Shadows provide shade and shelter, mine to my son   just till he’s ready to unzip middle-school pajamas and soar into the sun.   Night holds future bodies still, revealing what’s inside,   peeling the last curl of humility that laughs from a ripe insecurity, called pride,   spilling secrets tightly coiled in the nucleus…

Open your eyes.

See the bioluminescence,

ascending rhythmically

up,

up

from the abyss,

or God’s firework show

descending hazily

down,

down

in dancing waves of light,

the Holy Grail of sky watching,

the aurora borealis,

the northern lights.

We need to hear and heed this NOW more than EVER! Be kind. Be understanding. People are fragile, whether they show it or not. Learn to recognize the frightened child in everyone by listening rather than speaking. Just as you were when you were a child—afraid of failure—you will undoubtedly be tempted as an adult…

Former political debaters

and Facebook haters

sheath their swords

of “cancellation”

and get the ultimate do-over,

a hard-drive scrub,

the perfect social media experimentation.

The sin particle,

an element

before the elements

of the Periodic Table.

An irritation

to the core

that makes it unstable

like uranium or plutonium,

an existential explosion

with the biblical force

of 100 Noachian floods

unlike the God particle

of infinite glory

that pre-existed the lies

that traumatize

the innocent child

at the beginning

of every story.

If words are a bubbling brook

above the geyser of our hearts,

they’re poised

to say something about

the nature of our spirituality—

a disjointed but shared reality—

seeking comfort

in the womb of bad religion.

A carcass with a pulse,

a miracle dipped in myrrh,

perfumed a Jewish beard

and consecrated a blameless soul…

This poem is for all of us,
horse lovers,
who feel that horses
make the world
a better place.

This world is so unfriendly and unkind.   How’s a teenager with Zeus’s ADHD, the rage of Achilles and the passion of Paris supposed to survive the suburban hostility of drive-by bullets of bullying and cliques of cruelty with privileged popularity without losing his mind?   If you want to get to know me then…

Sometimes monsters

of our own making

show up relentlessly

until we look introspectively

at the mess we’ve made

when we’ve felt incarcerated

without the possibility of parole

as both our own judge and jury.