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I went to the MoMA last Tuesday and had what can best be referred to as a religious experience. This is what I wrote about it. ♥ EAB

Transubstantiation

It’s underneath your heels, pushing you forward,
the breath of a whisper against your neck,
the tipping after the tap of your footfalls on the pavement.
You can feel Its hints within everything—
the alignment of the stars,
the engineer’s placement of protective orbs,
the deliberate care of a pencil stroke,
the line of limbs’ grace against negative space,
the brushstrokes that translated a drawn out Hallelujah
from oils and flat pigments.

Its coolness stalks you,
first appearing as goose bumps on your bare flesh.
Everything must stand to take notice,
you see, for when It comes,
you will know knowing.

Your strides shorten.
A guard stands watch before an homage
to beauty within terror,
and an angel overtakes him.
He smiles back, knowingly,
and softly singing sacred words
that find ballast within the curls of a melody,
the entire room is transformed into a temple, a cathedral,
where silent awe—pooling, swirling, rising, crashing—
overflows from the faithful
and into deep, empty wells the faithless,
and It steps out from a spot beneath your shadow to announce,
“I am HERE. I am EVERYWHERE.
I have always been EVERYWHERE.”

…and now for something completely unrelated to all things concerning Ministers of Grace.

These are two poems composed relatively recently that I need to release. I’m currently creating some much-needed space in my mentalemotionalspiritual closet, and it just won’t do, having these in taking up the floor in there.

♥ EAB

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Written in November 2012, this poem has a regular rhyme and an appreciable meter and/or rhythm, depending on which hairs you’d like to split. I entered this in a couple of contests and didn’t win. Boo.

Muñeca

Gripping the lip of the sidewalk,
tipped after the trip and shoved,
look closely: it’s there, thrown out,
but know it was once well loved.

There’s an old darkened mark from its maker
in the hollow of its left upper arm,
and it proves to be blue antithesis
to the rage of new bloodstains’ alarm.

Fresh scrapes on its hands and feet weep
with infection’s deadlier vouch,
and the wind and the elements frost
all its edges with tremble and slouch.

Its pretty dress panels are dusty,
with its precious seams torn wide,
bony fingers are clamped over wounds
holding on to its delicate insides.

The distress of its threads blast agape,
its thin hair is speckled with dross,
and the brittle feathers of crushed leaves
press defeat into its skin’s gloss.

Its sour mouth is open and hungry
and muted by the toothless disgrace
from the idling engines of indecision
that blare their exhaust in its face.

No one can hear its dim whimper
to be let past the gates of disuse,
far from where time is no ally
and away from a sunbroken truce,
where nightmares came to call on a bluff,
where “I love you” just wasn’t enough.

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Written in April 2013, this poem’s largely irregular—forgiveness doesn’t always feel natural, does it?—save the increase in the number of lines per stanza aside from the internal confession. 

Forgiveness

Enfolded in lace and linen, I accept your gift
and return my right to paint you with greasy, blameful colors.
It’s your privilege now to declare your shame to the world,
if you should ever want to.

Franciscan bedrock never put springs beneath my feet,
but oh, I’d tried to make it home for you.
I lit votives and made nice with all the saints and angels,
and I’d hoped that in such blessèd company,
you’d see you loved dearly me, too.

Photographs, mementos, well-intentioned words:
illuminated consideration now bestows the insight
that I’d stitched my wagon’s reins
to your papery cut-out star.
You’d planned our journey with a broken astrolabe,
and I got lovingly lost in your shadow of the Milky Way.

You were a gift, my gift, my bellississimo.
I thank you for letting me love you
without receiving your love in return,
for in doing so, you taught me how to love better, how to forgive.

My wound’s character has changed, so I weep for you now,
that you pour dust over clearly marked paths,
that you don’t hear the math in the music,
that you can’t know the serenity of the astronaut
who dares to glimpse the whole world beneath his feet
and let his senses capsize when he comprehends
his tiny place in it.

Raggedy windmill sails,
dried-up bottles of bubble soap with bent wands,
delicately packed toys that your children might never love,
punched out drum heads, recycled regrets:
I embrace my station in your history’s never-visited curio shelves,
beyond the displays where you rearrange someone else’s amplified dreams,
where you hide the things whose beauty you cannot bear.
I claim the right to grant you the peace you seek.

I cancel all your debts.

I sincerely forgive you.