Because we’ve perfected
pretending,
we seem the same.
The subtle shifts
sleeping arrangements, bank accounts
divided time, formal conversation
don’t show.
It’s almost as if
we could march on in this sameness
for another 15 years.
Yet under my skin
my organs have been rearranged
my blood flows sideways
my mind catapults to places
once unfathomable.
Different
doesn’t seem strong enough a word.
Whatever that means
I’ve drunk the cool aid
Given in
Changed teams
Called home
Walked a mile in my own shoes
Swam the English Channel
Drowned
Saved by the pilot
Crash cart
Defibrillator
Narcam
20 minutes
Near death
Now
When I sleep
I speak
To angles.
The air is heavy and stale
in the bingo hall before
the patrons get here.
My sunburn is shedding skin
like a lizard. I scratch at it,
willing it to hurry.
The air conditioning doing its best
but even the blowing fans realize
this is a losing battle.
The money counter shuffles
its payout over and over,
shredding the silence.
Sweat pools at the back of my neck
then stretches a long trickle
the length of my spine.
We open the doors to customers
and the real fun begins.
the way the sky opens that
gaping, endless mouth
hungry, forever—
maybe I could do that
maybe I could be that
what wants to end?
who?
I could stretch on forever
a sunset, a horizon
beautiful, forever—
how many ways can I say
neverending?
how many ways can I describe it?
the sky, gray and dark and heavy
clouds I can draw, easy to understand
the mouth only I see
lightning teeth, rattlesnake laugh
chasing, forever
chasing what?
who?
still beautiful in all that shadow
beautiful for all the ache and hunger
maybe I could be that
“Truth did not come into the world naked, but it came in types and images. The world will not receive truth in any other way.” – The Gospel of Phillip
It is from water and fire that the soul and the spirit came into being.
I am not referring to that fire which has no form
but to the other fire
whose form is bright and beautiful
and which gives beauty.
It is through water and fire that the whole place is purified –
None can see themselves
either in water or in a mirror without light
Nor can you see yourself in light without mirror or water.
the visible by the visible, the hidden by the hidden.
Light and Darkness, life and death, right and left, are brothers of one another.
They are inseparable.
Because of this neither are the good
good
nor evil
evil
nor is life
life
nor death
death
For this reason
each one will dissolve into its earliest origin.
by one and the same breath, the fire blazes and is put out.
a Found poem / from: ” The Gospel of Phillip” The Nag Hammadi Library, translated by Wesley W. Isenberg. Original translation of this text was prepared by members of the Coptic Gnostic Library Project of the Institute for Antiquity and Christianity, Claremont Graduate School.
He rolled his weed with tobacco and mint
on an old tea tea tray. He said it helped him
sleep through the night without getting scared.
I mean, old school scared–like when
you were a kid and you saw a figure shadowed
in your sameold bedroom, sudden fearful
in the late-night dark.
He used to say a lot of things,
used to whine like a kid
when I asked him to
take out the trash
or go to therapy.
He used to hang around
and play games, videos
of people pulling honey from beehives,
of middle-class guys
with riding lawn mowers,
The Outer Limits reruns, Star Wars,
roll weed on his tea tray–tobacco and mint.
Our Internet, who art in heaven,
Hallowed be thy domain.
Thy signal come,
Thy will be done,
On screens as it is in the Cloud.
Give us this day our daily scroll,
And forgive us of our swipes,
As we forgive those who swipe right against us,
To lead us right into temptation,
And deliver us toward evil.
Amen.
