“I bite the hand that feeds me,

so that maybe it’ll let me starve.”

You bite the tongue you use to make others starve. You starve as you watch the empty men season their smoked tongues. You feed the hand that bites you, starving, maybe, as it lets you

fall.

The hands that fed me

let me starve

and I bless them. 3:30

Starbucks.

I once thought

that the cruelty

of this world

had to indicate

the cruelty

of

God.

I had a vision that you became a poet, and you credited me. Yet here you surpass me. It either shown the Creator’s cruelty, or His pitiless indifference. Of course I was wrong. Reality only seems subjective from an ant’s perspective. My father is dying. He withers. away in a makeshift tent less than a quarter mile from the grandest building in the city. He didn’t take my message well. I told him there’s a death beyond the death we see. It’s easily avoidable — and damn difficult. The gardener begs the Master to spare the tree for another year. Perhaps it’ll show fruit next season.

I killed the King’s daughter — put her on display with my name. I saw a beautiful dream, a vision of design — and crushed it between my fingers. It smelled like death. The Latter took my cousin, I guess. Here I forgot to snatch him from the flames. My sister is exploring the wilderness. She’s kind though. It’s painful to watch her die. What will I tell my mother? This morning I held my boy as he wiped the sleep from his eyes. I held him for ten minutes. I prayed with tears in my eyes that God would give him speech.

I thought about writing a poem about the bright side of my childhood, and the friends whose faces I saw were strangers to me. But I’m sure you have your battles too. Mine are no more significant than your own. Everyone is dying. It’s just… men broke the world and thus the world is cruel. We died before the earth. It wasn’t supposed to be this way. We died before the day. It’s impossible to gaslight God. And that’s what we try to do. We died before the night. “This is Your fault!” — It just doesn’t work that way. Yet so many people believe that it does. We died before the end. They take no responsibility for their actions. They place no responsibility on the individual choices of man, but heap them up against a ‘god’ that they do not believe in, as evidence that it must not exist. We must die to live again. It’s incredible. I saw a spider the other day, who had weaved her web in an abandoned sewer pipe. The thing was capped at both ends. The thought came to mind that it shouldn’t be there. It shouldn’t have been able. Yet it was. Another thought: what could it have possibly hoped to catch in its web? The web would only catch its own weaver. Are we like this? Another thought: how many men wouldn’t even question the spider or the web? One final: is this pride, God?

They’re asking for a paradox. The weights gave me flight. The pain is crippling, and I am running this race faster than ever. Brother at 9. Mother at 11. I want to dedicate one page to the word ‘REPENT!’ — and have it written all over in mad letters. Then another page that uses each letter as a box containing other poems. I don’t really know what I’m doing anymore. I’m just trusting. I think that’s all I feel I can do. It’s horrific. And freeing. I’ve failed so many people. But I’m still here. He’s still doing something. The piece isn’t finished — the poem not yet fully penned by the Poet. What will I look like tomorrow? What did I yesterday? Why are you so stubborn, old friend?

They outta have court poets.

You know?

To go with the sketches.

I shouldnt be one of them.

Here’s a caricature:

ants warring

wearing powdered wigs

holding stop signs and their tongues

absolute carnage

in an orderly fashion

the hunchback

pulverizes the podium

holds us all in contempt

forgot his fly was down

that he’d tucked in his gown

monkeys with typewriters

I say

there should be court jesters

I just shouldn’t be one of them

Are your knees locked so they may not bend? Do you respect me? Do you understand? It’s the reality that you drown out — that’s the one screaming in your face. You pull yourself away and find some comfort in shoving. idols in your ears. They’d whisper your sweet nothings, something to soothe you, but they are dead. They’re dead — and killing you too, sir. How should I say I love you? You wouldn’t believe me. You’d think me insane, or that it were an empty phrase. But, oh, how great is that love that I have for you! If you’d only take my hand — let me pull you from the flames you’ve made — I would help you, by He Who helped me! Brother may be in a cult. Mother sobbed and laughed. She knows so much that is untrue. It would require great effort to unlearn her to the gospel. Sister next. Then grandma? Or maybe cousin? Interestingly, the pain is horribly intense now, as if my enemy or my LORD willed that I may suffer as I serve. So be it, of course, so be it. He looks up to me, my brother does. Should I tell him the bitterness of the prosperity? Would he listen? Will he notice it for himself? If he does not, is he saved? Is anyone safe? Am I? Am I in right standing with I AM? I am not, but Christ is. Oh, Lord, see how I’ve fallen? What do You make of me? A vessel? For riches or waste? Why do I ask? I should see what I contain! What fruit is this, oh God? What hast Thou done? Here I am growing Thine will! The vibrant tree speaks now to the barren, nay to the tree with rotten growths — I must first remove the dead and only then may I be Your hands — and to prune and grow the Spirit. And when I look too closely into the mirror, I see that I am not myself at all — and I thank You for that! For part of Your purchase was a certain renewal — a transformative transaction… So I am not myself. I am not my own. Then I find… I never was really. What is there — who is there that doesn’t belong to You? Even the ones who call the dragon their father are still roaming about with the life You provide! I’m finding that poetry is dying in me for some reason. Because the blood calls to me? Surely. How could such howling hands still themselves long enough to pen something beautiful? And if that beauty has no Christ, it is no beauty at all! So I am bound to my own silence, and by my fervor chained to this ugly nothing. Oh Father help me say something again! Or do something! Or be something! Here I am, speaking to myself and to You alone. Didn’t I turn my back on You? Didn’t I turn my back on them? And on me? And on it all? Where do I face now? If I look at nothing? What do I see? If nothing, then what am I, God? What are You? I fed a fly to a spider today. To make up for the spider I killed the day prior. But it doesn’t make the dead live. The stains of death are not washed by life, but by more death it seems. You died, didn’t You? Shouldn’t I? Perhaps the spiritual death that I so obviously despise is only made so tedious by my desire for the death of the vessel. Am I a thief as well? If so, am I at the right or left hand, oh Christ? These words I’ll profess before You on my day of judgement— are they good fruit? Are the rotten husks placed upon Eden’s tree? Is my mind of Ur? Can You hear me? Why do I doubt You — when I have seen You so clearly? Won’t You return sooner? It’s all falling apart again. I’m angry at myself, not You. Why do You allow me to hate You so? Why can I not love You? I am sickened by Your love for me; it burrows within the chasms of my soul—— and in the face of my rage and disdain — it flies and flutters as a young fowl, with ease and joy — while I burn it with this torch of me, yet no feather is singed and no talon scorched; but I burn myself with my misunderstanding and hate. And You still love me; the putrid, damnedable absurdity of Your affections! Beautiful enough to bring me to sob, baffling enough to have me never think again! Yea, take these hells from my mind, Christ Jesus, take them off to the mountains and to the seeds; to the swine and their unclean shepherds; to the jackals and their starlit manger! What have You made of me, my Creator? What creature am I? What name would man give me? Does she wait for me still? That I am without excuse? Is her soul in hell? Does it spiral? Is it as beautiful as I imagine? Why do I betray myself? Why do I portray myself as anything else? Aren’t I dirt? Dirt or deity? I’m falling again, I said! Falling fast asleep in the stillness of myself — consumed into the depths of the nothing I am! The spider fled from my hand, plummeting from my safety and into the water. I thought it dead, but placed it on the shelf to dry out. Do I run from You this way? Will You lift me from the water when I plummet from Your hand? Will I dry and revive? The thing lived! It lived and made a web, but caught nothing. It rejected my flies. Does it have too much pride? Would it rather starve than to accept my food? Am I the spider, Lord? Shouldn’t You crush me and be done? Why can’t I love You the way You love me? Why won’t I die for You? What is my mind? What is my body? What is my soul? Isn’t there more to it all? Of course this isn’t it! Today was a heap of madness, and sanity fled from me. The wine speaks. Space is water. Water is air. Air is something like me. Jesus, what am I? Poetry wants to die, but everyone tells it to live. We were close once, by birth or by death — and I don’t think I’d recognize it anymore. It stabbed me in the back, that traitor, Poetry. I bled the color of her eyes, and made a trail from the grave to the clouds. Today I thought about giving up. Again. I can’t decide if I took too much or any at all. They said I’d be forgetful. What was I saying? Mother said she repents. Shouldn’t I be happy? She repents to an idol, it forgives her for nothing. Her Christ is of her own design, a pitiful little thing bound to her own heart— perpetuating the divide between the Father and her soul. How do I say this? How do I kill the dead? My body is rotting, I think. My soul is alive, I know. Yesterday I learned that joeys nurse in their mother’s pouch. Today I learned I’m in agony. Someone make sense of me, please. Tell me you get it. I’ll call you a liar. We’ll laugh for a moment. We’ll cry. We’ll die. I can’t afford to forget. I’m not sure what exactly. DECONSTRUCTION would make a fun acrostic poem. A crossly crossless acrostic, but still. Is it just the pain of my body that is picking at the scars of my soul? Is that all this is? Could it be so simple? Far be it from me, Lord. They’ve pulled the trigger, and from the barrel bursts forth hellfire in the shape of liberty, a slug by name of Tasteless Salt, and hate shrouded in rosy fumes. Man can’t stop himself now. Judgement, a chance of scattered showers, temps in the low 70s. I carved a pumpkin today. I laughed at legalism. I felt guilty for laughing. The pumpkin didn’t. I don’t think he got the joke. I don’t think there was one. Maybe he’s laughing at me. Or with me. Or at what’s coming. And how little I’m doing to prepare. Or maybe he’s just a pumpkin. Souls are hollow, not hallow. Maybe I’m losing it. Maybe I’m right. I really thought the word limit was 2,000. Is it not? I guess not. Lord, why do I doubt You? Do I not pray because I don’t believe, or because I’ve already asked for so much? Won’t You help me? There I go again… Father I’ve fallen, raise me or I die. Tomorrow is the day I lead my mother to Your feet — I am sickened by my lack of zeal, killed here by my lack of care. What am I really? Do I believe a word of it? Do I trust You? Or am I afraid that in Your absence I am worthless? Shouldn’t men ask these questions? What does it show? You formed my hands, so I point my finger to my mind. You formed my mouth, so I speak Your words to my dead heart. You formed my eyes, so I see that I perceive solely what You permit —— apart from this curse I bear, the one I am longing to see die. What’s wrong with me? Why am I like this? The meeting went well, and you still hate her I think. The flesh wrestles with the Spirit. I suppose that was the first sport. If I don’t save her soul, I don’t think anyone will. She said babies in heaven name themselves and write the life they want to live. I asked about objectivity. She digressed. We divulged about the divide and the divine.

A palm reading if you think about it

I spend my days

tracking down the edges

the far reaches of Your hands

the forests in the prints

the valleys of Your palms

and I wonder and wander

without fail I wonder

where I could be

reading the map

cover to cover

knowing where I am

I wonder where I am

and where I may be going

——

So it turns out they kill poetry

Which I figured.

Skipped a few doses

can’t afford to reup

poetry was what’s wrong with me

I’ve got razors growing from my eyes again

a rose bush in my gut

everything is on fire

I’m cold as ice, dear children

I’m so sick of myself

make me You please

——

I need to write 25 words

to keep a streak

that really doesn’t mean anything

It won’t help me catch the sky

or fix my head

or change my ways

but it looks nice to see

that I’ve done something without fail

for a long time

how many should I take today, Doc?

that’s what I roared… to myself.

I guess I’m good at that.

——

The days are evil

even the best of them

the brightest ones

cast deeper shadows

there is pain behind all smiles

because you’ll die

and deep down

you want to live

and deep down

you want to die

someone told me there’s light

and there is

but the dark seems

to drown out my day

it blots out the stars

kills the sun at dawn

and I stumble and reach

for the nothing around me

Oh God help me please

even if the light of You

burns me away

——