Good Friday

I have failed at Lent except to name my failings
have drunken reeled and stumbled blind to facts
and fallen down

Prayed with bishops, and lusted even as I prayed
"Simul iustus et Peccator"
the smoke and mirrors long since broken, blown


Brought up to go it alone

And now they tell me, sin is the failure to trust
in God; we're to assume the manna rain, fulfillment
and release

When all along I thought sin was to say too much,
to take too much; to murder and
disturb the peace.

Even if you make the right choice, you're forgiven
so why not yearn, why not want, to hunger
for the dangling fruit upon the tree?

Somehow the apple branch becomes the Cross,
and I the man who kneels to steady the spike;
the bludgeon wield

And all my heart that hungers blindly bleeds
into the hollow soundless void of ages,
upon the gilded pages

oblivion; the twilight grass illuminates the small-town eve with hope
and she in apron gleaning crumbs of praise will wait
to see what God will offer in exchange for joy
the mark, the plain, the measure of the frame, and the ancestral freight

i would joyfully shred a thousand (or two)
newspaper hearts over you,
i'd throw myself away
and call it passion;
the unoriginal sin.

but i have counseled those who crawl
love's muck of flood-strewn wrack,
who paw at memories, and lick the leather uppers
of reproach,
i've held the heads of wounded men
and kissed away the tears of some,
and so i know
too much.

poem for Dean

Banging on an empty kettle,
and stretching rubber binders
across a candy tin

A wind-up bear beats
a snare, a whistle-bird to tweet
the treble,
surgeon's hands to
pluck the strings

What register emotion:
an onion for devotion,
a vaccination's dart;
none replace
what's been missing,
not the hugging or the kissing.

If I only had a heart.

Sing to me a symphony
of blood and bone and flesh;
the pleasure at the end
of a long and lonely stretch.

Nevermind the violins.

Tap the time it takes to meddle
in Nature's careless miracle;
to change a thumping tire

Soon enough, there'll be grandeur
where the pillows used to languish
and we'll dance the lovers' part;
here the lyre, here the oboe
Prop our grins upon our elbows,
when we finish as we start

Soon enough, you'll awaken
where you find your life's been taken
Now you finally
have a heart.

new year's poem

Whatever happens now -
I am falling forward, leaning out from the edge
of now, yet born back
by the push of the unknown, the force
of hurtling forth.
I am the train's blind engine, its sheet metal
skin, the glint at the edge where
it slices the air, its scream
into the dark.
I'm the crown of the newborn,
the blood-smeared brow behind
the tiny hand.
Good life and young, and yet
so much forgotten, my years forget me,
who I was, who I will become.

This is the way the world ends, not
with a bang...

that white light is the linen pillowcase,
clean as a hotel mirror; 
and I do recall, after all, a few things:
the smell of your shirt collar,
his small hand in mine,
a room full of candles.
that white light is the snow,
a blizzard, burying the line.

the castle

a Valentine behind the black lace trees
in the West bleeds down, and
a streetlight blazes forth, the Advent star;
the snow is blue.

when I was my son's age
feverish, as he is, gazing
at the Tree; I'd imagine a castle, a mountain
a Christmas Montmartre (if you will), resplendent
with fairy lights and caves and conflicts.

the red glow of the haunted house, the blue
of the Winter Warlock's wood, the green;
and the whirring, glittering planets my mother,
the Queen of the Universe, lovingly berthed
in their courses.

our castle gleams in the picture window
flickering, the steam-obscured pane its shroud
of mystery,
and I watch his temp slide up and down the meter;
his father, asleep in the next room,
worries by proxy, and I recall

those long evenings in front of the TV
eating ice cream, flushed; my mother alone
with three kids, Dad out of town;
she never betrayed her fear.

And maybe she had a second glass of wine,
as I do now, watching the sun slide down the
tearful pane, into the winter dark
And maybe she wondered, as I do,
where he could be.

November

here is the thing:
a scarf that flashes like the underside of an oak leaf
the color of sunsets, rust, the hardened peel of a clementine,
that matches the fur on an old cat, a Tiger tom,
will come and go.

against the cold,
worn carelessly, a needed warmth, with glory
in the details; a needed layer, worn soft and slightly threadbare.
bleeding tapestry into the chilling earth,
tis enough, t'will serve.

i wrap the thing,
the sprawled and stiffened shell of fur and bone,
beloved in beloved, these material reminders, these gifts
buried in the weeds, mourned in passing;
a cat, on the side of the road,
a cat no longer.

a scarf no more.