The Next Person

The Next Person

I pulled it down from off the shelf and
almost had sticker shock.
But I had nothing in my pockets and
had nothing left to lose.
You should have heard the double
dose
I incurred by waiting so long to be
heard. I could have waited till the
stores had all closed to inspect
the empty way they made me feel.
I had enough money to start the day
but unforeseen fortune had scraped it
away.

I knew the pattern that started a half
a century ago. I could feel the peaks
and valleys
laughing at my need for mediocrity.
Could we just agree that the facts
did not add up to our expectations?

I once believed and now I’m agnostic;
I once performed casual exorcisms
in my living room. I first heard someone
calling for Grandfather and corrected their
theology.

Now I shopped for sparklets and hunted the
the aisles for new hues to paint the day.
I might purchase them with credit if I cannot
find a way to earn my keep. I’ll walk the
steep sidewalks like a penitent. I’ll stay
close to the ground.

I put it back on the shelf and left it for
the next person behind me.

Freedom is Nothing

Freedom is Nothing

(“And if the same person sins against you seven times a day and turns back to you seven times and says, ‘I repent,’ you must forgive.” Luke 17:4)

Freedom is nothing like the fortresses we build,
it is an open plain,
it is streams winding,
it is easy moments between noon and afternoon’s
breeze.
I’ll never excuse the hurts,
but I’ll forgive them.
And we can talk this Thursday evening
on the phone or on my deck.
We can unload the shipments of sludge
we’ve dug up from the past and
joke that we ever were all that serious.
Freedom is nothing like the theology we float,
it is God-in-us,
it is Christ forgiving,
it is the hardest labor between scars and therapy’s
change.
Nobody told us we could bottom out
so we didn’t talk for years.

I tried to revise the history,
I tried to say it never happened.
I wanted the day to transform the
memories that held my brain hostage.
You wanted to know there was nothing
left to be upset about. We wanted
freedom;

We wanted nothing more than untitled poetry
to hold us up between the storms. We could
laugh for ages
once we understood how mistaken we both had
been.

Freedom is nothing like the chronicles we read,
it is unrhymed poetry,
it is words waving,
it is written so well that the future can read it
like cuneiform characters in stone.