I am the box
lid open
not big enough for God
so flat now
wide as a box can be
Tag Archives: poetry
Oh say can you see
Me, the refugee?
My red-white eye
and blue blue sigh
and hope for self-evident truth?
You have given me to pray
You have given me to pray
and it’s like a slow tornado.
I’m sucked up in circles
and at the top am in the sun
and I say,
“Take me! Take me!”
But no, now I know
it’s not a prayer.
It’s a poem and me
fleeing again. I see
the people I love
and so slide down to them
through the last of the poem,
that old fire escape we had at school.
My daughter asked me what my purpose is
My daughter asked me what my purpose is
and I saw a flower.
It was blooming, but I
wasn’t yet, but would
yet, I hoped.
Hurry, it’s cold, it’s wet cold
Bakery girl,
what will rid us of your sadness?
You’ve carried it and still,
and I as well,
as bells have tolled
and dusks have walled
alleys away in silence.
That I might see
Is there an icon of eyes
of the dove
wings wide
just above the shoulder –
and of in the eyes
that branch
buried in the heart of Jesus?
All my worthless dying
Not to myself, just dying
The ego needs proof till its dying day
Yes it made sense: you made sense of it.
You slept with and solved every problem,
etching equations in glass verified
by daylight and the empty space beside you.
The night was your cloudy mind projected –
against it you appointed pointless sticks
to a pointless fire –
your altar to you, but you did it because
you could.
God parks desire in a drafty garage
Hands you the keys.
A soul should wilt but you won’t.
You’ll drive till the end of time
and when you’re done
you’ll put it back here.
I got lucky
That stone-faced soul
was out when mother and baby
and baby went by,
and so was I
in time for the smile,
that little bit left for me.
Utrecht Journal 