Tag Archives: Poetry

On Being Unlovable

I was never
Your moon and stars
You spoke plainly in the woo,
I never meant that to you,
And you were always ready
To let me go

I was never
Ready to leave
Until our last rotation
When years of instigation
Leading to rejection
Suddenly made sense

I was never
Enough
For you to pursue
You kept me subdued
Because it was easy
And fun

I was never
The problem
I was once pretty enough
To scrape together some love
If love had been the goal
Or possibility

I was never
Seen by you,
And now, so close to goodbye,
You suddenly begin to try
To put away the tools of your trade:
Isolation and indifference

I was never
Your moon and stars,
Merely the one you’d chosen
To keep forever waiting frozen
With all your other possessions
For the warmth of your touches

Meted out like alms to the poor.


Mr. Moon

I never speak to you anymore,
Or anyone,
But I see you large in my sky,
So far away,
And I love you in the distance
My constant friend.

I don’t tell you my troubles
In silent chrysalis,
I let the dead sleep,
And also that which will live
When these nights give birth
To the ever-changing sun.


A Pound of Flesh

Tomorrow I will treat myself
As something lesser than I can be;
I will punish my appearance
For my undesirability,
And I will go about my business
As a wasted commodity.

Tomorrow I’ll agree with you
About my insufficient claim
I’ll stay silent because I know
I’ve no right to change the game;
I’m an unwanted anomaly
In the world of All The Same.

Tomorrow I’ll use what bits I have
To feed the shallow illusion
I will grovel for forgiveness
For being a poor substitution
I will accept my surface
Necessitates my exclusion,

Tomorrow I will crawl about
The rotten crust on which I’m born,
I will discount my existence
For the crime of being shopworn
After you drank my youth,
I learned to swallow my scorn.

And tomorrow I will drink it down,
And tomorrow I will judge my skin,
And tomorrow you will take the blade
Forged every generation
And exact the pound from all of us
Because you’re hungry again

But tonight I’m angry with you
For a lifetime of distraction,
For a woman’s only strength
Being the strength of her attraction-
Because your every passing desire
Is another pound’s extraction

In every passing generation,
Ad nauseam, with no drop of compassion.


Uncertain Principles

What is man?

A tapestry of tumbling collisions-
Blind intersections, forked decisions,
Miserable masses following a foreign flow-
Can we ever assert beyond yes or no
A reflection of unique identity?
Are we caught in a waterfall into infinity,
Into relational eternity, into isolation or annihilation-
Does the singular stand in violation
Against the plural body?
Safety In Numbers, requisite or commodity,
Undergirds the homogeneity of corporate expression
The Individual either bows in repression,
Or exists in illusion.

These things cause me great confusion
As I divide to find the mean:

Must you be seen to truly exist,
And if you truly exist, mustn’t you be truly seen?


My King

You are no respecter of persons.
You do not gaze uncouth
At heaps of hoarded wealth,
Nor crave to devour tender youth.

In You there is no shadow of turning.
You do not rise to set
As we frantically orbit your constancy
Spinning our dizzy, dancing minuet

And some of us fall broken,
Restless though we’re lame,
But You raise up the conquered,
And lend the indigent your name.

You exalt the humbled,
And Your heart stands for the poor
So they will stand inside Your grace,
Singing Your song forevermore.


Hello, Again

It’s time to reopen
Metered communication
The celebration
Of the mystery of language
And enduring relationship,
Beyond numbing paralysis
Or faithlessness.

It’s time to heap coal
Into the faith,
To fill this space
With the heat waves of hope
Draped in robes of grace
Unearned, but unwasted
On the sole basis

Of His interventions.


The Emperor Has No Clothes

I’ve tried to read
E. E. Cummings
And as an author
I cannot speak ill of the read,
But as a reader
He writes suddenly, without thinking,
And I mostly go unfed.


NOLA

Dance among your dead,
And have you prayed first
On the beads you’ve thrown?
Save it for tomorrow
Today there’s just heat.
Inhale your legacy
And blow it out your brass
Into every waiting street
Drink, and be merry,
Eat your mud bugs
Before they eat you
And you wait in marble houses
While they dance around your grave.


But Now; But God

Truth, applied again, like balm to a sear
Burned by my sin, myself, my fear,
When this brilliant ray of hope appeared
All my failures somehow met:
My pale faith, my proclivity to forget,
Folded into my profound debt
And paid in full by His profound gift.
My sin won’t force me to be dismissed
Because His sacrifice will ever exist,
And He is faithful, and has made it just
To forgive and cleanse my muck and rust
To lay the ground for unbroken trust
By drinking all my death and hell,
The gnashing teeth I once indwelled,
To bestow His righteousness as well.
The gift, beyond my comprehension,
By His life and death, resurrection and ascension,
Has covered these sins, too loathe to mention,
With white-hot, smoldering purity
Draping me in white robes of amnesty
So He may look in love on me:

A filthy slave now clean and free,
Adopted into His family.


Killing Time

Pushing back time
Holding back his groping hands
Like some drunk frat
Who’s never been
To a gallery or museum,
Who cannot understand
Velvet ropes
Or the damage of a touch.