Poem: Prayable space

*

He'd been unbalanced
as long as he'd been,
and too often leaned against
himself and fallen.

He was immune
to the scientific
worship of reason
because of the hairline crack

in his own.
Reality
was what you could not contain
or share -- privacy

was its being,
its burden,
its flame, though perilous to hang
from or lean on.

Community was
only where you went to assuage
reality's
intensity and damage.

The fellowship was a mercy
like the physical
law
that broke one's fall

inward
to where
the word
of God pulsed with fear.

"It's only a movie."
Was he insane?
Or was insanity
what made him ask that question?

There was a small
puncture
hole
that widened and tore

all the secular,
a place that if justice
flourished anywhere
was its only access.

This hole formed into a cell
with birdsong spattered
on the wall:
so blue and serene was the word.

It was a house of prayer
where a brokenness churned
the air
and one's eyeballs burned.

I can speak
with you here
but no not speak:
I am nothing but ear.

Through some canal the known
world lay spread
in a prayable condition
where fate was liquid

again,
something to shuck
like a skin
or unfold like

a story
whose meaning
lay
in the future waiting.

The secular
caked in doubt
while something in its interior
spat him out

into a place
beyond destitution
that was
surely big enough for everyone.

He heard piano
music behind a door
that he could open if he wanted to --
it wasn't blocked anymore.

The person
whose place this was remained
unspoken and unknown
as the puncture hole widened.

*

Poem: When I was sick

*

At 17 I had the flu
and couldn't go to school.
I boarded yet I barely knew
a single living soul.

My mother brought me nourishment.
I felt her come and go
but was too feverish and faint
to thank her. Did she know?

My sickness brought along this fear:
"your weakness is your fate".
But her strength saved me from despair
and she would sit up late.

And now I'm strong and she is dead
but it still seems more fitting
the other way: me sick in bed
her at my bed's edge sitting.

*