I am the ends

of untied shoelaces

slapping against cement

with every step.

I am the umade bed

of the tired old man,

who plays checkers

with an imaginary friend

late at night.

I am the water

the drips out of the faucet

after you thought

you turned it off.

I am the unremitting weariness.

I am the seagull,

demented with age,

can’t find his flock,

and meanders the beach sky,

lonely as his voice’s cry.

There is great passion in suffering,

and the seagull is guided by the unseen hand

of the wind,

and the old man finds a friend to

place chess with.

And the great touch of God,

bends down slowly,

with all the care of a tropical whisper,

and ties the shoelaces

that have kept me falling for so long.

So many things.

There are so many things I want to do

but my body stands in front of me

and won’t let me by.

It’s breath is heavy

and moves slow as a cement truck.

So many things.

I tell my body that I want to live,

that it’s important for me to pick up the phone,

get out,

study the sky,

write it all down,

be a reporter for God.

So many things.

My body stares at me

and pushes me back with its eyes.

Cloaked in black,

it stands in my bedroom,

and a hoarse whisper blooms

with black smoke.

“You can’t get past me. I am not going to let you live.”

The figure of my body,

is hunched over,

jaundice-yellow eyes

staring out the window.

I can’t get past him.

How have I become

fractured,

furiously dismembered,

seperated from my body, from the spinning center of the Universe?

The room smells like crab apples and cold memories as I plan my next escape.

A lit window across the way lights a candle of hope in my heart.

What grave wrong

have I done to

cause an internal

civil war

in which both parties

of self perish?

The body guards the door of the room.

There is a hiss as my body wraps it’s cloak tighter.

I will live.

I will live.

With, or without, my body.

The car slipped

down 95 south

at the eggshell break

of dusk.

I couldn’t stop screaming.

She kept driving,

pulling over often

so I could get out

and scream at the sun

because it wasn’t there;

so I could hunch over

into my pain

my belly.

And off we’d go again.

I punched at the windshield

with my lips

that were on fire

with the rest of me.

My father,

my dear sweet father,

half Army Colonel,

half angel,

met us at their apartment in Waltham.

The burning sun in my gut grew into a gruesome dawn.

He embraced me and off we were to Saint Elizabeth’s.

I didn’t know it was possible to scream so loud,

to hate your body so much,

to be so open to the lights above the barren trees…

Two Doctors. They are middle eastern

and I can’t answer them-

hell doesn’t have thin walls.

Finally, when I ached for the end,

for the center of me to finally stop spinning,

I found a softness in my mouth and said it.

“Thank You, Jesus, for healing me.”

I smiled, and the pain ran away.

One doctor stood there and stared at me for five wordless minutes.

The other? He shook his head and left the room to find my father.

And every time the burning apple in my center would start to flare,

I’d say those words again, and smile, knowing

that Jesus is carrying this cross for me.

I

I saw January

and the sleep around him

glowed like embers.

I think he lives at aisle ten,

at the Trader Joe’s

in Portland Maine.

He tries to keep things warm

but falls apart crying,

knowing he is who he is.

He smelled like apples waiting to be born.

I know a woman

who can’t escape June;

she bought her heart

at a thrift store

owned by a diminutive

Asian woman.

The Asian woman

smiles every time

Miss June leaves,

knowing her heart will break

because she will fall in love with Mister January.

And then there’s someone else I know

and I hate her.

She doesn’t understand that words

are just pointers,

that the Universe and the people in it

are described by words

but are not made of them.

She flings them

at you

like empty soda cans,

demanding her five cents

after she gives you her ten.

And I hate her.

I know nothing. And that’s the same I knew as when I was born

I’ve come home.

There is an order

and I am part of it

and I will always be a part of it,

no more or less than the Snickers

candy bar wrapper,

making love to the sidewalk

in it’s own way.

That is all I know.