Poem

We’ve given God love’s name.
When we feel our prayers
rising into a Godless world,
we speak of love and feel
God turn to hear his name.

Creativity, wit,
passion, strength, and patience
are the virtues we use
to make the hearts of lovers
hurt until even the flesh aches.

He feels uneasy with this name.
Without God the damned stay
uncreated and never weep.
They never look back on love
and wish constant, hopeless wishes.

Watching the Chiggers

The chiggers like the concrete slab
on the sides of my porch steps.
I often have breakfast out there
where I can watch them up close.
The slab looks plain and gray a moment,
but when you lean close, countless
needle pricks of dancing parasites
draw into view. They move in fractal
patterns of turning and stopping,
and seem never to touch. They must
be looking for blood, but they don’t
act at all tempted by me. My nose
is a foot away at most, and they should
smell the CO2 of my breath and know
there is a bouquet of capillaries
for each one of them in the sky.

I like to watch them and know the trouble
they would bring me if I put my cheek
down on the slab and let them come.
I don’t pour out my boiled water on them,
or spray window cleaner just to see
what it does. They allow me to look
patently at the face of villains, and don’t
we all long to see the devil’s face that way.

Cold Fire

My daughter stomps on the blue chalk
until it’s a lump of powder on the floor.
She pushes it into a neat pile
and calls it a “cold fire.” The small
toy animals huddle around it
and she joins them, keeping cool.

I imagine a few small twigs
turning dark and glassy, the soft
locks of just visible blue flame
dancing with one toe on the ground.
It draws the water out of the air
and freezes it to the fuel.
You keep it going with wet moss
and green leaves until it starts
to slide of the mound of ice
building beneath the twinkling embers.

And speaking of inverting the extremes
of nature, I could have often used
“hot ice” to warm my tea or my hands.

Imagine a planet like this. You’re welcome
to the arrange the gravity however you like.
But when you come to its inhabitants,
you’ll find their emotional lives identical
to our own. Once in a while, they’ll have
to imagine impossible things to set
the world right in their hearts: fire
that burns and blackens, cold ice,
wet rain, and creatures living lives only
slightly different from their own.

The Curse

You want to be seduced by the eyes
of pythons; you want to stop breathing.
You want to see the bones bent
over the rocks on the Sirens’ island.
You want your body bent over
those rocks in the burning salt water.
You want to lick the stem of a rose
and grow sick on your own blood.
You want love from the sons of devils
and impossible oaths from their throats.
You want back the blood they took.

It’s in a heart shaped bottle stuck inside
a devil-man’s chest. But you’ve lost
the power to break hearts. Your own
is so full of glass, it can barely beat.

Giving Up on Your Dreams

I remember that it was this mug
I was looking for, not the chalice
with the stem long enough for the hand
that passes and the hand that accepts.

And I was looking for the cold tap
instead of some hot spring turned
baptismal magic with the salt
of legend and dream-crafted quests.

I need my slippers, which I would
have found by now if I hadn’t looked
so long for.. what was it,
the plane tickets and the frame-pack?

My neighbor is burning his trash
in a bent metal can. I’m certain
he’s done something wrong. This
is the wrong I’m here to right.