An Experiment: More Than I Intended

 

An Experiment: More Than I Intended

(“And now I commend you to God and to the word of his grace, which is able to build you up…” Acts 20:32a)

He was waiting for the bars to open,
or maybe for the churches to close. It didn’t
matter much, the sounds were all the same.

He was watching the saxophone cry,
or maybe heard the sitar hum. It didn’t
matter much, the clouds all sang the same.

He had edited his life well, only his shadow
knew every line. He couldn’t shake the memory
that taunted him. His crimes were his own.

He laughed well when appropriate,
cried more often when alone. He would have
hugged more often, but his arms had slipped. He
stayed within the lines.

His mind and time ever reminded him of
the eyes that stared him down like he had stolen
the ice cream cone he
was licking on the bench while cast iron monks
sang hymns he knew by heart. The splinters and
cries of heresy
kept him captive for decades too long.
He only wanted to be known as
someone who needed people as much
as they seemed to need him.

He shivered every time the specters of back
alleys
and sandpaper pillows blew his disguise. He only
knew what he knew (which was nothing new)
but everyone else seemed to know so much more.

He never blamed the words or the music,
he never thought the fault fell at the feet of sparsity.
He knew he could grow into the shoes that hurt his
feet every step up the street or down the aisles of
fading carpet stained by old knees and new tears.

I would sign this short missive, verify it is about me,
but I fear you already know, and those who do not
will learn it from you who do. I once counted upon
the favor of friends (and some still embrace the slight
darkness they know of me)
but I cannot disclose any more than these
few verses and parables. If you knew

It would be only the slightest smile
from the one
and few
who knew more than the sum of my parts

That keeps me sane this long, this lonely and
winding style. I have

Written more than I intended. I have

Lived so secretly in my rented spaces
that, for the life of me,
I would be a hermit

If not for the tiniest flicker of grace that
studies me, feet to heart to face,
and leaves the doors open inside the taverns,
the churches, the schools where
we all gather blindly enraptured. Where
the grass grows and the stars utter the
Name

Full of holy erasure
and ragged embrace.