SANCTITY

Lips like heaven
paul saw seven
but your place is the eighth
faith in your thighs
love in your mouth
charity
the rarity of the roundness
of your secret hills
will—to ride the night
like a jockey in a derby
the whole night is the derby
and your are the most magnificent

SAINT BRIAN

This is for Brian
whose thighs were full
and met at an ass rising
and dusky like the waxing moon
soft as prayers and cusses
firm as faith
the sight of it makes me
sure that heaven smells of
deepest earth
and its gateway is all covered
in brown hairs

you came to me krastic
and humbly
fantastically
you opened me
with the praises raised
from your mouth and the kisses of your mouth
and your infinite tongue
and finally, your body across me
you in the country of me
the length of the tight body
pelted in black hair
touched me marvelously
the tight roundness of behind
and smell of breath
worked on me marvelously
in the depths of an Easter night
you made love to me masterfully
deep your kisses
you loved me krasticly!

on this sacrament, which i am convinced,
is placed on
every altar there is no blood,
but only life
and i am now the universal mother,
doing only what a father can do, pinioned
under you, giving up my pole,
like a cross or a pillar, or a breast
to your mouth so that you can enter
the second childhood, so that you
can feed and feed on my seed
and we are both transported
out of ego into longing
to becoming' to freeing,
to being
all that lonely, dough
faced men envision,
watching expensive videos while they
jism and waste away
we
were on fire
we were bright day

christian kindness carries its
own cruelty
and nine tenths of the time the ones
who bear it wear a bible round their
necks and while they let us know they
take up their crosses boldly,
there is no hiding it,
we are the ones who waste our
time carving it all the day
now that the day has come
and not the twilight
do not with weary faces
and woebegone expressions
celebrate your jesus
now that yellow touches the sky
do not dress in black and grey and go
on and on about rules and duty
as yet, fed on saint paul and bleached
out purity
we haven't learned about the pleasure

beyond the rolled away stone
was the sweet smell
of magdalene's perfume
and of the grass just grown

now that you have come back i don't
know what to do.
i have made a mythology of suffering
and dealing with you,

 of taking wounds
into myself again and again
now that you are here how will i ever
make sense of pleasure, how will i
ever celebrate the joys of lust fulfilled
of the time we wheeled about and
rolled in bed all night long
springs creaking till dawn
and to the light on lilies

clearly, i don't know how to
deal with resurrection

PALM SUNDAY

and now
after the scourging
after the pillar and the slap on the face
and how everyone tried to capitalize on
my devotion
and I tried to make it fit in
there is the procession of palms
we’re all holding fronds
and none of us is dancing.
Catholics want to sing
they want to jubilate
but who knows how?
here in the Midwest
where the daffodils push up through the ice
what counts, what’s best is to be nice
in our khakis and Oxford blue shirts

But I want to be intoxicated

God when you rode an ass into the church
when you drove out the changers and the ushers
and the priests
and everyone carrying on
trying to be someone
carrying on their backs carcasses
and corpses
and corpses
of names
and titles
and dignities
lord,
what I did was take off my shoes
and take of my tie
all dignity flies
in the face of something more
that after searching
scourging
reading
fasting
resisting

i just want to be crazy

i just want to be mad
i just want to wander and sit on the floor of your house
drunk with jesus
and everyone who sees us
will think we’re mad
and that could be the end

“There is a tree” they sing
“There is a tree”
faraway
on a green hill…
on a hill
and if this ecstasy kills
then is there room on your cross for me?

I I

it has taken too long and too many wounds
to get the shadow of peace in this house
how, if i'd just closed my eyes, would it have come?
and i am tired of looking for love
where it will not come
ataring into the pool, waiting for
the sunken ball to glow

i have given myself to grim master, over and over
again
and for all alleged sin,
pluto won't take me in

unclench your fists in the sanctuary
after the sackcloth time of waiting
bury all sadness in snow and sin

i do believe the Dark King of all
my dreams is beyond the door
waiting for me

let the king and queen of love come in

IN THE WEEK OF PALM SUNDAY

and now it appears you will not
be coming back
anyone who ever had the desire to change my
life never stayed in it beyond five minutes
ah, and i thought you were it
ah, and i spent three weeks dabbing
the wound, knitting the tear
when you had left
and now i know it is true
to forgive is to forget

wipe yourself in sun, and go on
love is all around
dust yourself up, anything you thought would come from him
will most certainly come again

jarred by the picture of your face
i remember the brownness of you
startled by the elfin perfection of your little body
in love with the length of cock
with the walnut sack, with the smell of
cologne and that late summer time mercy
when in a hurry you came to my house and in a moment were
naked before me
in a moment were inside
and we collided again and again
and i held you then
i became the earth and the mother
and you the husband, and you the
elf
and you the child
in a while
there will be another such wind
and then goddess of easter
and lust will send you again

it is best, it is best
to live in readiness
down with these tired eyes
down with these sharply held shoulders
down with the mantra"
life is full of disappointments
though it be
down with the protest
the animal duress
it is best
it is best to live in readiness
knowing tha no one else will ever be ready
the heady wine of life boiling in you
will simply have to be quinched
men and women for
centuries have been lynched
or lynched themselves for
being too excited

this is life to me
to enter into that union where my tongue shocks
and delights you in your deepest parts
not to wait for you to rule
all of me
that is to fear my own choices
but that our voices might rise as one
in holy orgasm

only this i want
to eat passionately through to the
center of things

all of my dreams are haunted by insecurities
and dread of what i haven't kearned
what i can't earn
in the moment of baptism
we learn only this
to eat through to the center of things
to kiss god full and all over
to be his lover

the kingdom of god is for reprobates and
fools
i have to believe that it is simply not the
sort of place for safety
if you have spent a lifetime making yourself at home
in this world
you will not find a happy home in the next
there is something about people who spend time carving out
zion
that resist the signs of the real thing striking
the earth
come to me
all ye who are fucked up
and i will give you rest
all ye who are heavily pissed
and disappointed and find rest here for your souls
all ye who have skill and suspicion
to see the narrow gate past the bony fingers
of dull and unimaginative old white men
come
and then
find the bridegroom and rest

there is a reason it is a cross
only at the crossroads could there be
such a necessary meeting
i need to make peace with the world
and not just a dreary truce
i need to make love with the world
and acknowledge with true knowledge
that they knew not what they did
i hid myself in the river
i need to love
to forgive

i
am in love
and that is why my heart is broken
i
am in God
and that is why i am his temple
i
am a rug
that's why i am simple
and you can walk across me and be lost in all
my spirals
and my roses
this is where the world is
those are where galaxies live
this is all i have to give

this is the three o'clock in the morning
time which i live for. this is the end of all things
when i carry myself to bed,
carefully, like one on a more than acid trip
and in the wee hours, the whole world stretches and time
is like taffy and light is unending and darkness descends
into the dimness of two am
and then
i am amniotic floating into something
onto something
which is
the world of dreaming which is the world
of clear seeing
and maybe clear loving
for just one moment my red heart is exposed
will it ever end, will this be fulfilled
will the one i love come back to me?
and then i know
if it will be done, if will be done in this moment
if you were come back to me, it will have to be here
in the gold abyss or not at all
if there is to be a home it must be this
stretched out one, hot and pulled out,
burning like glass
seeing as God made the world at three
in the morning

i have gotten this place
solely that i might create places
i live in this space so i can walk
around in circles and i am still
learning after nearly two years
time to walk around in spirals
and i will keep walking them
and then, cross the red sea
i have come to this place to
work my practice
which is making perfect that
that the world bit into and flawed
flawed is a verb
flawed is the word i came to remedy
flawed is the beauty i seek
the meekness in me is only the lion
pretending

i will do the i ching
i will tell the cards
not for advice
or i will roll the dice
not to know what to do
but for a little temperance in what to do
i can no longer help myself
i need this
i do not know it can turn out
i have to do this
i am used, and i am free

sometimes praying about lets you know
it's just silly praying about
stop your donkey braying about it
you my love, know just what to do!

in doing what i know not what i do
drifting on the wind not
knowing what i do
seems to the way to love you

i am of a mind to dive
away from the mess but the mess
keeps growing. i would ignroe the torn heart
if it weren't so loud
the only cure for it is action
action is the only revelation
there is something to relieve this longing
than to speak the word
to speak a small word
surely, you know, i never felt like this.
the difference between today and yesterday
is the measure of the sorrow
and i would be a fool to think this will change
tomorrow
live with
the constant dull pain that makes the
world
or take action?
for the sake of love
in the name of love?
amen?
Amen

only yesterday
i was sad and lonely and it
was a hundred thousand years ago
i spent a stack of millenia waiting
fruit on these trees, rip'ning, falling, rotting
all the sweet smell, of useless wealth
and these breasts, heavy with so much to give
and the field was empty
and my heart was lonely
and only i sat, swelling, then wilting
in the waste country
this morning
it is not all about me
let me be wise
let me be kind
let me see it is not all about me
let my lips be wet with love
let me be absolutely stiff with compassion
the heart attack, the artery block of
fierce, fierce love
come down in fire
from your cherubim throne
and fill me lady
come down from your seat of glory
and glory, here in me
i am the house
i am your glory
all along
i have been your throne

w e t d r e a m

i love you so much because
i know who you are

this endless sharing, this mutual effection
speaking not face to face,
but mouth to energy
this deep pleasure and the geography of skin
the nursing of all needs
that is love
that is love in its most basic
unclincal sense
that is the bedrock desire
the fire
twisting of limbs
and the morning dew of funk and
perspiration
that is my prescription
for the healing of harms

the devil is just another name
for what you don't understand
my heart expands
believing in golden bibles
little by little i blow up
and the swelling is love
i wonder
the longer i believe
stranded on dry land
a bored and shrunken little man just
inches from babel
you made me a prophet and built me a dish
and said get in
be blown about
and so with unpronouncable name
and one glowing stone
i float
blown on the waters of you

i can think of nothing to say right now
only to be right now
cut me open and i will be
like a little russian egg
like one of those ladies
one inside the other

i can think of nothing to say right now
only to be right now
cut me open and i will be
like a little russian egg
like one of those ladies
one inside the other

i am happy to love you
i am happy to love anything
but all in the past has been this
fevered love
this grappling, worried love
i am so tired of loving stones
i am so glad for an easy love
uneasy as you may be
i mean, difficult as you may be
i mean as difficult as it may be for
me to get past these differences
because, as long--or as short--
as i have known you, everything
that matters has passed fast
and well... fast and well like
rivers between us
and that is enough

e c c l e s i a

i long to shut up
and be at peace again
i am trying to get to peace
again
but you won't let me
i am longing to get to you
again
where we once were
but you won't trust.
i saw
your original face hovering
over me
like the angel moroni
you were the cumorah:
i would incorporate you

ecclesia is a massive melting of the will

in the new age i shall be loved
we will encompass each other
you shall be loved
we shall be loved
with an intensity that blows up arizona

and the knives i've honed to stab
myself in the foot will be melted into
plowshares shoveling all this shit away

the juice is flowing
the need is rising
it can't be dammed
i am waiting to be struck
to be fucked
to give myself to you
this is the pregnancy
the long waiting
the waiting longing for
you who are the lover
of my dreams

i long to shut up
and be at peace again
i am trying to get to peace
again but you won't let me
i am longing to get to you
again
where we once were
but you won't trust.
i saw
your original face hovering
over me
like the angel
you were the cumorah
i would incorporate you
i will encompass all

in the new age i shall be loved
you shall be loved
we shall be loved
with an intensity that blows up arizona
and the knives i've honed to stab
myself in the foot will be melted into
plowshares shoveling all this shit away

i have bunkered down here
in the house on the edge of the world
waiting for the Last Day
in these days every name, every kiss
all pride shall be lost and soon,
after that,
will come the First Day
the day in which i love you
you don't have to go to church to find me
i'm bored and half asleep there anyway
the heart that is longing will
not search long
you will find me anywhere
i am in all places
i am always calling...
the long loneliness
like a belly growl
everything that separated, anything that
ever howled out horror is now
joining the us to the we
you to me
God's church is a roving thing
rising up like oil
sinking down,
disappearing
it comes where it wills
like a breath,
as a spirit
and none can say where it goes