Little girl (I say to you)

Little girl (I say to you) wake up!
Your dream is a dream
is a lie. It will crack

much like the arctic:

cold ships and surprised passengers,

furry voyagers fully committed, to drifting

until they bail for safer pastures

and greener grass. In the arctic

mind you.

You will notice the

click, click,

of the fan you never fixed

with the screwdriver, lost,

(it is under the magazines, dog-eared

and unread)

and that the faces are featureless

as you wake up [alone] cold, [again],

the TV too far away to warm you.

setting bones.

I see him-

your Loneliness.

I've watched him cripple you

as he does the strongest

the bravest, courageous

independent men,

kings, daughters.

I am not excluded-

I am human, as are you;

that we've learned in our hours

(late, many, special, forgettable),

that we've learned about our Human Condition.

      There is no shame in that.

But if you follow him-

your Loneliness

(and men and kings and daughters do),

know that weary legs, heavy legs
are harder to heal than broken ones.

Indian Summers and Funeral Pyres

We revisited it

again and again
just to see what it would taste like.

How could we forget?

The blood from my chewed lip,

the watermelon that wasn't quite ripe,

the time you cheated on your math test
in Mrs Reynolds class

but got away with it,

and that pesto dish we cooked for your mom

the summer before she died.

        The tastes are so short lived.

The mix of saltiness, your sister's piano recital,

and the 4th of July fireworks get confused quickly

with the time we drove until the sun rose, Thanksgiving alone,

and the bay leaves I added because the chicken was boring.

We couldn't help but take another bite

wondering if it was as good as we remembered

or maybe as good as we imagined.  

What's in my Name?

I didn't have to linger long

before he picked me up

and put me in his lap.

When he stares at me I feels small:
I am a grain of sand looking out to the Atlantic
I am a lit match shining my brightest against the Pleiades

I am a lamb lost in the grandeur of the Tetons.

He smiled.
“I have a question.”
He knows when I have questions,

He always knows when I have questions.
He knows I always have questions.

“What does my name mean?

The baby books tell me it is Greek

and websites tell me that it means healer,

but I am neither;

What's my real name? My new one?

The one you made just for me, gave me,

that says you know me,

have known me, and will know me.

The name that says you know my character,

that you created and then changed me.
I want to know it as it's called again.

“You once named a deceitful man Israel because he wrestled with you,
and a mighty nation and King rose from it.
And You changed the names of a whore's children

and intimately loved them as 'pitied' and 'my people.'
Finally you renamed a righteous and confident man 'small'

and now the world reads his letters.

Will you use me? What is my new name?
I want to know it as it's called again

because I know that you've corrected it.”

Gimp handed poem

this is whar a porm written witha splinted
left hand looks like. the fingers are denired
their natural ranfge of motion, stoppied by a piece
of metal anfd foam that looks klike a surf wave.
typos mount and patience ebbs away with the
slloth-likr process. A promise not to use
the other haand or edit seems unwise at this point.
the one hand can obly reach so many digits
and the shift button at the same time
to acapitalize at the beginning of each sentence.
the clunjky device rakes down the keyboard,
holding the ctrl key when unneeded, and stripping off
the key between x and v. that'ss the last straw
and this expriment is done.

I found this from when I had my face busted and my arm hurt from that bike wreck. I don't know why I didn't publish it, I'm fairly amused by it. -Jason

Sleeping in Parking Lots

In my dream I drove to Chicago.
It’s a beautiful city, but I’ve been there before.
I’m not really sure what I was hoping for
maybe to find you there
maybe to forget you there
maybe I just wanted to drive.

On the way I was singing
Better is one day in Your courts
Better is one day in Your house
Better is one day in Your courts
than the thousand mistakes I’ve made.
And I remembered what Grace felt like.

When your Cadillac goes 91mph.

That’s the problem
with naming children after towns,
those ones that you put on your bucket list
but have never been to;
You’re going to have to bury them.
They will be fun and wonderful and romanticized and
they’ll die long before their time:
before their first birthday cake and third Christmas
before they stumble through the awkwardness of adolescence
even before you get to smell their wisps of hair
the supposed new born smell I’ve never experienced.
You should never have to bury your own kids,
but there they go RIP Florence
sometimes in quick succession RIP Bordeaux
and if you’re lucky RIP Hamilton
all at once.

I know that I didn’t die.
I’ve got the time to watch the clouds
to see these cities
to try and catch up with my ever growing list.
I’ve got the hours and the days and weeks
to rewrite all the verbs and nouns we were so proud of.
And one day I’ll stop naming kids
by putting pins in an oversized map.
One day I’ll meet Sade,
watch Micah eat his first birthday cake and help hang ornaments,
hold Mollie’s hand through boys and breakups,
smell Ezra’s wisps of hair.
And one day Talitha will push my boat out to sea.

Fickle Hearts

You are not just a footnote
in someone else’s book.
You have a story.
A story of your own.
A story I have written for you,
write for you,
and will write for you.
You will make big mistakes.
You will make bad decisions.
And there will be consequences.
But do not fear, for everything you do
has been sifted
through My sovereign hands.
I will work for the good of you who love Me.

A Maker's craft.

There I am, a puzzle.
Not because I am hard to figure out
but because I am elaborate.
Each piece will fit only in its intended spot;
Intricately and affectionately shaped,
and painted by Your own hand.
I am clumsy though.
I tend to lose these pieces of myself,
unique and priceless,
and then I am afraid.
I am afraid because I don’t want You to see
how I’ve marred your prize.

So sometimes I try to create my own replacement piece,
but always with ragged edges and unsightly smudges.
Or sometimes I steal someone else’s piece
and try to warp it to look like my own.
I have even looked in the lost and found
hoping to find a piece
that might fill the glaring and damning empty spot
that I’ve put in something you’ve worked so hard on.
It’s to no avail though, You know your work
much too intimately
to be fooled by any stop-gap;
by anything besides what you designed to fit
in that spot, near the top left corner, 12 pieces down
and 7 pieces to the right.

You don’t get mad though.
You don’t fret and stress and look around on the ground
and worry if the dog might have chewed the piece.
You don’t condemn the puzzle
and label it as imperfect, blemished,
throwing it angrily into the box and labeling it as defective.
                That’s what I would have done.

Instead you smile patiently, and chuckle at my poor attempts
to fix something I had no hand in making.
Instead you gather your tools
and examine the error,
my error,
with Your warm and tempered hands.
Instead You craft another tiny masterpiece,
a perfect fit,
made with no less love and attention to detail
than the original.
Or the first replacement.
Or the second replacement.
You carefully create another piece for me
to make me whole again
as only my Maker would know how.

Fingertips outstretched.

Come closer.
Closer.
I want to see where I made the blue and green meet,
and the freckle I put in your eye.
I want to see the ridge I created your nose with,
the little bit of rose I put under your cheeks,
and the three stray eyebrow hairs you say you hate.
Be that close to me.
Come closer.
Because I want to tell you,
that that feeling?
The knot underneath your ribs that strangles your breathing;
those things that somehow seem to force themselves
between your stomach and the very bottom of your lungs.
It doesn’t matter where they came from.
It doesn’t matter if it was a mother or a fiancé,
it doesn’t matter if it was self-inflicted or Hate himself.
I can use that.
I will use that.
Because you will have nowhere to go but to come closer,
and I can adore that freckle in your eye.

48:17

It's not yours anymore.
Give up. You're clinging to nothing.
You're clinging to something you have no control over and it is going to slip away.
He is better. They are lying. You will fade and then be cut.
You are not confident, not caring enough,
not good enough, not fun
Compression shorts
not enviable, nothing special, not enjoyable,
they will never tell you, you will never find out
until it is too late and you will be crushed and they will
laugh and they will not cut-off shirt care because there
is nothing to care about you can't handle it you
can't even handle this or yourself because you
are weak keys YOU SHOULD BE ABLE TO HANDLE
THIS BY YOURSELF YOU ARE NOT STRONG ENOUGH
MAN UP BE BIG BE WORTH SOMETHING unlock
MAYBE THEN THIS WOULDN'T BE A PROBLEM MAYBE THEN
YOU WOULD BE ABLE TO SHUT ME OUT BUT YOU pedal
CAN'T BECAUSE YOU pedal ARE WEAK AND pedal BECAUSE
YOU pedal ARE pedal WORTHLpedal pedal pedal pedal. Pedal.
Pedal.
Pedal.

I'd put it in my book.

Did you ever smile?

I mean, I'm sure you did,

but no one ever said it.

You were human after all.

Luke wrote that you wept

and Mark said that you were angry enough

to flip tables.

And it's good to know that.

But what did your smile look like?

Did you have a toothy grin?

One where your upper gums showed?

Did you laugh easily and loud like me?

How deep were the wrinkles

on the side of your eyes?

Maybe you had a tiny gap between your teeth

that made your smile all the more contagious

and easy to be around.

And maybe it's not important.
I would just want people to know.

Earth and dirt and You.

Wood and nails.
It's all we needed
to steal your breath.
The same breath you gave us
when we were just dirt.

The songs won't be about you.

To the girl who loves somebody else:
He'll be ok.
One day he'll stop haunting your thoughts
then your heart
then you.
One day Love will find him again
and then maybe one day he'll find love.
One day he'll wake up unenthusiastically
like every other day and realize
that his Lucky Charms taste good again.
He'll remember that the Shamrocks are his favorite,
and how good of a song Black Water is
on his bike ride to school.
One day he'll realize he doesn't remember
the middle 3 digits of your phone number,
which Kanye song you didn't like,
or which side your hair fell to
when you leaned over him.
He won't be able to remember the new perfume
you got at Christmas or the shivers he got
when you kissed his neck.
He'll finally write and he'll enjoy his porch swing again.
He'll read about Joseph,
and he'll wonder what he can feed Egypt
or who he sold to slavery along the way.
He'll fall asleep without pain killers
and won't remember your middle name
just as you can't remember his.