Give me Narnia or 

Give me the Wild Lands of the North. 

Give me Aslan or 

Give me the White Witch

and her black dwarfs.

Everybody knows that the dice are loaded
Everybody rolls with their fingers crossed
Everybody knows the war is over
Everybody knows the good guys lost
Everybody knows the fight was fixed
The poor stay poor, the rich get rich
That’s how it goes
Everybody knows

A curl within a curl within a curl ad infinitum.   A turquoise fractal with salty skin and a wicked tongue.   The golden ratio— multiplying itself in eternal swirls— a pillow for Poseidon.   I stare out at the horizon, blue walls of hydrogen and oxygen molecules holding hands   as I listen with…

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.

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.