i am here
long past my ability to believe
or conceive anything
shaped like optimism
and irrelevant to
the revenants lurching
in and out of of this room
i a here
always, even now
dimly believing
in virgin births
and resurrections out
of tombs

i am here
long past my ability to believe
or conceive anything
shaped like optimism
and irrelevant to
the revenants lurching
in and out of of this room
i a here
always, even now
dimly believing
in virgin births
and resurrections out
of tombs

i didn't start playing to win
you may say that, but then you will
be disappointed
no, i came to play because
there isn't anything else to do
play this game
dance this step,
make your move
or perish.

remember before the beginning when i first
heard that you loved me
and i danced to you
now i slouch to you
crawl to you
resolve to you
turn my back on all others to come back to you
because in my often dull and tired way
i am in love with you
more than three a.m. fucking i am
in lust with you
put up a fuss for you
because i begin to dimly see
how you loved me

mornings
darker than my feet i stumble
for you
and into this life again
stiff limbs
and they are not the only thing
stiff when i am rising, robing, shading
my body from the coldness.
since the first time a woman with a bouffant
redder than the revelation saint john
dragons that she spoke about
told me about her jesus
i have been on the path silvering
golding
unfolding
into what i know not until
now, twenty years later, drinking coffee with
heavy rosary beads hanging from my hand
i am right back at the holy
place where i began

so i gave up the idea that there's nothing
to fear
in the light of the fact that
this life if filled with unpleasant surprises
and i wake up thinking often of
the broken promise of you
and how i walked away from
them
the challenge
which cannot be matched by wits or weapons
but only by graceful surrender
is to render respect to truth
and the way shit is
and yet continue laughing

i dreamed of everything i wanted
and then they receded
till on the sleeping ocean
washed what i needed
and i was confused cause
in everything i viewed
washing up the waves
there wasn't you

baptism ii

i will light the blue candle
and submerge in the green water
and in the gold light
baptize myself again to
you
once, all golden and light
you came down to me in the river
jordan
in the form of a dove
love proclaimed you its
eternal son and let me in
on the bargain too
and so i come back to you
inspite of all things
i don't wait not to be bitter
i just expect to be made human
as you came to make me long
ago

baptism 2010

i am commited to continuing on
but continuing in what is
and not in what is not
and what you are
is a valley where i have stored
many disappointments
and what this journey is
has sometimes been a trip
i'd rather not take
so unpolished, battered
and a little bit bitter i
give myself to you
in this imperfect love
which has not cast out
all fear

like a scream and a yell
like a gift from hell
all tenderly like wrapped in
darkness and flame
it comes
... once a witch whispered to me
the space between heaven and hell is inches...
with the cry of a bell and
reverberation shaking my dead body
into something like life
after all this time of fitful dozing
comes the gospel, more frightening then
wails about wrath and God's
fire and brimstone,
more hopeful than stories of sailing to heaven
in a ship that everyone's in
whether they wish it or not
and more than all those visions
cause this vision
is true

in the dark night he opens his mouth
and screams out a horror that stretches
beyond optimism or depression, past any vision
that comfort or pills or
and act of will can help into an absolute truth
of blackness
and if he can
and then he will
with the help of a million angels
walk to the heart of this black cloud he shall
see God
and he knows,
covered in night sweats that
god is there
and this dubious gift,
you see
is prophecy

take off your skin and scream
slip off your garments one by one
shirt, scarf, shoes
undergarments, dermis and
epi too
until you are naked and bleeding
thus
come before god
and not before all the people
this is religion
and not what they say
and all bleeding and screaming
cast yourself in the jordan

while i was wrapped in snow and half sleep
you came through all my nightmares with a kiss
on the head and said
only hard candies need cellophane wrappers
blessed are men when soft men touch
and much of this is to me
epiphany

epiphany i i



you swooped into the world
on the breath of a comet
in the womb of a virgin
and now, such as i am
i am your man
there is much i would rather not do
and a lot that makes me tremble a little bit
like the chill in the kitchen makes me
tremble
but to dissemble, and to hold back
that is the real monster that
i cannot stand
and to withdraw my hand from
the tree of good and evil
after the serpent showed me
is what i could never do
and what i cannot do is shrink back
and what i do fear
with all my heart
is to lose my heart
in fear

the rattle rattle of the old space heater makes
the bitterness of winter sweeter but does not
keep my fingers from being cold
and alone, having shut the door, having
refused more busyness. more silliness
not wanting to walk over the frozen tundra
that the city has become i sit here, still weakly
wishing, still believing in things that
have not come
taking for token of a future promise those
things that have
and i am still not satisfied with the way things
are and
far from that being a sign of your absense it means
i believe to strongly in you
and through this all i know i've always seen the star
i came from the east. i cannot stop
i've followed you so far

i am too tired to con myself into
good feelings
i am too tired for anything but kneeling
i am too cold for glorious beholdings
all i can do is open my mouth
and all you can do
is all you will do
which is sweep me up
having offered your hand
and that little greatness
is grace

i am too tired to con myself into
good feelings
i am too tired for anything but kneeling
i am too cold for glorious beholdings
all i can do is open my mouth
and all you can do
is all you will do
which is sweep me up
having offered your hand
and that little greatness
is grace

and what do you do with a new year
or an infant you cannot see
evergreen down all we've found is snow and ice
and we are too tired for hoping and nearly too weary
for breathing
and believing is just a headache
and in the scattered manger this may be the message of
that season
past any cheer you could force
in the snowborn worst
in the discarded wrapping paper waiting
like a shroud
desperation as loud as the misery
of doorstop fruitcake
i am born and
i am here

i am waiting with a dull ache
to be opened
i am the earth
and if you are the lightning
then frightened as i may be
i'll let you come in
you are my dream and then...
come in

when i sat down to write i was poor
and when i rise i'll be poorer still
it was my will and your condition
and with the permission of sarasvati
and with her white body, draped in
sapphire and my naked flesh
dealt out in you
i am the artist

you are the artist
with michelangelo face
and hair that smells like marijauna
you are the flower
i'm the fauna
opening
opening to you
and this badly done poetry
is better than yeats or keats
because
it is done by me

grey white morning give me strength
give the breath that frees
from death
ice white snow. milk white glow
give the light of life
on the day after the day of Holy
innocents
on the day after the day after when we repent
and when we are born
strength of hibernation
be with me
strength of mother fur roll with me
power of forgetting be in me
all in my furs
all in my cave
jesus came to save
be sending us in
to the deepest of sleeps

i would rather have you than silver
i would rather have you than gold
i would rather have you than any of it
and love and praise and smiles
which is to say: i would rather have you then
bullshit

it is here in the wreck of the thirty ninth lost
love that i have found you
and that just tells you what i'm like cause really
you were finding me and
i want to make this my story
about how i found the ship and crashed
the ship and wrecked the ship
how after all the shit and the
crying we plowed into the side of the church
and then shakign it off we left
with a locust and some honey a
crucifix and a book of mormon
and we went to live in a cave
and in the midst of this
turning my back on the
fire and brimstone falling from the sky
stopping my mouth from another lie
i blinked
and there you were

i have no time
but you have begged "in my time"
i make my plans, but you offer your hand
living with my views, you lend me your eyes
and we begin again
everything is so mundane when left up to me
and i loathe dependency
but you pray depend on me
and out of my poverty has come all
my liberty
you are always with me
when i choose to choose nothing else
because of who you are you wished
on a star
and came to live in a stable
and sit at my table

i want something new
that is i suspect something new
i know now we are on the advent of it
i want to be invaded
i am preparing for the entry
i want to be bent over and fucked by it
undone by it
duck walked by it
and i know with the stiffness
of my cock
that its coming

i have as many lovers as i did this time
last year
and that is none
i have not nearly as many
fears and more friends
i have, i have
i have an addiction to progress
and acquisition
i still believe that A can lead to B
i still can't believe, though I have seen it
how we invent connections
and how its really happening altogether
and rather happening all over again
so that you'll be lost if you think it
happened in Bethlehem
in another millenium
here, down the street from the grocery store
and the tired, smiling cashier
its happ'ning all over again

the orange candle
the handle on the coffee cup and
the shine of the tea pot, of the glossiness
of the mince pie is telling me something
i want to hear very great things
at jesus' birth i need bright things
and i ought to no better by now because
i have stopped going to church since
every year at church, at midnight
my sight is burned by lanterns and
candles and my ears hurt by trumpets and
i think... no
no... you wouldn't do that for a baby
a baby needs quiet and so i
a baby's only message is a breast
and mine is one burning orange candle
and a steaming slice of mince pie

before christmas

you walking monkeys over there
are not so far from bears as you would like to believe
nor am i, poor hairless chimp
now is the time to climb into our caves, candles,
little little
fires burning
the yearning, to be wrapped in furs and
frus of God and press our ears to the furry chest of the mother
there is a reason the son of man was was born in a cave
a cave like tomb
a cave like a tomb
a cave like the cavern where bruins brood
because, because he knew Brigid was there
her air is just another word for fire
and retiring is just another word for rebirth

no, it isn't the sex
for your mother had sex and look how
your father turned out
no it isn't the simply orgasm
for you gasp and jism every morning
in the shower
and certainly not bed and all the strange
places, but rather the excitement or--what is more
that like those sexy whores on screen--you
will be excited
you will be interesting
you will be fantastic and arresting
but the problem with porn
the problem for you is, well,
you see...
and the problem with me is i am always
taking it just one step too far
but you will always be yourself
and you and me
we... well
you can only be yourself,
and that's your problem