Who am I to cast light upon the human soul?
Sitting down to write peace-verses for mercenary gain,
Hunting for poems and hoping against hope that I need not
Poetry
Imperfection is the place where the spirit enters,
the small hole in your shirt, the loosening threads
of carpet, the ache in your soul for forgiveness.
She consoles me as I meditate
before Mass—Julian of Norwich,
that is, who says, “We are clothed,
wrapped in the goodness of God.”
And she consoles me after Mass
when I drive home to the friary and
pass two prostitutes who are sitting
on folding chairs next to the curb
helping each other with makeup.
Praise God for all things green
Lime jello, blades of grass, emeralds
Chameleons, the neon river frog
Heavy papayas begging to be picked
I expect the whitest dove,
purity as the Spirit breaks apart
firm blue of our ceilinged sky,
a tapered shape, an elegance.
But Picasso was right.
She spoke softly, calmly recounting
her pain through a furnace of litanies
that helped her hold on to the unbelief
Confess to ignorance
I do not know you, although
I have loved you twenty years
The lifting of your lashes
Like the iris
in the side yard,
I have stopped blooming.
Dig me up, O Spirit,
and split me; where I have grown
calloused, break me open;
I cannot tell you why
I taste death;
the cupboards
are reasonably
arranged,
the windows clean as rain.
while climbing towards
phantasmal blue
has broken—
we lie on concrete,
begging with a
shattered golden bowl.
My breath pluming white into December
could, to God, be incense rising out
of the puffing thurible of my body.
Up here, it’s impossible to tell for the fog
From far-out depths they come,
swell swelling swell,
'til cresting they salute the sky
and tumble towards sand that waits immemorially
to receive them.
Summer u
The narcotraficante commanded me
in gestures, take off your blouse.
Then he jerked it, scattering buttons—
smooth and pink—along the ground.
- noticing the migrant workers—
- two to a wheelbarrow of concrete—
- mending the walls of the rich
- that exclude them
"The wind blows wherever it pleases." Word?
The scene is played out. We need some Eden!
Were Abba the DJ, He'd spin hymns
To slay.
we nailed God down
He's at the back of the property
He's going nowhere, sir
His feet are stuck
to a block of wood
It's comical, sir
I went there once,
to the place you’re imagining.
It was purple, with wild geraniums
under green-bright stars.
All the constellations spelled
words, like &
After the olive groves at Samothrace and fog
which billowed up from a green sea,
the rocky sheep path and bleating ewes,
wind and sun—there w