On Ownership and Guilt

When the moonshine's as bright
as it'll get for the bright-eyed
young man's fumbling
fingers to stumbling 
on up a younger one's 
quivering, crumbling, 
deeply asundered 
Innocence, 
what then?

Is it you or was it me,
was it Adam, was it Eve, 
or the devil in a snake, 
coiled up in poisoned hate, 
maybe Alpha and Omega 
bent on giving freedom 
to such a vast estate 
with The Devil as a date? 


Or is it being loved 
by Someone so rich we could never earn a cent, 
got us greedy, 
stole our senses 
till we started needing 
something other than the grace 
of the light upon our Lover's face 
to spend our breath 
from out our lungs, 
so we chose poverty and death
to break our Innocence in theft?

On Treacherously Keeping It In.

Does he love you tonight?

Did it keep you up until tomorrow?
How do you keep it all together, Babe,
counting all those damned, dead sparrows 
by yourself?

You're by yourself, now.
And you'll always be alone
there, there
by yourself.

You got your anger
in the whitest little flame,the color of your ghostly, gauntly, ghastly, 
cowardly little game 
there by yourself.

...

Devil and the angels got their promises to keep,
like you got your pity
there keeping you from sleep 
there by yourself.

...

You got your silence
in a violent, little box.
Opened it up to teach me a lesson;
ain't you a sly little fox 
there by yourself.

You're by yourself, now.
And you'll always be alone 
there, there
by yourself.

a smoke in march with the boys

In that space amid brothers' candlelit conversation
intermittent with dark, Irish thirst...
Better than blankets! --We were wrapped into warm thoughts.

We sat with the lion of March,
His toothy grin in ours pressed into the bits of pipes,
ALIVE as the scratched matchsticks roaring
to the deep encouragement of bourbon-soaked cherries.
A thin, yellow wisp of sulfur appeared for a moment and hung
--a coarse, single hair on His mane.
It faded along with our frozen breaths,faded like our fears in the presence of the King of Spring,
though our windows rattled with His southernly blows.

We drew courage
and love,
exhausting malaise into a great cumulus pall gathering above,
looming pregnant with new growth over a season of doubt.
And like children on the neck of a great beast, we clung
to one another in the hope of new life
in a dissipating winter.

Part of a Whole

I am a part of a whole;Adam, he purchased my soulto the hell that I amfrom his sin that began Death
and grew

from federal father. That manbeget, like leaven, a man;and, onward and ever,the race rose and deliveredus damned.

I, black as the darkest of nights,loving the darkness... a Light!--Your Spirit shown into my innermost being.And, I knew
I would never be free;a part of the whole guilty thing.In Adam, I own The Fall.
Yet, I sinIndividually.
But kindness, oh mercy You showedin Jesus--my very own.My history wrentas His body you spentfor my sin.

Your wrath shook the heavens and Him,as He took in His body my sin.As fully You punished,that much I replenishmy hope.

--That anew, a new Adam is He;
new Life I have, sinless and free;
a new race, a new seed
a new Father for me,
a new family.

Oh, I am a part of a whole;
Christ, He has purchased my soul.
To God I'm redeemed,
and for this I sing My thanks.

On understanding implosion, Letter to a friend

More or less I understand
your mouth so mighty and handsome:
In the arms of a shorn haired Samson.

In Timnah riddled in robes of the south
and that rotting lion's yawning mouth,
whose welling eyes and welling crotch,
will welling, putrid air be lost
to burst of hide and hive explode
to swarm of needles, teeth. And blood,
in blushed mist of rising souls,
steaming streams departing, rose
for an honor cold
as their hot deflated molds
fell in Ashkelon of Philistines
for your mouth full of bees;
Eater with a mouth full of honey.