The Magi.
Art from Europeana on Unsplash.
On the first day of the new year,
I stepped into the world with nothing
but my faith. I had nothing to give
the Messiah. No gold, no
frankincense. El Dia De Reyes. Some-
times I am a man emptied
of God, & other times, I overflow.
Sleight of the heart. My faith
is like blood at the bottom of a slab.
Something is butchered to keep
it alive. Like those children, each
murdered, by Herod in search
of the Christ. Down in the nadir,
I understand more the powerlessness
of light. I am closest to God when
I’m far away. Even the Magi,
all three of them, were kings.
But God has no use for kings.
So, he called them shepherds instead.
Gave them a knee & a place
to bow. I admit. I have my own
endless doubt. I am too skeptical
to believe the linearity of a star,
too logical for the stun in the Shepherds’
eyes. Epiphania Domini. The pendulum
of my faith swings. But it’s another
year & I walk towards God, anxious,
like a dildo in the hand of a nun.
Faithless Magi, stray of the dark.
Light is only useful if it finds you here.
Art from the British Library on Unsplash.
Little Ones at the Picnic.
They are in the field playing, throwing
daisies on each other’s hair.
They laugh as if they have a mouth
full of light. I imagine they do.
Elsewhere, my newsfeed
is bloodstained.
Too many countries at war.
I’m notified
of another bomb & then
another. I am terrified. At what age,
I wonder, does this good light
slip out of us? Because here
they know nothing
about blood. These kids,
who came with their families for
a picnic, yet here they are,
singing to the hummingbirds,
playing with each other as though
they’ve known for life.
In their laughter,
all the violence in the world is wiped
clean. I wish it were easier
to live like this: To say to a wound,
I bandage you. To say to a gun,
I disarm you, I command you
to flower where a bullet was built to stay.
Instead, I think about the countries,
where, right now,
a soldier is holding his gun,
contemplating the order to shoot
into a house filled with kids.
I imagine that,
like myself, their innocence
has softened him.
O, how it leaps through their giggles,
through the delicate rhythm
of their voice. In this world
full of darkness,
I hope they give him a reason
to believe in light.
Photo by Krisztian Tabori on Unsplash.
Despite My Country, I Want to be Loved.
Find me a country & take this one
away. The skull
on the sidewalk is a girl’s reluctant
gift. Look where
she splits open, almost breathtaking,
the soft
nape of her neck littered with tar.
This country
of mine. Hurtful as a wound on the
tip of the tongue.
Despite your mauve light, I see what
you’ve become:
Slab stone & bodkin. Cherry barb
with the lustfulness
of shark. On the streets of Zamfara,
bandits have
thrown a party of blood. Even the
police want
eagerly to stain their hands with
crime. Witness
their sickle thumbs, their guns with
its deception of glint.
A failure of metaphor, this poem.
I say
My country, but none of this feels
like my own.
Wayfarer. I blame my own atrial
throb. It is my love
for you that mocks me, culls me
down a waiting
pyre. Across your copper fist, the
girl I love
opens for me the doorknob of her legs–
a home inside
the home I should have had. We
kiss each other
while another city burns. How easy
it is to be
an accomplice, to emerge, like Noah,
at the mouth
of the flood & call wreckage by
a sweet name.
Girl of my heart. We could lie on this
bed the rest
of our lives, away from the slab stones,
the blood scythe,
away from this country that now mimics
flood.
