My Words Like Armor

My Words Like Armor

(“But Jesus told them, ‘He wrote this command for you because of the hardness of your hearts.’” Mark 10:5)

I wear my words like armor,
I look for loopholes in yours.
Starting from the middle I can
slide down the slopes from north or south;
I can believe I am above it all.

Or, if someone talks out loud, I can
nod occasionally, I can mumble famously,
and leave them thinking I have heard
every word.
They may even think, though I would not admit it,
that I agree.
I do not.

How many years does it take to lay down my shield,
how many decades to reshape the form that held all
I believed.
I sealed up all the cracks and the darkness stayed inside;
the light could not find me. And you thought,
like all the rest,
that I was at my best when talking about God.

I disagree. My metaphors are misanthropes,
hindered hopes that sit at the base of my spine.
Every opinion I’ve ever heard has been mine
until
I heard a love that was more solid than
the poetry I created. I cannot define it,
I can barely describe it, but there is a WE
that exists in the midst of everything. My
theories only keep you at arm’s length anyway.

My fingers are calloused but my thoughts are mindless,
my progress is timeless and the cure I was offered
only tied me in knots. But I’ll sit with you here
as long as it takes to untie the kindness we had
at the start.