Postmodern Psalm
Lord,
have mercy on me, a sinner
who set up a soapbox
to air his aggressions
on the corner of Smith and Wesson.
Despise not the petition
of this wounded apparition
whose hymns have been sung
from lacerated tongue.
The devil pulls my hair
and it’s not fair
Lord, hear our prayer
Father, forgive me,
for I know what I do,
and I do it anyway.
I build a new golden calf each day.
Not thy will be done
but mine.
Me myself and I—
a makeshift trinity.
Pity this fool
who pretends divinity.
A culprit.
A hypocrite.
A good news-glad hand.
Nathaniel, point your finger—
tell me
I art the man.
Lord, you offered me a ride
but I took the bus.
St. Francis of Assisi, pray for us.
Make me a channel on TV
so the whole world will look at me.
Syndicate my vanity.
O Divine Master,
Grant that I may always seek
so much to repent as to transgress.
From my sickly wickedness
may my soul convalesce.
And one last request
may I express
before I wear your patience thin:
All I want for Christmas
is a shirt that reads,
“Most wretched among men.”
elegy for a beauty queen
Somewhere she had stashed
a cache of glory, marked for a rainy day
Now beneath a mountain of ash
it is buried within her story, pocked with ripe decay
A corpse bedecked in orchids
set upon an altar of grieved display:
in the shade she casts
i lay to contemplate
the fragrance of her end,
faint hints of ozzie and harriet
mingle with filth
and are swept away in the wind
he read her future in scattered cracker jack
and declared her third strike imminent
and so, in finest dress, he led her into
the darkest alleyways to dance
to dance the tragic ballet of her fall
each step imperceptibly slow
her obituary spans a thousand pages
of oracular lamentation,
an indecipherable harangue
of i-told-you-so’s.
and so, dearly beloved,
we are gathered to remember
everything she forgot
in the pursuit of freedom
from the slavery of all that she ought
she leaves behind myriad children
whom she never taught to speak
who were nourished with a diet of vanity
and apathy,
trained in a regimen of scatological etiquette
and bared teeth
bereft of recognition
they still nurse at her lifeless breast
as film crews silently wait to document
their graceless exodus
so now, you aspiring moseses,
go down and tell those pharoahs
occupying her streets
that while the revolution was not televised
the funeral will be
Marginal News (Seventh Inning Stretch)
today i’ve decided to scribble myself into the margins
safe on the sidelines, no making waves, no headlines
on paper that i’ve fashioned from recycled prose
i’ll leave the big space for important things
like presidential primaries and today’s tv listings
and maybe someone will read me
if they still haven’t finished their coffee
or aren’t late for tea with dear abby
perhaps after they’ve checked the sports section
and discovered that the results aren’t yet in
the game is still in overtime,
the referee is invisible,
and the scoreboard keeps resetting
maybe then they’ll look at me
and i can tell them
that i have it on good authority
that the game is rigged in our favor
and there’s still time to change their bets
if they’d pull their heads from the funny page
and leave popular opinion hanging from the gallup poll
Fallow (A Prayer for Rain)
as slowly as the grass grows
does my soul turn to You;
a lazy sunflower jealous of its seeds.
with stubborn hands,
my faith I have plowed under,
turning my garden of Eden
into a garden of Gethsemane
where, with spirit desiccated,
all hope evaporated,
I have fallen to my knees
with parched mouth now to plea:
these arms have grown weary
of the weight of Your silence;
and these feet are too sore
to walk this fallow in Your absence.
my own yoke grows cumbersome;
i beg you to take it from me
help me to till this soil
and reap harvest from these frail trees
A Reflection on a Reflection
what does the mirror see when it looks into me?
the cracked glass of an ego reflecting a dream
where i’m running in place as my stillness gains speed
and my feet sink like roots into streets made of weeds
a forest of myrcia born of inertia
planted in fertile soul
wherein dwells a miner who knows a refiner
who makes diamonds out of my coal
the fauna in hiding, in forest residing
give breath to my essence’s leaves
from animal to anima, a blossoming andromeda
whose petals unfold to receive
light from a sun whose beams have been spun
from threads of a heart unweaved
this holy ingestion gives birth to a question
that never my mind could conceive
so now left to ponder
the broken glass through which i wander
i grasp for the answer i can’t seize:
what does the mirror see when it looks into me?
The Day I Erased Myself
Fearless before the rusty barbecue pit
I placed page upon page of my past
Upon the pyre
And watched my smoldering memories
Dance like flames
Whipped into a frenzy
By the winds of remembering
Dissipating in plumes of smoke,
These scents never to be smelled again:
Warm hedonistic afternoons
Light filtering through the cross hatched
Wooden frame of her back porch
Mixing with the haze in an opaque shine
Walking alone through the woods
And smoking too many cigarettes
Sublime affectations masking childish affections,
An infant’s existential cry
Years in low rent apartments
First tastings of liberty and decline
Wandering aimlessly thru
The nihilistic wonderland of the carefree mind.
The splintering of self through
Countless mute valedictions
All the broken pieces finally
Facing each other for the first time
The horror of realization begets
The desperate prayer for salvation
Begets the beginning of transformation
Begets the fire before my eyes
For now I must erase me:
Who I’ve been
will be a blank spot in the pages of history
A streak of rubber debris in my memory
Splendid and majestic is His work.
