Epiphany

Then everything layered like onions,

Levels pulling and peeling away,

Curling on the floor, feral fetal cats

Mustachioed with reality’s whiskers,

And by the prism-glow of my heavy watch

I see as I have seldom seen before

The slow steady breathing of the sky,

The trees stretching toward heaven,

The ground all falling down to meet me.

The Ever-Ending Mystery That is God

Put Him in a corner, turn your head, He’s gone.

Bury Him under Nubian sands for generations,

And when you dig Him up, He’s equally gone.

Even the image we held of Him has flown—

No white-maned Jewish patriarch comes to mind.

Instead, we see Our Father, in baggy overalls,

Puttering around the messy, shadowed garage,

Fixing one thing while fouling up three,

Ranting about the Philistines and the Democrats.

When we weren’t looking, He slipped out the door.

We prowl the night lanes, shouting out His name,

Which returns an echo on the empty wind.

 

This Thing

I don’t yet know what this is.  It’s sat on my heart a long time.  One day I thought it had left, but when I came back it was still there.  Late at night, or early in the morning, I sometimes feel it stir.  I’m sorry, but I don’t know what to call it but “it.”  It scares me sometimes, with its formlessness, its ubiquity, its general disregard for convention.  It sometimes seems to mock me and to enjoy itself at my expense.  Once I considered cutting it out but all my knives are dull, I’m no kind of a real man, I’m no good with tools, I’d blame it on my father but instead I think I’ll blame it all on it.

Road Trip

Sometimes the road

runs in the wrong direction

and sometimes you do,

but you’re making good time,

listening to The Band

and Johnny Cash,

stopping only for beer and gas

in the last town before the border,

where the locals eyeball you

by the low sun’s fading beams,

turning away and spitting

into the impossibly red dust

when you threaten eye contact,

and you want to keep on moving

away from everything you know

but that’s always a feeble fantasy.

Even now, as night catches up,

you’re slowly turning around,

cruising back into the low black clouds

where your life lies, waiting to break.