feel a little more whole

the way we spoke on the subway
our words mingling like passengers
clinging to the rails
never quite ready to part ways

the way things look too clean…too still
not just your toothbrush
but the mess you made of my heart
gone

how lovely it was
to have your things scattered among mine
a forgotten sock
your glasses on the nightstand
a sign this space was ours
once

the scent of your shampoo hovers
an echo of you in the quiet
I breathe you in, eyes closed
wishing you were here
to wrap the night around us
turning off the world together
leaving only us
together in the stillness

He said we were like a supernova,
the sudden explosion, white-hot
and loud in the body of the sky,
the kind of light that burns
through the eyelids,
leaves an afterimage etched
in the retina of the universe.
Seen for three days straight,
sunlight and starlight fused
into one unbearable glare.

He told me love is the reset button,
the way a star collapses to begin again.
He said, I could survive alone,
but chose me instead, as if survival
were not the easiest answer,
as if being with me were a decision
made in a moment of stillness.

I doubted him—
his quiet strength, the way
he could carry the weight of silence
as if it weighed nothing,
the way he didn’t sway
when the winds rose,
when I unraveled, my edges
fraying into the thin air.

I need him to hold the center,
to keep the world from tilting,
but he doesn’t need like I do.
He lives in wants stripped clean—
no hunger, only fullness,
no chaos, just the brushstroke
of a steady hand.

And me—
I am the opposite of steady.
I am a gust,
a whip of color staining the canvas,
a metamorphosis that never lands,
forever on the verge of becoming
but never quite there,
a creature of motion, a hunger
that doesn’t know where to rest.

Still, he stays,
his calm like a gravity
that pulls me into orbit.

The supernova burns out.
The light goes dark.
I want to ask him,
What happens after?
But he looks at me—
the way he always does—
as if the question isn’t necessary,
as if we were already
the answer.