Why do we trap god in a pit Or pickle god in a glass? Why do we think of GOD as a man In paintings, in print, in brass? GOD is not human, she said to me, god is the spaces between God is the gravity well, the bee, GoD is electric: the Queen. If you scraped all the good from human hearts And somehow measured its sheen that’d be the shadow, a whisper of god just flameless gasoline. God is remove your sandals NOW And slap those feet on the ground The creation of flesh, who works the plow Struck dumb, ambered in sound. The sum of every genius thought The joy of every glowing heart The power of every pent-up watt The counter and the counterpart. You burn your sandals now and pray Let god unknot the macramé.
Month: November 2017
mariana to everest
How can I take in Mariana to Everest And battle Time, when she thinks she’s the cleverest? Here’s a curled-up baby, damp and crying Blinking with its black eyes at the room Every eyelash, fingernail complying With the human blueprint from the womb. Here’s a wrinkled shell, her soul still beating Even after AIDS has gnawed her flesh How to live when all of life is fleeting? How to age, when birth appears so fresh? How to love, when lovers die tomorrow? How to rage, when justice walks away? How to grieve when tears don’t lessen sorrow? How to see the weave within the fray? We must follow creature intuition What humans did before we managed fire We must understand another being’s condition And do our best to give what they require. We serve our human sisters and our brothers We cannot always choose their paths through mortal night Touched by the ancient calling: healing others It’s enough to lend our steady beams of light.
mother
I spread myself out and melt into the grass Becoming the blades of translucent sun-glass I am the bubbling under the stream The salmon that fall through acrylic and steam I melt underneath and become beetle shells The nettles the splinters the crunch and the wells The hollow and echo and ghost through the trees Breathing the waters and rustling the leaves I am the sky now, the moon-clouded sun The breath in your lungs and the drum of your run I am the skin holding blood to your chest I am the dewdrops on pinecones undressed I am the rock rolling up silver hills To generate forest from butterfly frills. I am the scraping of birdsong at eve The kisses of lava on saltwater frieze I am the washing of particled stones The salt-weed and sea moss and ocean-bleached bones I am the jungle infusing exploding I am the tundra diffusing unloading I am the depths of sulfurous sea valleys Crabs spidering through my Riftia alleys I am the heights of the quartz-weighted peak Lighter than air where peregrines seek In one slip of time, with a reach of my toes A stretch of my hips and scuff of my nose I reach out to space with the tips of my hair – Come talk with me, child; you’re under my care.
[Featured Image: Among the Sierra Nevada Mountains by Albert Bierstadt]
balladrael 
