poetomachia

i want to feel your hope in my hand
to know your healing on my head
hold me now
hold me now
please

and when i’m sprawled out on the floor
there’ll be a knock, love will come open the door
casting neither shame nor hollow compassion
love will hold me in a gaze full of passion

my body will quake, my spine will shudder
wracking tears from my dry eyes, groans are all i can offer
squeezed, i can’t grow to hold the fat mercy
nor the promise of what she says i can and ought to be

am i awake beneath a sliver of moon
having the hope of a dream
pulling thread, new fabric cut,
drawing the seam

And when I found I had cancer I told my family
And I grabbed my daughter by the ears
And I pulled her face in close to mine
And I told her that I wished I would live forever
And that I believed I might
But that I was not sure
But that it mattered a lot that she understand
That to live is good
And to die is inevitable
And that they are to pass on their love and their best wishes
To their own
Who would be everyone who would ever exist after them,
Stars and sand, dollars and cents
And that someday, on a distant planet
A skinny, worthless old man would sit at the end of a row of grapes
Next to the shade of an olive tree
When his heart would not keep up
And time would slow down
And the blue above would become the deep smile of a young woman
And his chest would be thick and heavy with the happiness
That comes from being immersed in a force-field of pure love
And though he would imbibe the shallowest of breaths
He would be utterly refreshed
Transported
In the sunshine

did you hear the lightning?
did you see the thunder?

Swagger and confidence
Meet sudden incompetence
In light of the brilliance
That meets nay dominates the need of our times

The savior is fluid
Surprising and tricky
Distributing his presence in 4 dimensions
At once
Exposing the hearer and the bearer
As fools and dignitaries
In a resonant reality
Of purpose and intent
In filling the breath
In the cool of the evening
At the dawn of time

I love waves
I love photons
And I love curvy things
Like space
The globe
And You

A bright light doesn’t apologize for the shadows

It doesn’t give us value or virtue
It only logs the mistakes we make along the way
Pulling us through this concrete pipe obstacle course
As we try to stand out like a pageant winner
Or go through the motions to satisfy mom

Keeping us all wishing for freefall
And a soft landing
Making some of us forsake all else
Keeping others dutiful
As others rebel
For a while

Dammit!
The system is in feedback
The system equilibrates
The system lies
But never for long

We stand like wash on a line
We are folded
We are stored
We are held in reserve

For a time

They keep me baited
And switch-ed
By their panscreen
Jag

They keep me heating
Metabolizing
My human form
Ignited
For now
A bond

Maturing then replaced
They have a statement
For themselves
On punch card
For breakfast.

In ¾ time

They only issued us one moon
Pulled on a string
Etching a perfect circle for physics class.
Waning from one to half to none
Waxing the same fractions back

Giving lovers something to look at
Together
Like a sleek cat on the beach

Pulling back
Calling for colonists
A hotbed for robots
A launching pad for stepping out

They only issued us one
But there is so much room for more
Many colored satellites
Lighting up the sky at night

But they only issued one
To Rule the night