little girl, get up.

honey, i’m thirsty

i fit myself more tightly under your arm,
close like breathing or ribs.

i will drink you till the sun falls apart
oldly, crashing down to earth.
i will drink you while gently our father repairs it all,
hinging the doors of heaven and earth.
i will drink you as we walk through level fields
slowly like old lovers over the earth.

and when time doesn’t rule anymore,
when there is no hastening, no hurry,
i will drink you and it will be like first tasting,
like first sweet drop on my tongue.
every sip i have of you will never be enough.
in one drop rolls the taste of the whole world
and heaven.

i like the point of the sublime
when sky meets earth meets me
and something in me whispers
contentment
like a lullaby to a tired soul,
when arms pull round to meet me
and something in me whispers
safe
like assurance to a ransomed child.

I.
ethereal, perfect,
paragon of loveliness to which i cannot attain.
you are good, kind, καλη.
when i see you i smile,
then crouch quickly.
walk over my hands; i will suffer it
that your heavenly foot will not be
muddied, earthized.

II.
i am planted in you,
my fingers like roots reach down.
i draw up soil and scrutinize it,
then pat it carefully back into place.
aerated or marred?
who knows?
seeds, earth:
fecundity. you are life to all
who know you. you are life to those
who know you not much,
perhaps not even at all.

III.
you, my friend, are sometimey.
all passion: there you go!
bursting into flame!
be careful, friend.
like ashes after fire,
a fall after a flight.
trust me: don’t i know?

IV.
summer to my soul,
hands woven like blankets.
(this is easy enough to guess.)
i still remember your hands,
the teethmarks on your knuckles.
but that is not all:
you, like summer,
brought drought.
you were desert to me.

V.
steady.
perhaps i drew back
because i was too afraid to know
your humanness.

VI.
you are a cruel labyrinth,
a chess game from hell.
which door shall i choose?
the lady or the tiger?

VII.
we wrestle then i fall back panting,
my leg out of joint,
my body splayed next to you.
you draw near, gather me up,
hold me. you tell me it’s alright.
i am too in awe to breathe;
am i in these arms?
i have longed for you a long time now.
where my fists pounded your chest
they are burned:
glorious scars.

i am odysseus come rushing home
from wartorn days with a battlescarred soul.
this place is our treewoven bed -
these tired walls our canopy.
this prisonplace our fatherhome.

each day is like this:
a race to my penelope.
i rush up the stairs,
but the loom-seat is empty
and our arbor-bed is forlorn.

dear, did i tarry too long
with sirens and cyclops?
are you now relinquished?
return to me. i am weary
and long for your eyes.

i understand that anyone would want you -
warm, smiling, full of life
(but you are more than that: you are
wisdom and stories and rich, rich love
for men and women and God.
and my protectivism surges forth
to think of any hands on you
that haven’t yet dug deep into depths
of mind and soul and heart.
hands that have not been
blistered and bruised tilling soil
have no right to reap
sweet golden grain;
when they harvest they do not know
the nurturings of sun and rain that have
birthed a blossoming glory.
no right to savor
tart heady wine;
at first tasting they wll not discern
the flavors of salt or cedar or apple
that aged and made full-bodied and rich
a good vintage.
the only hands deserving of you
are ones with you already
under their fingernails,
in the creases of their palms,
in the ridges of their knuckles).

i can’t see the road

but i can see animate lights
drifting carelessly through fog
aurora borealis of suburbia

i’ll take what i can get

writer’s block is bad
when you eat poems for lunch
like lauren rigsby

nothing poetic
happens in sugar land so
no poems for rigs

to be sure i thought
typist poets would ruin
your appetite for them

but soulful-eyed zachs
with earnest tapping fingers
cannot vie with these

faikus for lauren:
silly and ridiculous,
monkeys and penguins

these pages crunch in my mouth
and sustain me: the ink runs
down my throat, a burn
in me as i swallow. fire
sears my insides and i
glory.

it drives me to the wine that is
humanity, but i cannot live forever
on drink. i get hungry for
promises and hope;
with people you have much
beauty, much life and breathing,
but many stomach-aching pangs
of need. people don’t keep me alive.
but they keep me living.

it is this digging, this foraging for
answerlessness that sustains me.
you say the text offers answers;
i say it sprouts questions like grass.
i say people complicate things;
you say they are all beauty.

this church is nothing without both of us;
this church is nothing without both of them:
it’s messy: there is ugliness and beauty in both.
that’s what life is;
that’s how life is.

you are here unannounced.
it’s a relief, this opening door
to your eyes. i know that
when your foot crosses the threshold
i will be home.

i missed this: your arms,
strong like rafters,
warm like a fireplace in winter,
soft and supportive like an old wingback.
you smell like a thousand past evenings,
a thousand pages turned.

unannounced, uninvited, but
just when i needed you.
come, we will sit,
and i will let my hand rest here,
and yours will lie here,
and we will be here together.

bring your hand here by my eyes
so i may trace between your fingers
with mine; i will remind myself of them
again and again – the callouses,
the scars, the freckles,
the very sworls of your fingertips,
the patterns of the hair on their backs,
the paths of the lines on your palms.
i fold myself around them in prayer.

it was the night i almost ended and i
had filled myself with coffee instead of grief,
night instead of despair,
rolling metal over dark roads as though it would
obliterate my misery.

do you remember, dear one?
i came to you with the clothes on my back
and you said,
“you are radiant,
you are beautiful,
you are what i have loved these
long years.”

pulling me into arms
sinewed with hope
you assured me i was
yours and whole.