words of faith

"I would die for you"
echoes down cavernous thoughts

I heard that if you knew God
he'll whisper in your ear
in just such a way
that you'd have no choice
but go insane

once, someone laid his son out
and offered him up to God
but why would God ask?

when you look at me
the vacancy behind your words
turns the walls yellow

maybe dying for me is too easy
as you put yourself on that table
expecting blood like rain

maybe living is the real test
in its ambiguous fullness

"I would live for you"
makes me ache and turns time
into walnut trees
littering the ground

maybe living is enough
and we should speak such things
only when absolutely necessary

words - for better or worse
are acts of war

for better or worse
words are all we have

Eastward Wind

each morning the wind sweeps in from the west
as I drive down the highway I can feel it
pushing me up the road in the emerging light

I've come to count on it
plastered streaks of cold
as I rush to start my car

each morning as you watch me leave
a look of distress overtakes you

but each morning you can count on me
to get carried off by the same wind

the velvet strings of existence
grappling me

I know meaning only

in my struggle

the word *enough* measures me

into small pieces

quietly falling
back in

don't listen for anything
but the wind cresting
the valley and emerging
from my chest

let the silences that fall

between
feel comforting in familiary

let expansive nothingness
careen off the smallest shelves
enveloping the largest mountains
swooping guillotine swipes
tap history divinity into hemispheres
reason and emotion's seasons
seas on forgotten lands sway
wayward but seasoned by time

let nothingness expand
swelling melons explode extreme
filling rooms with strange smells
I thought I smelled this before
but this time they're synthetic
men in hazmat suits built them
when nothingness swept in
recreating nothing from obliteration

but nothing remains unexpanded
I've expanded inflating fat like God
like the emptiness atween emptiness
infinite and immeasurable

yet my body is solid
and aches each morning
the cold wind stings my face
but it reminds me I'm alive
which is somehow just enough

Stepping In

words swelter in my mouth
because I don't like the sound
my voice drags driftnets
some strange need to talk

looking in others homes
is an erotic experience
I find living is a mystery
and speak to your possessions

your year-round christmas lights
punkrock bed without bedsprings
yet delicate and neat like
you know how to sleep

and you do know how
dreaming vivid motions
fragmented and connected
life-like continuity

the eternal Hallo-mas
holidays collided fragments
creating new hallowed rites
and when we dream we

dream big

the words continued flowing
like a comfortable stream
I could have told you

I was a magnificant perv
and still felt safe

but I'm not so magnificant
I'm your run-of-the-mill
20-something perv who wants
nothing but an end to emptiness

then you asked me about love
and I answered definitively
like I somehow knew anything
beyond the weight of responsibily

but I can accept my condition
I embrace the strange ennui
wrapping my ankles and speading
up my body like a snake

and small smiles incanted
with unnamed thoughts echoing
in the empty space between us
helps me find something

to believe

a lot like faith --

reaching

except I know for certain

what I am not
I've been told I look like Jesus
back when I had long hair

it is short now and I resemble
something that looks like a man
anonymous in the city
with too much nothing to hide