Poetry
Meal Prep
Defiance 4/20/20
Quarantine connection
Princess, maybe not for a while again
Last Straw
John Prine died today
and that was the last straw for me;
I’m watching videos of him
and crying: come on home, he sings
no you don’t have to be alone;
but I am alone, we go through days thinking
there’s always tomorrow, sliding into
the ease of open arms;
it’s all a lie we tell ourselves
because the truth of unknowing
is too terrifying to face daily
Tonight is a supermoon, silver fuzzed by clouds;
the world goes on, humans
are mostly inconsequential to the orbits of moons;
one lover at her home watching Moonstruck,
another outside looking at the moon
with me, but not with me;
the sweet sad songs run through
tears clean my eyes
an owl’s cry pins me into this moment
I want never again, though I know I will,
to displace now for tomorrow,
never again to dissociate
when a lover repeats a story,
never again to dismiss
the precious distinctness of each moment.
Tongues
Supposedly a sword, my tongue
but really not even a dagger
it is best dipping into you
leaking pleasure, spiraling, twisting
so many places intersect:
my benchmark for a taco house
their lengua, soft and rich
gravy on my tongue;
my inability to persevere
in learning another tongue,
the one she desires to hear
soft, romantic, boleros in the air;
my tongue gliding along skin,
intent on tasting arousal;
my tongue tied, abashed
unable to express expansion;
too many tongues, not enough;
words plastering my ears back
and finally, silence, savoring
the end of all speech and sound,
as your tongue meets mine
hearts electrically connected
Afterwards
I can wait to get back to normal
normal was destroying the earth
normal was destroying my soul
in unnoticeable tiny bites
maybe what matters is now
the now of seeing you on screen
the now of knowing I am not alone,
that many beautiful humans care
outside my window in the morning
birds sing on, the same songs
they have had as long as memory
memory being so fickle anyway
soon enough we will again directly
see each other’s eyes and smile
I only hope we remember
the gift of quiet, the sound of breezes
Lockdown
Heaven is not a place
When I was a pastor and sat with people
who were actively dying, like Anna,
by her hospital bed, holding her hand,
sometimes they, or their children,
usually a little timidly, as if it was something
they should know and had forgotten,
would ask me, what is heaven really like?
Now, I don’t personally think
heaven is a place, but a condition of existence
but that’s not the time or place for metaphysics,
so I would tell them, I don’t know,
but I can imagine, because if what I imagine
isn’t true, then it’s not really heaven
and I wouldn’t want to be there;
and I would tell them, you can also imagine
because your heaven will not be the same
as mine, but they will have in common
that all the goodness of our lives
will be distilled into one continuous infinite joy:
everyone I have ever loved will be there
close by, even the ones with whom
it ended badly, or who died before
I could ever tell them I loved them;
I’ll get to now. My parents will be there,
arms open, and we won’t ever have another fight
and they won’t ever again irritate the holy fuck out of me.
My brother will be there reminding me
to joke them if they can’t take a fuck.
Every cat I’ve ever known will be rubbing against my legs
my Dittocat climbing my leg as a little kitten
Cringy the stray dog licking my hand,
all my lovers surrounding me in their arms,
somehow all at once.
I don’t see any reason that we would see God
any more than we do now and it doesn’t matter
whether there even is a God or not
if I have all my feline and human loves again:
my heart will have no limit to how big it can be.
I will cry freely every time I see someone I have missed,
it will be a continual rediscovery
of everyone who ever passed through my life
and love will go on and on without end.
I realized, as I was sitting there,
holding Anna’s hand, that sometime
while I had been talking, she had stopped breathing
a beautiful smile on her face,
I want us all to hold closely,
in easy times and in difficult ones,
whatever we think about a divine or not,
that there is always a point to love,
always a reason to be profligate with it;
the promise, independent of any doctrine
but rooted in our bones and flesh,
in the knowledge we have
that we don’t know exactly how we acquired,
is that no love is ever lost or wasted.