if i took a rational
only-fools-think-people-rise-from-the-dead
position

if there had been objective witnesses of the
disinterested-in-the-deadness-or-aliveness-of-the-party-in-question
variety

if paperwork had been filed by an authority of the
professionally-certified-to-confirm-death-and-or-life-remaining
type

like for Jarod who
hangs an official certificate
written by a paramedic
above his desk
a souvenir of his resurrection
from a three minute absence and a death cheated

to have been gone three days and
then at supper sunday evening
would mean he’d have killed death and
taken from it keys to (dare i)
eternal life

that is a hope far too great
for the rational
only-fools-think-people-rise-from-the-dead mind

are you

abandoned abused bitter
broken depressed desperate
gay lonely poor
self-loathing spiteful
tragic troubled

yearning for change
discontent dejected
rejected injected
insane (though only a little)

egotistical egomaniacal
pyromaniacal nymphomaniacal
or otherwise sex-obsessed

abhorred by
culture church family
or struggling to function
in society at large

if so

send in a lifetime’s expression
of inexpressibles and wording wordlessness
send in your soul carved
black blue red and
bringing life to sheets of dead tree

and languish on poet

(happy people and lumberjacks need not apply)

Kitchen’s
Ambrosial
Refreshment
Ever
Needed

Bellies

Languish
Amid
Cookie
Yearnings

Silken white buries
A darkness we want hidden
Come snow, clean our world

Each fragile snowflake
Plots to pile its beauty’s weight
‘Til I surrender

Acrid and salty
I remember mother’s words
Don’t eat yellow snow

there once was a gent from up north,
who to kansas for college went forth.
he got some degrees
in saxophonese,
and moved with his wife to new york.

that we sailed from
all known things to
bathe in hues beyond
the visible, is now to you
indomitable grayness

years can’t be trusted to
remember how long i waited
for repentance to bow your
steely denial, ever-hardened by
my molten acceptance

waking doesn’t end the cascade
fantastical re-sensations
crash upon themselves
with a vividness reserved for
God and the young

light honey-thick swims
down my cheek and
peace patience gentleness
(unwithering fruits on undying trees)
pray i taste and share

i now more real than myself
offer as you fade from view
no longer solid enough to hold them
and soon it will be true
that you were never here

fixed on each step their
eyes unblinking dare not miss

the dry, cracked boardwalk
bows from the weight of a
man-made glory

in the moment so close to you
bikinis and boardshorts don’t
hinder their worship

as though before them now
walks the risen Christ
his brother and the three

i wish i would read The New Yorker
in a subway car and appear as smart and
savvy as she next to me from whom
i hide these words as i write
(ever-so-greatly tipping my notebook
leftward making the ink in my pen defy
gravity to get onto the page)
about her and her reading habits and savviness
while a homeless man declaims his verse
in the land of the blind with all the panache of a
homeless man shouting poems on a
subway car and i wonder if my verse will
one day be read by the smart and
savvy or heard by another young stealth poet
as i beg

the sheep meadow is not the place
especially on sunny days
to come to find a brief escape
and undisturbed meditate
in hopes that i might generate
a verse you would appreciate
but i can’t seem to concentrate
with all this hairy PDA