IMPERFECT OFFERING

          The better the singer’s voice, 

          the harder it is to believe 

          what they’re saying.

               -David Byrne, Stop Making Sense  

Manna is prone 

to mealworms 

or mold; iridescence 

heralds both 

fever and death. 

As any city 

pigeon knows:

freedom’s wings 

may come 

stapled to rats—and 

Eden’s fruit is filled 

with pith—still, 

gutters grant quick

baptismal baths, 

and you do not need 

to sing the beautiful

for the sound you 

make to be the truth.

YOU COULD BE MISTAKEN

Jonah too at first
thought he was large.

Or perhaps it was
the opposite: too slight
to get swallowed.

Is there such a thing
as an ordinary vision?

You have heard hatred’s 

trochees marching 

lockstep in your sleep

and seen the herringbone 

marks of large 

teeth on your arm

with no idea how 

they got there. Maybe 

right versus wrong 

is charade. Maybe it's simpler: 

if you parade around acting 

well-fed and not limping,

you too will be followed. 

Or maybe you were made
to stay in one place and shine

like the sun—the only thing 

in this preposterous universe

too plain to need a name.

WALKING AFTER JESUS

Crush a rose

with your heel

if you want. Still 

it will bless

your foot

with its scent.

WHY I STILL WRITE

A lighthouse doesn’t 

cry out

or run 

all around 

the island's coast;

it just keeps 

repeating the one 

thing it does

and hopefully 

helps a few boats.

LAWS OF INERTIA

Never mind romantic notions

of agape and eros;

there are two kinds of love 

we the stricken know of:

the one we’re so stuffed with

it billows from our pores like magic—

at night we can barely 

shut our eyes

and each caress and kiss
feels tantric—and of course

the next-morning kind

which we walk around so light on

that every time we take
a step, it’s like 

we glide 

into oncoming traffic.

ORDINARY DREAM

Dreamt I built myself a temple 

from what I could steal 

from the ruins of old temples—

and the only
change I made
to the pile

was to hose
the rubble down
for a while,

just to get some of the holy off

and make it a little
more run-of-the-mill.

ON THE SEVENTH DAY, GOD RESTED

And lo, only after growing tired 

of carrying out the legislation 

of his own delight did he discover

that the greatest pleasure in creation
is solitude and isolation. O, to put 

down the phone, he thought. 

O, to be left alone 

to be a recluse. And now, 

having been made in his image, 

so it must go with all of us. 

For is not the point of our lives 

a sharp end 

when our loneliness no longer 

makes us feel small—and, turns out, 

never did at all?

 
All along, in fact, it brought us 

closer to omnipotence. 

Like the sunflower

teaching the galaxy how to swirl, it 

made us feel simply enormous 

with excuses.