me: "i wish i could be eloquent."

cynicism: "eloquence is just a sad, sad state of denial."

me: "denial doesn't sound so bad."

cynicism: "hah! you poor boy. even denial is futile."

me: "i guess it just depends what you're denying."

Jesus Christ: "If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me."

---

a pulse of velvet fury,
shaken out like a rug
in my bloodstream,
walloping the daylight.
what drips when
red icicles melt?
Golgotha 5-star resort,
with in-room Jacuzzi,
cherry woodwork, and
free wine on the rack.
ring if you need anything,
or if that doesn’t work
pray earnestly,
someone will hear.
carpets eat pieces of dust
like us for breakfast.
dust is pieces of us.

---

cracked skin like a desert
for me to wander in,
and it’s just a sign
of your strength,
built up through hurt after hurt.
sliced through with joy
at the sight of your boy
no longer at arm’s length.

so you’ve got a callous, a desert?
well there’s a river wet enough
(wide enough, deep enough).
if you want to feel
then dive into that flow.
you’d never expect this wetness.

---

we’re mere inches--a slight sway-
from the place where all shades
and depths are washed away.
less than seconds from the day
when all lines and curves will fail,
leaving only words we could never say.

---

such a bright Word in such a dark world,
writing a sentence atop a hill.
the sentence forms a poem,
and the poem spells hope-
and hope will carve us each
into letters in that Word.

---

let’s hang out tonight.
we’ll slice through colored sheets of glass,
and install the windows in our cathedral.

we’ll plant a garden in your bed,
pulling dirt about your head,
and watching roses grow.
watching roses grow.

---

if i could lightly brush your hand,
that would be more passion than my mere body could contain.
or if i could kiss your bitter pain,
then both our stony hearts would melt to sand--
to sand, and then in sweltering heat,
our lips and hands and chests would turn to glass.
and if in a while all heat must pass,
still our glassy hearts will hold our tired feet.

---

i saw the flash of her eye
sweep by me
like a subway on a dark night.
and when she had passed
my arms turned to glass,
just waiting, waiting for reflection.

i felt the strands of liberty
sweep over me.
i could’ve been a littered street
the way my dust and trash
were brushed away at last--
and then as she came walking my direction.

---

speaking of cliché’,
i feel like i’m dying.
it’s no homicide,
more of a day by day
process.

when i wake in the morning
and know every word i say
will be more shit than clay,
when i anticipate plush singing
crosses.

i claim to have no claim
on things even legally mine.
“i owe no allegiance to my spine...
as long as you give me tame
crosses.”

how i prove my clinging
when i claim to want
to walk on water--
but insist on bringing
galoshes.

---

i dropped my face in the mud,
not realizing that all i am is mud.
it fell out of my hand
like a photograph of my lover
when she is standing before me.
i tried to spend myself
like a fake dollar bill.
you just glanced and knew my scheme and--
smiled?
you make all things new.
yes, and real.
you make sunshine
for the things i try to reveal
with flashlights.

---