I get these moments…
When the world seems cold
Shoulders and toes
And I belong
Nowhere with no one:
Old like
I’ve overstayed
The slightest welcome
And I see the back door…

And I think,
“No one would miss me
If I stepped out now.”

Sometimes
Tired of me, the days shove by
All elbows and heels
I want to yell, “Watch it!”
But slink off in silence
To eat sour grapes and herrings red
Waiting for something,
Anything else:
The wind against a window,
A bird call, a clock chiming.

I’m learning, slowly,
To shake off the dust
When goodbyes get lost
In the white-noise of apathy
To let them fall mute
And walk on happily
Because family is family
Across all distance
And distractions
And social conventions

Sometimes
Family costs something:
Some wild-eyed trust
And purity of intent
Concern for each other beyond
Ambitions and aspirations
But nothing is lost in the wake
Of honest refusals-

Time is gleaned:
Some time to travel
In other directions
Return to your peoples
Or build a new village
Find some savages
Whose hearts are clear
Of guile and show
And twisted desire-
In bare feet, dance around the fire

Of freedom and simplicity.

How does one, into madness,
Descend, but that sanity
Is certain and solid? Sadness
Rips not the fabric of vanity,
Should all be vain.
Even the squalid should sparkle
Through tinted panes
Or against a dirtier, darker
Standard- how should we stand
Without ground and legs and gravity
And the heavens to stretch forth our hands-
Heaven’s purity reflecting our depravity
What measure may stretch
Across the division?
A man is a priest is a wretch
Who has been forgiven
And needs no new sacrifice:
His One High Priest saves-
Can a man die outside the Life?
Can he come alive in waves?

Can we evade the weight of tragedy-
The misuse, the gnashing, the vain,
Our farthest fall is the apogee
Of our highest reach- The sane

We measure by blindness and momentum.

How I shiver, tremor, ache
As crumpled paper, here I lie
Balled and crushed by some mistake:
The folded plane that could not fly

Ill again am I.

These bouts predate
My conscious choices
From wee, broken state
Come I, but the voices

Of wrung-out being accuse:

These frailties exist as punishments alike-
Penalties for all I cannot be-
But how unlike Him to strike
The confused and weak, with infirmity

They cannot understand

When He forgives the ones
who err in ignorance.

I love our mornings,
Children’s silly, babbling laughter
Like bubbles colliding
Filling the rafters

With offerings of peace

Joy beyond our wildest hopes
As the leaven in our bread
Or cream in our coffee,
No one concerned with getting ahead

Or falling behind,
Because we’re right where we should be.

Nine and thirty years
Stirring the primordial matter
Of being, function, and identity
Shielded from the shatter
By the fluidity of expression

Constrained by determination
Kissed by destiny,
Dizzied by the collisions
Within artificial boundaries
Of usurped hierarchies

Safe again within the tower
Of tender strength
Laboring for the least,
Toiling at length
To maintain the integrity

Of the led and the leader together:

The value of every sheep
Is the mark of the shepherd.

Blow you wild winds
Against the foundations
Unmoor the pride, the eyes, the sins
Of ancestral resignations
And the hubris of myopic
Overcompensations.

Tear down with all passion
The scaffolding of human reason
The artificial edifice fashioned
Of our goals, our desires, our treasons
Blow, rage, strip away
Obedience as contorted feasance

So the fundamental stones
Through time eternal may stand
Men of thought, men of action shown
Side by side and hand in hand
Skill is only knowledge applied
But even knowledge alone can
Spare the stranded, huddled inside
From the wrath of forming ignorance

After all, it is knowledge that cultivates obedience.