{ always back and onto something. }

Life in itself is definitive. As I write these words. As I drew those pictures. As I ate the left-over millet. As I smoke a cigarette. The mind and the body and the spirit are all interconnected and working together to create this epic adventure. This casual experience. The story that has been written and is being played out in each breath, an exhausted sigh, a break of dawn inhalation, grunt. They are all transpiring over the span of time I am here, existing. And when I am gone, birds will yet sing from the tops of trees and pick through moss for breakfast. Orange rinds will accumulate in compost. Pretty girls will drink beer for the first time. Kindergartners will forever be fascinated by the loss of teeth.

Lord, I want to be so good. And "good" is such an adulterated word. Spoken more from the mind, than the heart, where it should rightly reside. And this ache to be thus has so consumed me in all differing categories of life. It has devoured me like yesterday's fresh baked bread. I am now the partially digested mush mulling around the stomach lining. And I want to purge.

I have seen many things. Ingested life not altogether pleasing. Constantly looking back at these visions in a state of wonder and confusion. Allowing them to hand me identity, sorrowfully wrapped in the funny section of some obscure newspaper from 1998. And I don't get the jokes. Or maybe they're just not all that funny.

Lord, I want to be good. And I look to the future with a great hope of someday this and someday that. As though life will truly begin at that specific fabricated point. After the 400 millionth breath. When I'm better. When all is made right with the body. Or the mind. Or the spirit. And my brokenness is inadvertently perpetuated by all these dreamings.

Life is now, and life is short. And I want to be so good. I am sorry. I am so so sorry. Life has been standing next to me, staring at its wrist watch, pointing to the passing time, while I've desperately tried to collect my things. But keep falling asleep by accident.

{ Mercies Knew Each Day. }

I lived alone for many years.
Quit early on.
Fairly Fresh gave into distance,
absence, and the Disquieted days of Drought.
captive to Caprices

Spirit became large and ill-proportioned
in all the wrong places
filled by meals of mammon.
bloated on the roadside
still very much alive.

And O!
Kisses on the Lips
Supreme Softness came from nowhere.
so sorry spirit buckled,
White Knuckled,
braced for impact
and burst, bleeding out.
both by my own hands
and the seeking sucker punch of sweet Divinity

I never saw this Destiny,
imagined such reparatory ruin,
or realized those wrought wrists
would also rotate.
while writhing in obstinate prepubescence,
like a drunken leopard,
mauling the freshest Fingers of my Sooth,
spoon-feeding my loose lips the Firstfruits.


daily he came calling
to break all the old bones
and begin to build a new frame.


panic strikes soft
soil throughout withdrawal
we wept together quiet
yet so audibly internal portions quake

still
with wet kisses to the cheek
a mighty oak palms the jaw line
caressing sickly skin
brought back by the hour
a lost and lonely babe
walking wobbly, the legs awaken
to New Life, after too much sleep.
And nothing
has ever
Actually been so tremendous
as rerouting every burnt-out synapses,
and allowing peace,
being free for the first real time
since a breath caught the lungs.

{ ... }