Of the Divine Mysteries (a prayer for understanding)

Day 4:  A poem about a religion you don't understand

Of the divine mysteries
of our forefathers' faith

We pray for understanding

Of the faith they hefted
like bundles of sugar cane

We pray for understanding

Of the pure white faith
like sacks of fresh picked cotton

We pray for understanding

Of the faith that kept us bound in isolation
with saws and axes in the forests

We pray for understanding.

For those who prayed to lay down their burdens
but never thought of putting down this one

We pray for understanding

For our blessed white savior
in the land of the olive skinned

We pray for understanding.

For hair of lambs wool to fall as feathers
on the shoulders of renaissance paintings

We pray for understanding

For the morning star and the angel of light
who turned out to be black

We pray for understanding

For a faith that demands obedience to authority
yet turns our ancestor spirits into demons

We pray for understanding

For a faith that turns its own forebears
into witchcraft and pagan devils

We pray for understanding

Of the mystery of being made in his image
but not worthy to question his design

We pray for understanding

Of an African cardinal
with a European mind

We pray for understanding

Of an American pope
who is wrong for loving

We pray for understanding

That 'America' is the child of
Europe's cruelty and New world innocence

We pray for understanding

For the difference between
Catholic, protestant, Anglican, and Adventist

We pray for understanding

Between Episcopalian, Pentecostal,
Rastafari and Baha'i

We pray for understanding

Of the ever broadening line between
Religion and Spirituality

We pray for understanding

Of what god the birds sing to
when they wake each morning

We pray for understanding

Of why I should not dance in church
when everything else in nature does

We pray for understanding

Of what makes Abraham's new God
better than any of the old ones.

We pray for understanding

Of what makes Abraham's old God
better than any of these new ones.

We pray for understanding

For the supreme knowledge
of taking knowledge with you

We pray for understanding

That despite what you might think
I can believe in several things at once

We pray for understanding

That any dissonance in my cognition
is the radio being tuned towards harmony

We pray for understanding

That my questions about your faith
does not make us enemies.

We pray for understanding

That I love you
and that's all there is to it

We pray for understanding

The Preferred Method of Writers

Day 3: A poem about how you wish to die

If it worked in prose for Virginia Wolf
And it worked in poetry for Eric Roach
When the calm, cool face one day gives me a wink
I'll read her my sappiest one yet, I should think.

Tired of Love Poems

read write prompt #83 « Read Write Poem isn't exactly the inspiration for this one, but it's what got me writing, so in a way they are responsible.

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Hearts dance on my sideboard.
On my bed head.
On my kitchen counter.
Hearts loiter in the bathroom sipping Mai Tais
Beside the porcelain swimming pool.
Hearts leave a disgusting, sanguine sheen
as evidence of their having been
on every usable surface in the house.

I am so sick of love poems.
I am so sick of having recently re-grown my heart
only to have it pound so fast and so hard
that it muscles through the bars on its cage
slumps down my shirt and onto the page,
greets the world with little arterial limbs,
and either immediately starts to dance
to the music of your memory or
Runs off through an open window or door
and gets lost in the street;
lost in so many different ways,
lost trying to get to wherever it is you've gone.

And I'm tired of dishonoring you
with a nightly seance involving me,
a bottle of rum, and a host of elated little blood pumps.
And the spirits we raise are only tricksters.
They're not you.
They smile too much and are happy too often
to really be you.
But still, I swallow their lies whole.
And I stay up all night long
wrapped in the warm fur of insincere memories
and remain thankful for the lack of acuity
that comes with the lack of sleep.

By the time your smile embarks
on its flaming course through the sky
I'm already tired.
I miss you.
But I'm tired of missing you.

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I might have a hard time convincing you that I never know what'll come out when I write, but you'll have to take my word for it when I say I didn't know what I was doing when I wrote this one. I mean, Wow. Who the fuck died, right?