Twelve Star Crown

Foothills of the Rockies on the edge of spring.

Driving through for two days, under an endless

blue sky and beneath stars unnumbered,

and with Revelation on CD, over and over and over.

The Red Dragon is up there in the sky, and The Woman

has those twelve stars on her crown, and I see her running

and I see angels wings grow to take her to safety, and I see

that her Son will be born, and maybe he will wipe away our tears,

and wipe away the ones I’ve cried over you.

It feels like the end of time, and what does losing you matter,

when The Red Dragon is paying off his legions with hate to come

for all the broken and under the heel, and we’re on opposite sides,

but we both saying we’re fighting with angels, but my love, my love,

you carry a gun and hold the hand of the one that Mocks Your God.

The wind is bitter still, and I can’t let it throttle the beleaguered light,

let it blow out all the love I have for this world, or for you, still, still.

If you worshipped a God of Love, why did you side with the monsters

who demean and degrade and speak of Faith through gritted teeth

and clenched fists? Are we not all His Children? Are we not all one blood?

The flood didn’t take The Woman, may tender hearts swallow up the deluge,

and may there be a glowing city one day, no more night, only the warmest light,

and all this pain and hurt and hate and sorrow be wiped away, as we are children

again, living forever, clean and whole. You turned your back on me, turned me away,

but I want to see you there, without the burning hate. I want to hold your hand in the sun.

Ever Tender Light

She walks in the blue shimmering light of the aquarium.

Muted and soft, wavering over her, softening dark eyes.

Dance of shadow on jacket slits for her lost angel wings.

We watch the mermaid show among enraptured children.

Bright tails and otherworldly smiles and crowns of gold hair.

The children can touch the world beyond the water; Heaven.

We feed the rays, and she remembers her first emanation,

when God took her by the hand to show her all of His creation.

She remembers how she’d spent a sweet eternity lost at sea.

We sit watching various creatures swim and look curiously

into the blue, vibrant and hushed blue, like His ever tender light.

She takes my hand in hers, whisper those words that answer birth.

Fighting Chance

Israel, late summer, the sun going to the underworld,

the stars coming out, night sentries in service of their mother,

the moon.

She is walking barefoot on stones, my wife, whom I knew

too early, but now we are one, and we are holy again,

and she is with child.

A pool of water, not yet gone in the bright and hot sun,

I dip my hands into the pool, and I wash her feet,

and kiss her toes, and stoop myself to her.

I thin lift up her shirt to show her belly, where, just beginning,

our child is taking form, the new angel come to the world

we have made, to make it anew themselves as they grow.

I make the bars of the cross with this water, make the sign

of our Christ on her flesh, to protect her, to protect us,

to bless us as we fall towards heaven.

The sky is dark, and the stars whisper they’ll show the way.

We walk on sands and stone back to Jerusalem, hand in hand,

made new again, Adam and Eve given a fighting chance.

Dead of Night, Almost Christmas

Dead of night, almost Christmas,

when The Messiah was born.

Scripture said, the angels announced

to the shepherds: “Come and see!”

And here I am, out in the night,

with nowhere to go that’s safe,

drinking fast food iced tea,

in a parking light of an all night store.

The lurid lights, the phony cheer,

the talk of brotherhood that’s empty,

when the world’s burning and God

is invoked to put the weak upon the fire.

Tax collectors, prostitutes, lepers,

the sinful and fallen and left behind.

Those He touched, He healed, He sought out.

The ones like those here, are left to burn.

The say He was born in a stable, laid upon

the manger, a humble child, poor family.

On the run soon after, a stranger in the world.

A poor prophet, executed for his powerful words.

His children yell: “It’s Merry Christmas asshole!”

and lose their shit over coffee cups, petty ass shit.

So lost, so angry, and I almost turn away forever,

but I remember the love I feel, touching His face.

He came for me, for us broken, left behind.

Now, will He chase poison from powerful souls?