( I think I've been reading too much Eliot. This is a piece I might take to SPU's workshop. Any thoughts are welcome, all 3 of you blog-readers. )
May 21st, 2011
Well, that dream bled out
with a tick of the clock, to
a soundtrack of maniacal snickers
and stifled sighs of secret relief.
Cementing a place among
our litany of
crack-job prophet jokes.
What now? A man’s shout
at the timid believer clutching his red suitcase
tears through the dank
Times Square Air.
Out of the rain, in the red booth.
I blow on my miso soup
Creating stippled cosmos, a swirling galaxy of perforated
Tofu. With the wind of my lungs, on the surface
I bequeath life, and feel my whole living self sink the red seat,
across from a man I love,
who is sipping green tea and staring at the rain.
I take his flesh-and-blood hand, to feel it,
And watch the news play on the TV screen.
Where is your God now? A jeerer
calls, probably not meaning
to echo anything.
Everyone’s thrilled
at faith’s fall. Yes, it was a stupid
faith
Still this man
packed a change of clothes,
chewed his cereal, caressed it, one precious last use of jaws predestined
to vanish soon.
He agreed to the cameras
believed the way few believe, told the crew,
I am blessed, I am, indeed.
If I were God,
I would have broken my silence
broken down at
the sad, naive hope of
such easy escape.
I cool my soup, watch the worlds spin.
A tiny world that can
begin and end, in time.
I wonder how God loves
him, all of us,
in our existence
in our stupidity.
