The Ruined

They would like to view themselves

as black holes, collapsed giants

bending the moral fabric

of space with a gravity

greater than before their fall.

But compared to the real Sun,

they are burnt-brown wisps of smoke

that float upward from candles,

writhe, warp, and then dissipate.

Alien Child

Beholding the baby, you could not see yourself

in him. He had his mother's flesh and form, but none

of you: a hybrid of your wife plus something else,

something indecipherable that struck you dumb.

And as he grew, his face grew more foreign to you:

inexplicable expressions, pure smiles, pure frowns,

eyes imbibing all things, as if visiting new

planets in each poor corner of his run-down town.

And as he grew, his faith grew more native in you:

you found comfort in his otherness, in this cross

between your woman and her lover—now in view

as your love too—and in his freedom from your flaws.

I Am Sinai

My stones are smeared with mud and slime,

my slopes worn down with wind and rain,

my summit dark with dirt and grime,

                        

but burning shrubs declare His name

and prophets dwell within my caves

when God descends on me in flames,

and as His flames roar and crackle,

smoke like incense hides His presence,

making me His tabernacle.

Inside the Vacant Tabernacle

Wombs emptied too soon

like homes beneath the Quabbin—

a water-filled wound.

Stepping out of the Cinema

“It’s funny how the colors of the real world only seem really real when you viddy them on the screen.”

                                    - A Clockwork Orange

The daylight saturates my sight

and I blink the blackness from my eyes,

before which the world transfigures:

the colors quicken, high definition,

as if the screen has wrapped around the sky

while shadows stretch away from the sun,

and the CGI seeps into towered clouds

too tinted with sci-fi tones to be real,

impossibly piled and ready to topple.

Driving home on a riverside road,

I see cars glide by, movements now smooth

as liquid crystal in seamless cinematography.

I score my drive to swelling melodies,

turning through curves to the rhythm

of strings that sweep like summer winds.

So earth, man, machine collaborate,

colors bleed from creation to Creation,

and sounds mix in enfleshed imagination.

And so the city projects its dreams

onto nature’s green and golden screen,

light dancing with light in the moviegoing rite.

Camouflage

To cheat death, blend in with him:

ingest death disguised as bread,

filling your flesh with his flesh.

Master and Apprentice (Childhood of Christ by Gerard van Honthorst)

Outside the sphere of candlelight,

outside the scrape of saw on wood,

outside the workshop’s walls,

a black and silent night.

Outside his focus on his father’s hands,

outside the sanding and hammering,

outside the pauses of appraisal,

a sightless sleeping night.

Inside with spirit spectators,

inside their songs, hushed and awed,

inside the home where heaven watched,

a night when man taught God.

Dedicated to my mentors: Professor Neal Shipley and Bishop Arthur Kennedy

Nexus

Where is the crux of time’s continuum,

the terminal of every wormhole?

Where do all spirits, whether luminous

or ruined, converge in a whirlwind?

Lost in the swirl of wings and fiery eyes,

both tweakers and time travelers end their trips there.

All bullets break through space’s barriers

and burrow in the marrow of the man there.

Rippling through space and time,

all prayers reach there and finally rhyme.

At the core of contradiction,

the sign of perpendicular lines,

lies the site where all sacrifices unite.

Empty Rooms

In the hush before the exhale,

the apparent emptiness of lungs

actually saturated with air and life,

whispers sneak out of the silence,

converge, and await their birth as words.

Other vacant spaces shush in expectation:

starved stomachs, aborted bellies’ absences,

empty rooms, derelict ships, deserted tombs,

old battlefields with blood dissolved to dirt,

prisons that could not contain apostles

aided by angels typically invisible,

and the Good Friday tabernacle—

not inhabited, not abandoned,

but a haunted, hallowed box.

And these words cannot confine you;

you refuse to conform to their content

or disfigure yourself to fit their form.

Still, they transfigure in the stillness

of their seemingly hollow syllables,

conveying the echo of the voice

that called forth Creation in the void.

Failed Fatima

After the sun danced, it limped

to Portuguese Provincetown,

refracted into rainbows,

and fragmented into sparks,

which settled in people’s hearts

and claimed to be complete stars.

Now we worship broken light,

but soon our prayers will sputter

and our dead flesh will shudder

as residual rays fade

and the cold black hole appears.

We will then condemn the times

when we banished from our minds

the disappearing children,

the dwindling laughs of babies,

and the ever-dimming days.