All those Sundays at the altar,
All that 11:00 a.m. sunlight,
Streaming in through tall church windows,
Congregation backlit by some sort of faith,
Concepts and wise shafts of light,
Steaming words falling on half asleep ears,
Paul's Anglican smile permeating the congregational din,
Shrouds lifted by holy thought and deed,
Veils drawn for a view of divine supper,
Who served the fish stew?
Even if it was thin soup satisfaction was guaranteed,
Blood of Christ,
Body of Christ,
Eat and drink,
For no man shall enter heaven,
Barren of this validating meal,
Dessert was a foregone conclusion,
But not at this supper table,
Wine was liberally drunk,
Apostles preferred wine,
To meat or fish or flesh,
Or bread or the word of life,
All things suffer,
First premise,
Long before the cross,
Epochs before Golgotha,
Suffering was born with first thought,
Thus all things suffer,
Longing for no one suffering,
Longing for more wine,
Not wanting to be a cannibal,
Dining on consecrated flesh,
Perhaps blood is thicker than wine,
Prayers more important than flesh or wine,
Divinity didn't intend cannibals,
All the beasts of the field,
All those birds in the air,
Waking at the divine altar,
Praising God for all this suffering,
Wisdom doesn't come from wine,
Truth can't be digested out of flesh and blood,
Some spectrum seems necessary,
Like joyful singing and happy dancing,
An eternal flame,
So many people on fire,
Self-immolation abounds,
Strike the match,
See us burn,
Such a humiliating conflagration,
Just what did we learn?
What wisdom did those agonizing flames teach us?
Yet every spark,
Igniting our souls,
From light,
Into night,
Into light again,
Eternity clothed in its divine refrain,
Just the same,
All this destructive fire,
All this torrential rain,
So when the sun shines,
We rejoice,
Every voice lilting,
Sweet upon summer's breeze,
All this planetary tilting,
All these prayers whispered by sacred trees.

Winter holds high court,
All that dank and dangerous,
Legal structure held in fortitude,
All those brave and courageous,
Arresting this and that,
Sorting emotions and actions into fractions,
Factions don't fret,
They'll bleed you,
They'll toss you over the edge,
Remember me as I was,
Not as I am,
For I have given up all hope,
Balancing on the apocalyptic precipice,
Knowing every box canyon ends the same,
Entrenched by towering castle walls,
Created treachery at its best,
Winsome folk need not apply,
These are airy elevations,
More than rare,
That very thin atmosphere,
Scratching the stratified ionosphere,
Attempting to see beyond the blazing stars,
Atomic eruptions blinking back at us,
Like we are a crowd of starstruck fools,
Too cool to care.

Scantily clad summer with its heady perfume,
Fragrance adopting that scented forum,
Still winter court comes to order,
Snow white elements arduously selected,
Showy jurors with their stealth and limber,
Citing additions and multiplications,
Rounding down a fine line,
Sums of frozen speeches and rancid cream,
Sentences of deprivation and even death,
Probabilities will never equal reality,
Only lightning can save us now,
Hurricanes are not enough,
I am tattooed with angst,
Branded by that cur called love,
I surrender to the converse universe,
Realizing there are no imparted givens,
Slipping artfully past all those happy endings,
Radical shadows mock those that partisan love has convicted.

Courtroom walls loom,
Dank air fills that stolid room,
Dark and stale in that solid din,
Searching for a rare black pearl,
Hidden deep in roiling sin,
Finding cold unhappiness,
Nothing truly ranks first,
Cruelly it's all or nothing,
One and one,
Two by two,
All in all,
Majority rules,
Something enumerated then found,
Something numerically lost,
Only empty pods,
No peas or pearls,
Appeasement is creased,
Those seedy jurors condescend,
Rescinding all of love's God given rights,
Time shall be the final judge,
Even courtrooms must abide,
Seconds and minutes and hours and days,
Months into years and decades,
Life sentences,
Blocking the stairway to heaven,
Wrenched here and then there,
Sensibility seems only a dream,
Each hour a xenophobe nightmare,
Every day a calamitous scene.

Bigotry has strangled the beloved,
Crazed sprites dance wildly,
Watching Rumpelstiltskin rejoice,
Spinning chaff into riff-raff,
Burning justice at the righteous stake,
Only cinders and ash remain in the end,
Rash words into sentences,
Penalties leaving wounds and scars,
So winter court is finally adjourned,
Each juror inclined t'wards their own make-believe peace,
Reclined temperance the true culprit,
Skewered love on a spit,
Brashly braised and publicly roasted,
Cannibal chauvinism devours life,
Every bigot cowers then drowns,
Smothered by lower life in the end,
Only compassionate warriors can survive,
Love retreats to another foreign camp,
Creating fire and shelter like in the old days,
New reality in this overwhelming vamp,
Escaping high court and its dim flickering lamp.

When I woke,
Excited,
Ablaze in that starry dream,
Words,
God spoke,
Lying naked in the cold stream,
Where love's legions ruined us,
That mighty two edged sword,
Piercing our pounding hearts,
Such a terrible fuss,
Oh Lord! Oh good Lord!
Swift currents have swept us far apart,
Our love has been submerged and drowned,
Every rapid and every barrage,
Sweeping love away,
Such a hazardous undertow,
Deep into unknown depths,
Where the world is blind,
Heartstrings entangle us so,
Captivating love is seldom kind.

You're not as primitive as me,
I'm more tribal in my thinking,
My bare bones have me rooted in the trees,
Your full breasts have me dreaming,
Drinking thirsty bliss into all of this,
Knowing I can't live,
Give you all of this,
Caressed by bliss,
You're modern standards,
Bandied about on city streets,
Staged in my primitive mind,
All this circus,
So much ruckus,
Times that oft weren't kind,
Oft those crazy beats,
Where two vanities often meet,
A dry rind,
Withering under the intolerant sun,
My wavering mind,
Drifting in an indolent sea,
Blood rushing through its jeweled course,
You and me,
Dredging love from the bottom of the sea,
You and me,
Dodging cupid's arrows which that devil shoots with glee,
Codging on my own,
Revolution such as the stars have shown,
Action compacted into drone and moan,
Harken to ringed Saturn,
Trailed by red Mars,
While the grail moon,
Hides its shy and sultry face,
Convex curtains have hidden timeless glory,
Vexed for certain such an inglorious story,
I'm on my knees,
Repenting before the final fray,
Still you tease me,
Not black or white but always gray,
So I wander hopelessly cloaked,
Revoking destiny before the night comes,
I've set fire to love,
Watch it burn,
Love soaked in grief,
So much disbelief,
My tears are like rivers,
Flash floods across my face,
Grace has abandoned me,
Left me with shivers,
Watching love burn,
Watching you turn away,
Again and again,
Today just like yesterday,
Hearts can't feign love,
Love like water,
Blessings from God,
Inattentive us,
Letting love like water,
Run through our disbelieving fingers,
Such a disappointed fuss,
Love with all its extraordinary mess,
Like a flash flood,
Carving a dangerous way,
Twixt rock and muck,
Sluiced into some disagreeable channel,
Unrelenting until the raging storm has passed,
So we raft down love's rank canals,
Beneath the surface of the crackled earth,
Far below crevasse and cave,
A seismic berth where hidden love raves,
Causing hearts to break,
Causing love to make,
Mistake after mistake,
Like a ray of light searching,
Seeking some reflective surface,
So in time love might truly find,
A mirror heart that cares,
Braving crazy love in kind,
When we're drowning in a sea of love,
When joy and happiness have been stolen away,
Only gracious light can save us,
Only truth and right will find us,
Before we finally close our weary eyes,
Before we tragically die from heart ache,
Only tragic love will cure us,
Only brutal love will ever care enough to make us wise.

First encounters,
Are sometimes,
Fucking,
Terrifying.

Second time around,
Often the same nervous thing,
Preparation and suffering to learn,
Experience eventually saves us.

We're not conceived then born,
Knowing just how to fuck,
Myriads of critical moves to learn,
So many genuine encounters needed.

Great dancing and a passionate lover,
God is splitting a universal gut,
Somewhere hidden in the cosmic din,
Rooting from the dark back row.

This is where we make our stand,
Brave and naked on this earthly stage,
Craving universe our captive audience,
The craven moon our adoring relative.

Rivers of unpolluted water,
Generous rays of pure sunlight,
All these fragrant forests and earthly delight,
God applauds the perfect day and flawless night.

Often we forget our faultless lines,
Stumbling onto the blazing stage,
Indifferent footlights blinding us half the time,
Somehow we sing in tune as we perform and age.

Each vital breath,
All this basic consciousness we flaunt,
Every crucial heartbeat,
All this euphoric love we want.

Nothing really matters,
Our own selfishness and being,
All that truly matters,
We're all just cosmic bits and pieces,
Fragments of dust and light,
All those factual crusty matters,
All these feisty atoms,
How well we live our lusty lives,
Love and positive ions with every breath,
Molecular life and every zion heartbeat,
Goodness dispelling atomic devils,
Godliness appellate at these sonic levels,
Washed clean of repellent secular sins,
Meek hearts seeking divine vibrations,
Salvation orbiting inherited universe,
Meditation reverberating sacred verse,
Oh holy empire of massive nothingness!
Souls shaded by Eden's passive trees,
Rivers of wealth and joy that forever please,
Reflecting mountainous images of ourselves,
Enveloped by canopies of acute material,
Protection from the abstruse world,
Nothing obtuse really matters,
Heartbeats in this liquid realm,
Satiating forms of blurry life,
Saturating a ruddy picture,
Nothing muddy or cruddy truly matters,
Study love and light,
Captured by our righteous souls,
Bits of Nighthawks,
Remnants of that rare big bang,
Rays of divine light,
Piercing the wary world with nothingness,
Stricken weary by so much reactive power,
Airy parables corralling corruption and dictatorship,
So little munificence,
Nothing but dramatic significance,
Everything reagent and vertically distant,
Horizontal memories and forgotten lofty dreams,
Nothing less than linear evolution and consistent salutation,
Compassionate salvation swirling us into an age of roughness,
Magnificent emptiness vexed by fragile chemical equations,
Regaled solutions like seminal love mixed with astral ablution,
Fleeting moments of appellant success in every diminutive universe,
Directed by feckless instruction,
Reflecting truth and reckless construction,
Deflecting light and contagious self-ambulation,
Mummifying love's great debt to rumpus nature,
Rejecting recreational being in this nothingness stature,
All that honestly matters,
Our composite selves as our universe shatters.

I'm waiting for you,
Waiting to hear your voice,
I can't help myself,
You take my breath away,
Sweetened by your fresh and lovely way,
Something bigger than myself,
I'm fidgeting and restless,
Feckless and romping,
Unsettled by my impatience,
Chomping at the bit,
Waiting for you love,
Come lean on me,
You've stolen my heart away,
Once again and once again,
Such a welcome summer rain,
Craving to see your precious smile,
Wanting to hold you for a long long while,
Embracing you close in my needy arms,
Cherishing your every heartbeat,
Sharing kisses and each long sigh,
Blessed care and tenderness,
Bliss beside this pure and rushing spring,
Willing this delicious gush,
Praying love's wash will ne'er run dry,
True love lasting a long long while,
Untainted like the wild stars,
All this young love,
Having no beginning,
No manifest end,
That old love,
Venerable it's always been,
Like creative gravity,
Mysterious circular beginnings,
Attracting distant enigmatic love,
Composing an emotional mix,
Clothed and upright now I'm fixed,
Waiting restlessly for your love,
I can't help my reckless self,
Unlike the trite and brazen stars,
Orbs of light burning bright,
Waiting to share blazing love,
Every loveless crazy day,
Every anxious night,
Troubled and tightly wound,
Betwixt frayed and fixed,
All these mixed blessings,
Deciphering your words and body language,
Digesting your cryptic messages,
Confessing my risky notions,
Repressing my arrested emotions,
Investing in recipes about love and devotion,
Every restless night,
Every reckless day,
Out of this precious love mix,
Into material sex and darling light,
What dare I say?
Should caring words bare my ragged soul?
Could tragic love e'er be right?
Would I,
Unearth pure love and sweet heaven,
Should I,
Unabashedly dream tonight,
Could I,
Envision you in Eden's secret garden,
Trending love's divine and heady goal,
I'm waiting for you love,
Praying you might love me too,

What about you?

What about you?

What about you?