A Little Poem

Little poem, rekindle my paling fires.
Tamp down the ashes bedding the hearth.
Drink from the nearest river. 

Little poem, put on your nine-league boots.
Reimagine the heights of summer.
Make what's salty sweet again. 

A little poem, you know the value of discretion.
A makeshift structure, you understand
each winter has its corresponding summer. 

Neither crucible nor cross, lend us a moment.
Fend off the storms and sow an allegory.
Tell us, again, about all God's monsters. 

Birthday

Born naked and alone.
Born under a placid moon
and smattering of planets.
Issuing cries of wonderment.
Grasping at air. 

Born with a mouthful of tears
into a profound mystery.
Born at sea level,
sky pushing down on me,
earth pulling hair, night
defiled with twinkle and gloom. 

Born between the hellfire
and the holy water.
In a world made wild
with intention and invention.
I was born beside a lake
in the year nine thousand.
Motherless, I was hatched
from the cosmic egg.
A new ghost. An angel's bell.

Born barefoot and running,
the silence audible.
The constellations had fled.
God was yelling.

Hellbent

Having once been dandled
on the knee of God
we hear a song tempered by flame.
Having played in the maze of days
our disappointment is lamentable,
our wine seasoned with syntax,
eternity intangible. 

In a house of sin and sorrow
you'd think your God was better than this,
mansions of light devolved into ruin,
the soul a tenement, a crackhouse,
a final stand in our confusion. 

Which is why we mill about,
gnawing the rag of a last hope,
pulling thorns out of our hair
and insisting they're roses.
Waiting for a dog-faced god
to spell the story of redemption.