"baptisms" poems
Silky smiled girls
With cups tipped off of saturdays doubts
Validating infidelity for a firm grasp
Graffiti sideways winks
Your only as remarkable as your last debute
Born again to a word offering baptisms in svedka
Your vices tattood on a list of hymns
Find solice in no mans company
Bring faith on your knees to a boy who can't speak his name
Your body is a temple with access through insecurity
Bless me father it has been two drinks since my last confession
Silky smiled girls
Make no home for validation in weekend crimes
Nov 6, 2013
Nov 6, 2013 at 11:13 PM UTC
all the lapses in time
mix like melted crayons
i'm tired and wish that they could stay on
my skin, but they drip down and in
to a puddle at my feet
the moments that drip, slip away
are the ones that i wish that i could keep
but they melt, mix and make
a puddle so deep
i should step in
i'd be delighted to sink
take turns to tip back and taste each one like a drink
splash, spill each one over my skin
make each a mess for memory's sake
turn, tilt, and take time to
clothe my self in all the caressing colors
like a motley collage
of rainbows turned chameleon camouflage
i'll hide in the folds of these memoreies
for earth's forever
fly where they take me
daydreaming while waking
splash in a puddle comprised of the past
pbpbpbpbpbpbp play in a puddle of
paint like
late night
rain puddle baptisms
and fake rage spasms
and faces so cute it's hard to look at em
money could buy happiness if
someone bottled and sold the sunlight that we napped in
on the sidewalk
the opposite appearance but the same substance
as our late night...not dates...adventures...and deep talks
the early Tuesday morning
walks and discovering
our very own piece of paradise
complete with waterfall
the overall romance
like an always sheepish glance filled swing dance
the innocence...
the spontaneity and
"do-it-you-won't-i-wouldn't-even-be-mad" spring break trips
taco bell and heathens and sheathens, HELL!!! comments
fresh beginnings and new starts
curious minds and ravenous hearts
lakes that look like bits of Scotland
and arms with seals also on hearts
(ar ar ar)
memories like melted crayons in a puddle at my feet
he will take the memories that i can't shake
Mar 21, 2013
Mar 21, 2013 at 7:57 PM UTC
be honest
when did you last wash your hands
perform bacterial baptisms
to was the nicotine
from your lucky
and pomade
from your hair
and when did you last
think of me at three am
were you in bed
in the sea and the sky
and was it hot in thirty below zero
do you miss me
when youre *****
and craving naivety
and when it gets too hot under fleece pants
are your thighs sweating yet?
Jan 5, 2014
Jan 5, 2014 at 10:29 AM UTC
"She says, 'It's only in my head.'
She says, 'Shh, I know it's only in my head."
I was baptized when I was four years old
except it didn't turn out like most baptisms do.
It was a backwards baptism,
my childish innocence was left floating in the bath water like dead skin
and I stepped out bathed in sin.
Reborn in sin.
Seeds of sin
planted into my growing body
by the man with the face like Jesus.
**** on it like a lollipop", he said
trying to appeal to the childish innocence
that he unknowingly stole
just moments before.
I did as he said
obedient child that I was.
I didn't know the difference then
like I do now
but the difference doesn't even matter anymore.
When you plant corrupted seeds
you grow a corrupted tree.
Now I wake up with blood under my fingernails
from trying to shed the hate
branded into my skin.
Now I'm constantly fighting a civil war
between the devil and god
raging inside of me.
Now I feel guilty for who I have become
because I never knew how innocence felt.
Now my poisoned mind only knows to yield
to the sinful whispers
that float inside my head
whenever I close my eyes.
I may have lost my innocence
but I guess
I didn't lose my obedience.
"But the girl on the car in the parking lot
says, 'Man, you should try to take a shot.
Can't you see my walls are crumbling?'
Then she looks up at the building
says she's thinking of jumping
says she's tired of life.
She must be tired of something."
Oct 25, 2016
Oct 25, 2016 at 8:53 PM UTC
Just
six years old
when I found out that kids could die.
There was a family at my grandma’s church—
The only black family
in the entire congregation.
The mother
was petite, wore thick glasses, and played piano during church.
The father
was greatly obese, with thinning hair, and a permanent smile.
Their two boys
were four and twelve years old.
The night of their death
I saw them at church.
Service had just gotten out
and I was running wild with my two friends.
Both a grade higher than me.
We ran across the large stage
and jumped into the huge bathtub
they used for baptisms.
The four year old boy,
only an hour away
from Death’s grip.
He said to me with a big, genuine smile,
“Hi Daniel.”
But he was only four.
Practically a baby, I thought.
I was running with the big kids.
No time for babies.
So I turned back to running around with my friends,
ignoring his friendly greeting.
An hour later
that little boy’s dad
pulled the family Lincoln Town car over on the freeway.
Flat tire.
While the dad was walking around the back of the car,
the wife and two boys were waiting inside.
Some ******* drunk
slammed into the car.
The dad watched the car
fly forward and burst into flames.
The smiling four year old
burned to death that night.
The twelve year old
suffered severe brain damage and died two days later.
The mother’s face, chest, back, neck, arms, and hands bore
charred and bubbling skin.
The father died of a heart attack a few months later.
That piano playing lady of the Lord
buried her whole family.
A decade later,
a teenager back at my grandma’s church
for mother’s Day.
The burned
former mommy and wife
still sat and played at that piano.
For some reason
she was still working for the big guy upstairs.
I couldn’t understand it then, and I still don’t.
For not saying “Hi”
to that doomed little boy that night.
That was the first time I’d ever felt like an *******
When I was six years old.
Dec 3, 2011
Dec 3, 2011 at 12:57 AM UTC
The driver wears a clock
with a hat
and it tips in favor to the newest customers
twice a day.
It drives a bright orange cab
delivering backseat baptisms
to the patients walking across the flat-top abyss at night.
I see the cab roll up beside me
and its only one step to get in but, flights of stairs are truly there.
Judas with three hands invites me forward to sit down
but, he starts shouting in tongues and all I hear is something
about shoebox pupils.
The weather in the cab isn’t inviting,
it believes in me though
and hands me a paper bag to ***** the obnoxious ticks
away, leaving an empty stomach for fair elements.
I hear my stomach quote: “I am the egg,
a sack of an embryo
of culture and ******
chairs open doors for me.
You are the prized treasure
of the spider’s remain bag.
Bleaching light is afraid
of you.”
The driver then says with solid breath,
“Jukebox oven needs only one more
piece of our lives.
It promises with frigid fingers and leftover voices
that swamps will always run under us.
So we do as conscience demands, we pay the fare
and believe that is fair.
Feb 17, 2013
Feb 17, 2013 at 8:28 PM UTC
The lies we tell of God
Are no baptisms in a dripping moon
No cleansing in and of sunlight
No anointing me of Earth
The lies we tell of God
A mark of mortal rage
A mourning that glows and devours
The fingerprints of our ancestors
The lies we tell of God
are the lies we tell of ourselves
Sep 17, 2021
Sep 17, 2021 at 10:18 AM UTC
We are simple people,
whose names won't be remembered.
They will not build us monuments
or carve our faces into stones.
When we pass from this world
they will not broadcast our names
on the Television to tell the world.
Our mourners will not fill up Cathedrals.
Instead we will get a single column Obituary.
We shall lay our broken bodies in the family plot
next to those who left before us,
waiting patiently for those to come.
We are simple people and this our fate.
To celebrate the most mundane of things.
Baptisms and weddings;
First homes and new friends.
This is the life for which we live.
It is not a grand tale embodied with gold
but do not let this fool you.
Do not let this diminish its worth.
For this is an ordinary miracle.
A magnificent gift to be nobody,
and yet be everybody.
This is the phenomenon of simple life.
Mar 26, 2015
Mar 26, 2015 at 8:37 PM UTC
A Bach piece never heard
was played for the first time
by a cello player in a courtyard
of a bombed Berlin hotel.
I knew it as lovers know each other.
No secrets. It resonated in my heart
a lifetime of troubles and
brief interludes of joy
where baptisms don't matter
and nothing is ever blessed.
Aug 23, 2021
Aug 23, 2021 at 9:13 PM UTC
There is no knife that can cut as deep as you.
Baptisms save no one...reassurance of mind is nice though.
My mind and my room, filling us inside and out.
All of the little things I barely use.
The same things, done and done.
Words become repetition just as the Earth and Motion.
And what of the countless people who take their dreams and write them on paper
as they take their lives, and write them on paper?
Feb 26, 2012
Feb 26, 2012 at 11:43 PM UTC
let me take you to church on friday nights after gin and whiskey
roar ‘oh my god’ so she knows you like it
take communion when my thighs greet your face
- - - - taste thy gifts, which we are about to receive
knees rap the hardwood floor, make you beg for mercy
whisper sins in my ears, teeth bashed pillows no longer muffle
crying out your confessions, repent
- - - - keep it pseudo with a blindfold
dip deep, deliver baptisms when i get you wet
- - - - god is a woman in this bed, no more ****** mary’s
metamorphose **** into holy water
vocalize moans to the harmony of the gospel
precise fingers conduct the choir
- - - - adagio, andante, allegro - you designate
reach salvation when you ******
- - - - arch your back, thy will be (un)done
Mar 31, 2019
Mar 31, 2019 at 9:01 PM UTC
casts huge leaf shadows on dirt
and the mockingbird's mocking me.
"mockingbird,"
I put my hands in my pocket
and pretend a smile,
"some things you can't out run,
church bells and a wedding dress,
funeral processions and baptisms,
the cop car radio,
she was so beautiful in her wedding dress,"
I'm pointing my finger up at the mockingbird,
"so I'm a few steps ahead of you in heartache,
it was a toss of the dice,"I tell the bird,
"I threw a handful of rice."
"so don't look sad at me, bird.
everyone gets hurt."
and on her branch in the sycamore tree
the mockingbird's crying to me...
"I'm a few years ahead you...
Sweet One, lonely bird.
I've walked through fire,
stared into the wall of shadow and sorrow
into the cold silence of tomorrow.
I hear what you're telling me, Dear One,
loves been a little hard on you, too,
and there in illusion lies the danger
so please be kind, my friend,
the sorrows that never seem to fade away
become the grey, dark sea,
and sunlight through the Sycamore tree.
Dec 19, 2024
Dec 19, 2024 at 2:43 PM UTC
Now I will take ya'll further back in my time
The time when I realized angels were taking care of me
They were always mine
My Daddy was quite different when he came home from Vietnam
My Mother became secondary
His mission in life was to show others God is number one
Don't misunderstand me, I know this is true
Yet I saw it my in mothers eyes at times this made her blue
Daddy stayed in the army but we also opened our home
It became a place of residence for the unwanted
We called it "The Manor"
A place to find Christ and no longer rome
During this time I was a very young child
In my eyes this enviroment felt a bit wild
Everyone rejoicing, singing hymns
Then out of the blue great vibrance would come
Someone would burst out speaking in tongues
Oh, so very much going on
My sister was upstairs jammin to psychedelic rock
Hangin with the hippies who were supposed to be
downstairs at church or the rehab class
Yet they had wandered away
To the psychedelic world that led them astray
I remember once seeing one of the alcoholic homeless men
Sneakin into my Daddy's bathroom
Drinking his aftershave
To satisfy his alcohol crave
Ah, the good Ole' daze
After sometime we moved "The Manor"
To the country, in the sunshine
A place we called "The Farm"
A big ole Victorian home, the stairs to the attic were gone
The stories were that the house was haunted
The scary tales my sisters told me yet still
I never felt any harm
The Cape Fear River flowed thru nearby
I watched the Baptisms as I played on the side
Spiritualism in my heart so very true
It buried deep inside me as I grew
I decided not to let it escape
For in my heart I knew the true cost it intakes
Even then I longed for a simple life
Trouble free, I dreamt, at no price
I sure did get happy when I would see
Grandma and Papa pull up
It meant we were heading to the beach
In Papa's SUV
That is always when true PEACE would arrive
Inside of me
Mar 19, 2015
Mar 19, 2015 at 9:40 PM UTC
I feel as if I'm corrupting you
You exhale as you have me pushed against your bed
I think of unholy baptisms and ****** awakenings
I just want your body
You slur insistently
But I also want your hair. And your lips. And your eyes.
You add importantly
Using your fingertips gently for emphasis
Now I don't know whether to go or stay
Jun 28, 2013
Jun 28, 2013 at 4:33 AM UTC
We’d made things once, things of substance:
Copiers, straight-sixes for Chevelles, Novas, Impalas,
And tons of film, of course, loaded into tiny Instamatics
Which accompanied us to everywhere and everything
(Unless they mystifyingly scampered away from pocket or purse,
In which case we drove, cursing and volleying blame to and fro,
Fifteen, twenty, maybe more miles to retrieve them
From the kitchen table or back of the toilet)
To document births and baptisms and weddings,
The in-betweens and hereafters,
(Renderings of children and dogs
Sitting under trees with blossoms of pink and red
The blooms implausibly bright, child and beast stolid yet smiling,
Or tableaus of tux-clad cousins and brothers,
Squinting blankly in the aftermath of a visual right-cross
Courtesy of the supernova-esque emanation
From the blue cube perched on the camera’s top)
So they would not be victims of the vagaries of memory.
All of that is gone--no, taken--from us now,
The means of production having embarked for Memphis or Mumbai,
Those things which sustained us now simply vestigial curiosities,
Like hand-cranked presses or ancient milking machines
We’d tittered at on long-ago school field trips.
The march of time and technology, to be fair,
But it has left us obsolescent as well,
Stranding us without context or clarity,
With access to neither advance or retreat
(The old photographs simply mock us now,
The red-eyed images fading to the soft tones
Of a rose at the end of its summer,
The name of the third man on the left,
Who’d worked on the line with us nearly three full decades,
Refusing to be conjured out of the thin air)
Leaving us diffuse and unordered
As the old and cracked negatives
Stuffed higgledy-piggledy between old snapshots
In an enveloped at the back of an old file drawer.
Feb 21, 2017
Feb 21, 2017 at 7:30 PM UTC
Every year visits to grandparents occur,
And the grandkids have “grown so much,”
And they need to “put bricks on their heads”.
Every year the family is updated about
The sports and the activities,
The good dates and the not-so-good dates
Of the previous year,
The births and baptisms,
The deaths and funerals.
Every year we endure the
Sometimes awkward, always long conversations
With the friends we see just once a year,
Maybe less, and every year we seem
To get further and further apart,
And the conversations are shorter,
Maybe even just a “Hey”, and you
Wonder why we can’t talk to these people anymore.
Why do people so close to us in heart become
So much more hard to communicate with in person?
Is it technology, fooling us into thinking
That we are connected to each other, when really
We don’t know each other at all?
Is it time, slowly eroding our years of
Memories and similarities, leaving us
Longing for the “good old days” instead
Of embracing the new ones?
Is the problem simply us;
Are we not willing to create new memories,
Go through the stresses of trying to forge
A new relationship when distance
Becomes an issue?
Maybe that is the problem.
Yet no one is willing to fix it,
So every year is the same.
I’ll probably be writing a poem about this
Next year.
Jun 25, 2018
Jun 25, 2018 at 4:40 PM UTC
until I watched her at low-tide, I never
believed
she could pull water from the rocks
until I walked to the shore at dawn, and
found her moon-lonely, floating
above the empty remnants of a river once home
to a town-full of
baptisms,
until erosion turned her cheeks to
aqueducts, pouring herself back into
holy
until she looked at me and asked
if I thought they would notice that
from now on the Mississippi would be salt water,
until I looked into her eyes, hollowed and
cored and caved, and
all of the things I had drowned or orbited
in her over the years was looking back
at me
I didn’t know that running
just leads
to caught
Sep 3, 2014
Sep 3, 2014 at 1:34 PM UTC
we circled each other like strange, timid animals of prey
you’d never seen me crazy
but you’d never given me a reason to try
so discarded you mark me
shelf me as that little girl who’ll never understand
now here we are parked in your car
the orchard is quiet tonight
echoing the silence we are disrupting
before you can take my hand and preach your lies
I pop the door and take off
you sigh believing me to still be a child
until you get out to fetch me
and in the dark you see my top before you
do you question what’s underneath me
like you do what’s under the rest of my clothes
no where in sight is the little girl you once knew
intuitively you head toward the pond
contemplating new baptisms
or finally cleaning off layered dust to find reality
wondering what tragedies I’ll bring you this time
do I still make you feel like a young boy as I jump
in the water covered by mere splashes and starlight
are you surprised by the me I am here
that the me you barely knew was fraud
or rather only a mask as painted as your own
Mar 8, 2015
Mar 8, 2015 at 9:20 PM UTC
“Love isn’t always magic,
sometimes it’s just
melting.
Or it’s black and blue
where it hurts
the most.”
– Andrea Gibson
Love isn’t easy,
but it is familiar.
It is memory.
It is rehearsal, target practice,
skipping stones.
It is knowing you cannot hide
in anonymity when love always
reveals.
I.
You can wear no veil,
no shroud, no cloak that will
fool me.
I will know you by your gait,
by the silence of songbirds
that have come to expect your nightingale melody,
by the parting of the sea
as you rise from its depths.
II.
You cannot even hide
behind clouds.
I will know you
when lightning strikes too close
to home. I will know you
when the sun comes scorching,
leaving angry marks of Cain on my sin.
I will know you when the sun
doesn’t come at all.
There is no heavenly body that can keep you from me.
III.
You are known
to me even when I do not face you.
I will know you at the playground
when you don’t know how
to tell me you like me
without pulling on my pigtails.
I will know you on your rooftop
when our triangular wishes
are carried off by blinking airplanes.
You are known to me
even when you cannot face
the pain you’ve left me with.
IV.
I speak in your voice
before I even realize the words are yours.
Forgive me, again and again,
for singing in a language
you and I torched
after its creation.
I know you because no one else
dares speak to me in tongues.
No one else prophesies salvation
in a thousand speeches
before the tower comes crumbling down.
I will know you when you are silent.
I will know you when you are crashing thunder.
I will know you when you are civilization falling.
V.
Love isn’t easy,
no, but it is you.
Love is knowing.
It is unraveling, undoing.
Mapping out your dreams
and learning rescue remedy.
Love is you even when I least understand.
It is holding funerals for who you were,
baptisms for who you can be.
Love is ceremony.
It is breaking bread, saying grace.
“The one verse you can trust.”
Swallowing covenant.
//A.Z.//
07-17-20
2:17 AM
Jul 25, 2020
Jul 25, 2020 at 1:44 PM UTC
We can thrive as a planet
or die as a species
and our egos may argue otherwise
but it will go extinct and wither
quicker than our bones will dry
and all the false currency
we gave our time to
will crumble in its uselessness
as life will go on without it
and those who thought themselves
immortal under the grace of god
who thought their sins against life
forgiven by the repetition
of hollow words
while burning down
the home around him
will drown in the waters
of their meaningless baptisms
and life will go on without us
as it had before
and as it will long after
any memory of our existence
has any light or thought
and yet today we still breath
today there is still hope
still a chance
to thrive as a planet
to survive as a species
to stand against
the ego of our minds
and follow the wisdom
of our hearts
Jun 26, 2018
Jun 26, 2018 at 1:54 PM UTC
my most recent self published Lulu book, [MOON tattoo], was reviewed by Krystal Sierra, and part of what she says is here:
Because of the relationship between the line and white space, the reader turns back to the poem again and again, a practice that speaks to religious tradition, incantation byway of word and image, how the poem itself becomes the way God, or Spirit, communicates with us via channels we understand, the interplay between the word and white space much like what we know and do not know about the nature of the divine. – Krystal Sierra
~
some poems, from [MOON tattoo]:
[level]
brother is digging barehanded in the backyard a hole for what he hopes is the alien of god’s choice. as for existence, my mother’s is low on mine. my father is keeping out of the same sentence any mention of ****** and totem pole. no one including you cares for my sister’s worry that this no this is the bottom of a rock. if asked, I will say I was visiting with my arms the museum of rowboats during the regional spike in baptisms we as a family failed to interrupt.
~
[meditation]
summer was for sexting and for watering the scarecrow’s spine. say it with me this was not that summer. as a ghost might surprise the mother and go to salt, a doll might remember its teeth.
Jun 2, 2016
Jun 2, 2016 at 3:21 PM UTC
You stole my religion,
And left me faithless.
That’s what happens when you love so hard that you switch places.
I’m into *** and drugs,
Not a prayer in sight.
You’re into baptisms and bibles,
I bet you pray every night.
I used to be envious,
I used to covet thy neighbor,
But now: I don’t care.
I’m into cheating and lying,
I’ll never tell the truth.
You’re into virtue and life after dying,
You’re in the “battalion of youth”.
I’m the lost little lamb,
You’ve taken my place in the flock.
I’m lost to the wilderness,
You’re the sudden block.
I sleep with the snakes,
You can imagine the venom in me.
You sleep in the clouds,
You fly with angels so free.
I’m okay that I’m evil,
It’s alright to be bad.
I know the life you took from me,
I remember the life that I had.
I’m leaving the nest soon,
Mama bird will never know.
But soon my dark heart will consume me,
And eventually it’ll start to show.
Apr 23, 2020
Apr 23, 2020 at 4:47 PM UTC
Coded messages, inscribed by the scars on my skin
Aspects of a secluded heart; as the line of tears, maps
Out the journey to a long sense of finding due healing
As the border between maturity and old youth, in a new attire;
Once the public uniform of coming in your, “Sunday best,”
Disguising all the vile of yourself- as we fashion ourselves to
Look like the most likable person; the scrap pieces of dripping water
From prior baptisms- as some of the sovereign believers are uncouth
To their God, wearing the many false skins, hunted in wickedness-
Their very own diplomacy of delighted barbarism
Separate all of your self-gratifying creeds, and agreed to
Worship in love, pray together; coming as you are- as we are
All knitted together by familiar troubles, hurts, griefs, uproars-
To raise our voices, bringing life to this new body.
Jul 14, 2024
Jul 14, 2024 at 7:14 AM UTC
brother is digging barehanded in the backyard a hole for what he hopes is the alien of god’s choice. as for existence, my mother’s is low on mine. my father is keeping out of the same sentence any mention of ****** and totem pole. no one including you cares for my sister’s worry that this no this is the bottom of a rock. if asked, I will say I was visiting with my arms the museum of rowboats during the regional spike in baptisms we as a family failed to interrupt.
Jan 3, 2016
Jan 3, 2016 at 7:41 PM UTC