Of Winter and Ordinary Time

The sycamores haunt me,
Bleached branches
Like dead gods’ bones
Flung into starry nothing.

Holy Mary, Mother of God,
Forgive us our belief,
As we forgive our doubt.

Wine and bread weren’t enough,
So I chose fine white cheese
And a thin slice of silence,
The breathing of the dead.

Bless us, Oh, Lord,
And these thy gifts,
Bruised and broken as they be.

Sometimes

Sometimes an orange football rolling across the floor.
Sometimes a sycamore, thrusting its barren branches into the winter sky.
Sometimes a small white dog, yapping through a colorblind dream.
Sometimes a documentary on Andy Warhol playing unwatched in a room full of
             people.
Sometimes they’re the wrong people.
Sometimes you are.
Sometimes all of us agree to just be sad together.
Sometimes we can’t stop.
Sometimes things move in the corners of my eyes and I hear choirs of sexless angels.
Sometimes I’m a sexless angel and I’m singing and I move in the corners of
             someone’s eyes.
Sometimes the world’s a scratched record and the needle’s leaping, and heaven’s in
              its landings.
Sometimes I think I’m dying more quickly than usual, and I buy myself flowers.
Sometimes I see God hiding in the tiny spaces between these words, between our
             bodies.

The Day After The Day After the End

The clock is stuck at five to twelve.
The rain comes relentlessly down.
Outside the windows, light fumbles
And stumbles into the distance.

Inside the windows, we just stand.
The clock is stuck at five to twelve.
From another room, we hear sounds
Such as we’ve never heard before.

The roof leaks over the table,
Where we’ve placed a battered bucket.
The clock is stuck at five to twelve.
It’s been perhaps that way for years.

So I’ll hold you if you’ll hold me
Until the rain stops or we do,
Until the sounds or we have gone.
The clock is stuck at five to twelve.

Eldon Thigbee

So we’re at a conference

on some windy plain

wearing aboriginal bikinis

provided by some child

with faraway eyes,

and I’m concerned

for my laptop,

which is lost in a crowd

that conveniently disappears

before the first session

on teaching the conflicts

to those already conflicted.

We don’t remember

quite how we got here

but over a torturous route

from a forgotten cheap motel

where I may have left

some of my clothes

(maybe this explains

this damned bikini).

Oh, yes—there was

something about a dog.

Outside the open window

(which conference

opens its windows?)

a country & western band

in Gram Parsons-Nudie suits

plays a song called “Eldon Thigbee,”

and we’re farther from home

than we’ve ever been

though we don’t know

just what that means.