Get good at death
Practice it each night you go to sleep
My mentor rattled.
When death becomes a teacher
Death dies and Life is all that is left.
And he said that, just before he died.

//

Two ways to practice death
Morbidly- means because you hated life all along.
That is to choose death as better than life.
The other way is this poem.
//

Some are attracted to death like perfume
Just wanting to get out of this life like a fly in a web-trapped.
On the way, they tear and burn tear and yearn to feel the contours
Of their skin’s exit. The shape of their torn wings. Others
Stand patiently with death at their end
And live facing a backwards in thanks for each hour…
Ticking like a Hebrew clock…
Teaching them to number their days.
Even calling some laughter
Their lives read backwards become a praise song.

//
Shadow of a woman contour on a church steeple

just below which,
Someone is crying and being baptized professionally
Preachers smacking the book

worship team waiting in the wings to escalate things…..
I’m shaking in my front row seat—something has entered me.
Something has come down from the baptistry
And chilled my skin like a ghost at a haunted house

or that character in Amelie who in mask breaths on his love’s neck in the fun house

before this,.
I saw backstage, where the mics, communion treys, cups for communion, props of sanctity-the glory was there too.

Usually at this part of the service, they break to welcome visitors-

as kids we would always find “the candy lady”

who gave us all gum, smarties…we knew where the treasure was; but

this day was different. Missionaries were speaking about Africa

and people being raised from the dead……
I met the broken missionaries
And looked into their eyes.
I saw all the shadows, and still do
chose only
The Light.

I chose even then The Candy Lady’s kisses and smarties!

But they had been sanctified into bread and wine that day!

//
Live as if dying today
Ikuri says
It’s terminal
Everything is terminal
And the terminal is Light.
//
Buber saw
Everything
As relational.
How deeply we relate
Is the temple of The Living God.
//
I don’t believe me
Even when I pray
But when I shut up
God only hears
My true word.
What I said
When I was sleeping,
That is.
//
I watched enough of that movie
To know it by heart. Some art
Is like that, enter at any point of the river
And know the whole thing.
Like when you meet a stranger
And know their whole story.
//
America says back
We are making money
And buying new cars. I’m writing mystical poetry
About corralling stars
As a kid on my chipped red
Rocking horse,
I said to her
I’m writing mystical poetry again
I don’t need a new house
I need to find the one I’m in
I am a house with many rooms
Some of which I’ve never entered.
And America says back
I’ll be back at 5
Dinner is in the microwave
I’m taking one of those AI driverless cars
To the gym, see you at ten.
Ok, I’ll be here writing mystical poetry
And corralling the stars by then dear.

//

When Frank died
They found poems everywhere.
On receipts, horse tickets
Ball game stubs, gum wrappers
Fish tackle boxes, book sleeves
The guy couldn’t not write it all down
They had to call in the linguistic team
To clean the mess, and edit it.

//
You have enough footage to last you
For eternity son. Thanks God.
And enough words to make a sea or two.
//

On the artist’s desire to make at least one piece which contains their whole being:

“Hope to find a work that will accommodate all which I have felt.”
We hope to make one whole statement.
Something which embodies and gives skin
To our best sightings, best thoughts, feels, instances, glimpses….
We want to make a whole animal which can walk around forever.
On it’s own two feet.
And to make and draw blood from words.

//

“Hopelessness is where sin settles.”

//
The old man
Had to
Get one of
Those driverless cars
Or manless as he calls them.
If you want to take away someone’s manhood
Make his car driverless.
//
The old man had to get one. He had watched them driving by his house overnight. Cars with no men in them, with cameras everywhere. These driverless AI cars had taken over his city.Some were scared, others curious, some bold one, interactive. At first he had hated them. “How emasculating!” He said to his wife.
But then the accident happened, and he still wanted to go to work in his own car. After all, he was American! And cars are a right. It’s in the constitution under some amendment I’m sure.
So he did it. Broke down and got one from the new local factory, who traded trees for Teslas.
Now his car parallel parks better than he did.
But now he shows up to work, with his head slightly lowered having perfectly parked for the first time in his life. He knew everyone could tell the difference. His car was a better driver than he had ever been.
And one has to work with that feeling.
//
The laws of relationships require love.