Four poems
Four poems
Death and Money in Dialogue
One cannot serve both God and you, it's said.
You hold yourself quite high to believe your service serves the One.
It does not always, but fear of me resembles fear of Him, as destinies resemble origins.
All men will see you, but not all will meet me.
All die but not all die well.
Tis harder to gain me than find you. To you, men shout "not today." To me, they sigh "one day."
You have not their heart's fear as do I.
Their fear is losing me. What happens upon meeting you is told and believed in old tales. What happens after losing me is the darkest mystery of earthly life.
Meditation on me produces all manner of works: grand and kind or base and pitiless.
Men begin to meditate on me and find themselves unable to meditate on ought else.
You control only they who love you, none else.
The world needs me and hates you.
They only hate me who have never known me.
They who know me not crave my sweetness; Those who know me love my bitterness.
Those who know me not believe me bitter, but my true tasters discover me sweet.
To the puppeteer
A great mystery: Why did Jesus bother praying?
A lesser mystery: Why do I?
Soliloquizing on mind's barest stage,
Pleading with my mimic—
Like one puppet to another.
My own words repeated back,
Gaining feedback so loud
That mistakes are assured.
A jester will bear no responsibility
For japes spoke from his motley hand,
But a puppet holds no accountability
For its speakers misfortunes.
When the puppet is right, then glory be;
When the puppet is wrong,
Mere confusion clouded our faculties.
Either way, the puppet may hide
Behind curtains where I cannot stay.
The puppetmaster may sit majestic on his throne,
But that place sounds very far
From the pranks I play on myself.
Only in Theaters
Every person builds their life
Mesmerized under one event
That either never will happen
Or never won't.
In the mind's theater, it's a blockbuster—
And, like every art in our age of re-production,
The photography and cuts are perfect and final,
And the actors never alter their lines.
Circle one date by which this film will take place,
And gasp at the plot twist when it does not.
Or, find the date when that film never happened,
And yell at the thrill of learning it did.
And, if neither technique rewrites your script,
Crack yourself open a cold, bitter draft,
And enjoy every minute until those credits roll.
The Cornerman
The bell breathes for me.
I sit and I wait for him here.
My soul speaks to me.
He wants to help me fight for my life.
My soul pushes my blood back in,
Treating wounds I couldn't notice.
I need him to help me become who I am.
And he needs me to fight and keep fighting.
My soul speaks to me of perfection,
Words I forget nearly instantly.
I can barely hear him—
My heart and my breath compete for attention.
But every word I can hold and remember
Is another strike towards triumph.
My soul is a part of me.
He tells me to stand.
The fight will go on.