days are full and round and empty
and always seen from inside. 
i only know them from the edges,
from the darkened bit above the horizon line.
and something taps on the windows
-a deeper nothing that promises less- 
than the one that comes in the backdoor,
a Siamese cat in a polka-dot dress.
see, we’d be all tattooed
and covered in glory
before we’d open our faces
to the sun of the morning.
we’d slather our skin up
in chin ups to win up
the right to mate with the hot one
when she’s properly ginned up.

our nudity on sale to some sort of bidder,
we’ll never become in any real way.
but the window-tapper gets a bit louder
and in her drabness of dress, we see a new day.
but it’s living inside a bubble,
swimming in the air to preserve the swirling walls.

the dark wave breaks
on a world already broken
by the explosion of the waters.

Holy Saturday is the deep drain.

it is like the sun washing out mountain features
on its daily movement along storied lines.
in momentous motions
of underwhelming worship,
the rise and fall of stumbling old voices
and all the hope of a world is invested
in two or three children who do not yet speak.

In seas of rock and bitterbrush
stand homes propped up by desert winds-
swells of sand rise up against 
investor’s plummeting interest.
it is born from a discovery
Eureka! is the cry.
And it falls in rapid descending steps
like bathtub rings on a lake gone dry.
rattling through streets on feet
so dessicated you actually tumble,
you sow the seeds of your weedy race.
They fall hoping for some myth of moisture

but in this place, the stars shine brighter
as coyotes stalk our housecats.
This is grace: that the presence of death
is the spacious wandering
that grows God in us.
That the foundation of our houses
is the wind that blows
and Spirit makes excellent concrete.
That we each have one Father
and in his womb
we know hope pulls us through. 

prayer is desert rain
just when does it come? when
does it flow?
and yet we find canyons cut
deeply into hard bedrock and
lined with sandy floors.

making camp here at the base,
on the river bottom, we pray
for the flood and lift up sails.
maranatha! cry the singers.

The only life I may regret
Is the one you might abhor.
One that devours, that kills to rot,
Turning a profit from things I am not.
May my confession burn so deep
It severs all leveraging ties
And opens eyes, taught to discern
The hopeful wandering of a world being found

Strange new growth in a wintery ground.
From the virtuous wise, an old concern
Is stored in the words that I prize.
This prayer is for shelter to sleep
To become, in faith, an unsolvable knot
A deadly weapon, a straight arrow shot
Kept safely locked behind a door—
A name, an unpublishable secret.

like an athletes body, you train the
priest to ascend the altar. worship
presses service out of stones refusing
to cry out. fools, we gather in the hope
that we will not be alone. but instead
we find that we’ve made ourselves alone.
in your grace, we were pressed into a
stack of stones twelve high and singing
like the riffles rolling behind us till you
scoop them into creation-song. you’ve
pressed our service from the stones
stacked twelve high in the Jordan River.

of course it would always
   turn out this way. 
how could i ever think
   the sun would not grow hotter
that the city would not
   take our water 
that the king suddenly see
   that his life depends on the potter
the track-home builder embrace
   the runaway, indolent squatter.

of course it would always
   turn out this way.
of course the sun would
   burn out the day
it always was and always will be.

but i will still scream the sunset
   at the noonday summer fire. 
and leave my life
   to be an artifact that
   there was true belief.
leave it for the archaeologists
   who dig millenia from now
   when all of this is simply desert
   from floor to summit

these fossil blues
are the true good news. 

the world is cold and bare
rocks flake like skin
on hillsides given over to emptiness
to quiet
to use by whoever comes by, 
taking from those hills’ guts
whatever we can find.

the same land where desert fathers
forgot their minds to let God in
are scraped at for some powder or other
we use to keep up our sanity
and moisturize our skin. 

Build us up into desert people
   lost to the world
   except in love.
Dry us out into thirsty people
   hungry to heal
   a red-streaked sky
Bring us low
   till the ways we try
   have come to know
   our red-flecked tomb.
Slow our spin
   so we feel our center,
   and for gravity’s love
   we quietly enter
      a dried up, a worn out, a virgin’s womb. 

what makes me love the drugged up babies
just like holy-souled churched up ladies
kids with no goals nor places to go
like tights on legs masquerading tattoos.
hipsters, beat poets, no ink
who boil brains down and watch
those blazing days fade down
as glorious trips into worlds on screen.
and the faded ones know the side we scream away
while the blessed hearts are in some other world.
but this whole life is a fractal followed
all the way out to sea.

the day is to darkness
as the voice that rolls inside
a marble held under tongue.