This doubt comes
     when the mind’s page
   is too full of quarter-spoken words to be
     a living space
   for the jaundiced herd of other lazy witnesses
It comes when we believe
        the Christ had
                         owned
                              spoke   a message
and didn’t explode a message
   didn’t live and die the message
        didn’t have life pressing out of him
            the message plumping him up like air in a balloon
        or water in a hose
   the alphabet that fills up a word.

words and words and letters making words spilling over into syntactical maneuvers made dull by the belief that we all deserve the right to express ourselves.  but no one’s words are the sky-splitting kind that pave the road heaven comes down on, revelation words and bright bursting words, hard words that call everything back to the sameness of every word. color all the world’s sounds into words, running a pencil over paper over sound like that vibration is a leaf and the imprint left behind is a book, is a cartoon, and the page-leaves twist and turn in some literary autumn. then let them fall wintry silent, resting on the half-hour downbeat when there is silence in heaven as everything dies without a future. silence is not an investment.

and there is the Messiah who shines and shines
     who  has blazing eyes and holds stars
     whose hair and face are illuminated
     whose bronze feet are rooted to the earth
        unmoving
      unrusting
and all the world moves around him untrusting
      and there is the Messiah who slashes lies
      with the tongue of his mouth, double-edged and sharp
His Word! His Word!
   flourishes and moves, a rapier hummingbird through air falling in halves
     it bashes into the lie and storms the walls, thunders down those stones
       the broadsword brings oral victory in halls too used to loss
   it is planted, tip-down, in the ground and is a work blazing with creation-heat

the heat of the shifting shadows when all is black…
and there is Light! and Word! and lustering out of the eyes and pores of God is the same heat, the same word, the same pulsing wonder that makes the world every morning.
all the light gathered in all the colors is black, is white is fear and might and faithful. martyr. love.

whenever words
    raise welts on wounds we never cured
    well, honey, i know what comes.
whenever words
    sting more as they become absurd
    baby, this isn’t new ground.
whenever words
    is a twelve-line poem broken down
    into four sections framed by
“whenever words.”
    my dear, the sea this kid dies in
    is just an echoing sound.

Holy Saturday

   no other word
      for this day, the only day
  that hell rises up above
(that black wave breaks)
     the ocean’s surface tension

   holy.    only cruel irony
 only mocking, laughing mouth
  perched on a silent hill. 

  …on Good Friday
     swollen sadness
  grief given
 the night is brightest
    to blot out the stars
   and because
             the sun is furthest away.
 breath squeezed from the chest 
     because the tide pulls
       powerful heavy
    and these lungs are on 
     the ocean floor 

naked is a noun, a state.
naked is your start and end.
it’s not too much to say that
naked is the way we think.

naked holds our full attention
open eyes as clothes fall down
we think an open heart is naked
naked’s not an open mind.

naked nipples titillate
naked presses against skin
to open up a naked heart
and see if it can’t swell with heat

against the quiet of the sky.
never so naked as
the winter-clothed body walking
across a missouri field in bitter cold.

someone named
  not an artist
shapes a skull, twirls color around
the eye sockets
dips the whole thing
   in dark chocolates
and lets it decay
  on the back porch
    in the rain
      in vain, oh in vain!

just a spinning rooster,
this whether-vain-
or-significant attitude
is such a waste.
   says the preacher man
   and a mortician
   and the ugly politician
   while a lady in the bleachers
   checks to see
   how much cash does she have in her wallet?

pouring in comfort-concrete,
you do not allow the sucking of suffering
     like retreating ocean waves
  to hollow out in your chest
  in your faulty legs
  in your diseased blood
  in your brain awash with
     all the wrong chemicals
and leave you exposed, hollow
    dry as sand
ugly as the bottom of the dry Red Sea
see your body as
   too torn a flag
     to wave proudly.
and that crossing out of
    horizontal waving
with vertical giving up
is the death that breaks the husk
to bust the dirt crust
  and give life.

there is a sign that remakes
  pain, disease
  into glory
So wholeness is patterned,
  not after nature
  but after
the absurd beauty
   of the space between stars

If all the world is cosmically streamlined
   so my thoughts become notes
   synced to all my devices
so my shows follow me
   seamlessly as I walk room to room
so my friends always know what I’m doing
   and therefore know me
If my body is hardwired so that
   my face books and
   my beak tweets and
   my space shivers with
     each move I make
If iPhone-a-friend:
   Google translate my question to ribbits
   for my froggy friend on his lily-iPad,
this all cannot make me
who i’m trying to be.
Wire my hand like Luke Skywalker
   and I will EverNote that
   you have not formed a person.
only plucked one more App(le) and
   killed one more lamb.

Letting words rattle and roll
   others and mine
   languages hip-deep in time
   more beautiful than watching coffee brew
and i wonder if i’m running
because all the truth of centuries
   clothed in, or clothed by
   my shabby skin
cannot speak to a gossip and a pharisee
  who know what world they are in.

Good Mother
   who gives milk and bread and wine
   you bring into your home
   all people.
Good Mother
   your shoulders are wide, across time
   and your legs are long
   like prayer
Good Mother
   your hands are strong and hips
   heft children out of a world
   of rock and dust
Good Mother
   you rise out of the landscape gothically!
   and put off architecture
   for prayer.
Good Mother, made of earth
   you are found in all the earth,
   creation’s acoustic to echo
   a blowing Wind.
Good Mother, made of flesh
   we know heaven by your holy ladder,
   propped by God, almighty
   and Good.

Give thanks to the Lord
for he is good.
His love endures forever
  what’s in your backpack, Eli?
  is it worth cutting people down?
  like a farmer turned to pesticides,
  what have you just saved?
His love endures forever
  are you Jeremiah? are you Elijah?
  are you Mosheh the Law-maker?
His love endures forever
  who has the pen that writes this story:
  “the gory explorer making your world hunky-dory”
His love endures forever
  are we lost in a post-apocalyption
  landing in Hollywood for lack of traction?
His love endures forever
  are we lost to Oedipal cycles
  and fatalistic blind-man knowing?
His love endures forever
  our preacher’s names are Gantry,
  are Grimes, are Ginsberg, are Google
His love endures forever
  and the plotline loses its way
  a braille-bible for children of sight

we are limping now
  hiding in a cave, crying out
  wondering how a victory on Carmel
  could have left us so lost
  alone and prone to Jezebels.
But slowly, again, there is a swell
  a resurgence
  not in the hurricane or
  fire or earthquaking glory
  of God’s damning justice
  but in the fantastic echo of whispers and
His love endures forever
  as something rises to the top
  like cream in adversity
His love endures forever
  and the snarl of cynics
  is drowned out
His love endures forever
  is drowned out by the saints
  keeping faith on Alcatraz
His love endures forever
  keeping faith at Petra
  on Petros, on this rock
His love endures forever
  where the story written
  is of enduring love
  long-suffering and kind,
  redeemed language
  and long-awaited plot-lines
  a comedy for a people,
  a people pulled up in
  peace by another’s crucifixion

His love endures forever
  His loving kindness extends
  to the ends of the earth. Amen.

fields gray and midwestern

  stubbled and curvaceous

  like husband and wife

timber wooded

  in its dark life

frightening as fatherhood

  is the land we draw our life from

  the world that bears up under us

  that looms large over us

we are not our own

we are not alone and

  the world is beautifully holding together

a melting pot

   all one material

gives way to the

   salad bowl

but better is

   a casserole

various materials

   cooked into something new

   but still

a middle-class supper.