The Universe a boy with
Feminine hands makes of our
Embraces an enthusiastic
Dogpile somehow straddling both
Our backs at once starry robes
Flung open
Laughing
Light as ether
-M.
Category: God Poems
Who Am I, God, in the Order of Things?
When the angel comes
Will I know to step back
Will I have love
Or will I have lack?
-M.
All Dizzy Things
The Star is the center. All
Things revolve around it—the
Room, dimly lit—the flashing
Optics—gilded mirrors that
Turn on time—doors pulling
Themselves open and closed—
Gears, wheels, sprockets,
Springs—gods, humanity—
All dizzy things.
-M.
I Dreamed of Sacred Orange Trees Last Night and Want to Make More of It than It Is
Squeezing for juice the
Oranges of the gods sounds
Like a holy testicle trap
A love so large
Deity by the balls
Happens. Praise the gods
And pass the juice glass.
Mercy is a soft hand and
Goes both ways.
-M.
The Star
Is he the black dog in the night when
it’s noon and all the lights are on,
or is he the star around which
noon and all the light revolves. To know
him with bare eyes is blindness. We see
him once, poorly, and never anything again
but the flash burned into our corneas—
the red, the lightening purple, the terrible
white. The half memory our only light.
And he would still not be
black dog in the night,
nor black dog at noon.
He would still be the light itself
and we irreversible, starless, dying.
-M.
Tick Tick Tick
Father Time is the G-rated
Version of the voracious
God who ate his children.
Father Time taps his
Tick-tock at me gently
Sighs, smiles, shrugs and
Smooths his lustrous beard.
The voracious god, belly
Full of children
Looks me up and down and
Makes rude comments about
How my tits used to be higher.
I trust this god more.
Our relationship is complicated.
When he leans in for a kiss
His breath stinks like children
And it gets my childless womb
All in an uproar.
I kiss him back anyway. I kiss
Him passionately until his
Breath stinks like safe sex,
Guiltless liquor on weeknights, and
A liberation I’m not even sure
I believe in. It makes him gag
And vomit up his precious children.
-M.
I’m All Wet Anyway
I am suggestible unembracing
my suggestibility without
context often getting my nose
stuck in best-selling
books on god—a new
understanding every day an
oracle in chapter-long
spurts until Heaven
gets too drippy and
I find myself
all wet.
-M.
(Day 1 of my 66 Day Poetry Habit, Take Two)
Mending
A baby blanket the size of
A grown woman’s
Bed—the grown woman
Lying in her god’s lap in
Pain
They go to the bathroom
Together one of those
Weird couples who go to
The bathroom together
Because
She cannot walk or stand on
Her own
Or sit or lie or do
Any other thing on
Her own when that
Pain comes to take
Its tax
Oh my god I’m in
Agony
The Great Destroyer we
Don’t believe in together has
Wrapped me skin and
Bone in thick veils of
Agony
Her god offers her a bit of
Cookie and promises her
This bit of cookie the
First food she’s eaten in
A day
Will be the pleasure of
A prayer
And not make her
Sick it’s a big promise—a
Promise only a great god
Has the heart to make
And keep
-M.
(Day 21 of my 66 Day Poetry Habit. Three weeks! Three weeks on a bit of a sad note, but three weeks nonetheless. I wasn’t going to write today. I thought I needed another P day, but I’m glad I sat down with my book and did it anyway. It’s always better to write than not to write. How often we need that reminder.)
Blessed
Safe in his hundred arms
Enfolded we sweat away
My freedom hearts as
One ticking thing a
Lifetime of un-spread wings
This poem is unfair
To a god who loves me truly
Enough to cut off my
Oxygen sometimes
-M.
(Day 20 of my 66 Day Poetry Habit. For those of you following along, yesterday was actually day 20, but I had to take a P day for personal reasons. Nothing like getting back up on that horse with a little of the good old god-angst. I hope everybody has a great weekend.)
Victory Athena
Jaw set
Gray eyes clear
Seated at a loom
In an officer’s tent
One battle
One pass
One well-placed blow
Nike woven in gold
-M.
(Day 19 of my 66 Day Poetry Habit. I’m not going to lie, you guys: today’s poem sucks. Sincere apologies to Athena. As bad as the poem is, I think she might appreciate at least the fighting spirit. I feel like absolute hell but I AM going to make this 66 days. Write a sucky poem. Live to poem another day.)
