SADNESS

This sadness is a blind, caged parakeet,
raging in despair, handed into your ribs, placed
as a companion for your heart. 

Until one day there comes a thud,
and the sudden silence will snap
you into existence -- 

the wrinkle of a steering wheel,
feet through wet grass, the shiver
of a bass line dropped in your stomach --

and though now you feel the outside, inside
you will, for a long time, carry a dead bird
uncomfortably close.

LOVE WILL BE THE RINGS

Love will be the rings
of an oak after every
burnt petal peals into
the air, after vibrance melts off,
and the joy of stars curls
underneath the night sky.
When the replies to our groans grow
more dim and color gets boxed
up and left on the street.
Love will be found present, even after
the disappointments and gray
days, during the jog around
the neighborhood when the soul
dare speaks: I know
I’ve been here
before. Love is a fierce force.

FAITH

"Couldn't we all
go looking for him?" he asked,

brown eyes blinking.
"It's been a long while,

and he might be lost."
The crowd dropped

their eyes put back
their thumbs in white

envelopes and muttered,
"That is not the game,

not the game.
Not at all

the game."
And he, being able to see,

plucked their pupils from
the ground,

hauled storage bins for
loose limbs, climbed

into an ambulance.
After fishing 

through compartments,
he emerged

with rows of needles in his arms,
and a fist-full of thread.

CURTIS

Once driving at night on the interstate
I asked my father, weaving into the silence, "What was one time
you doubted God’s existence or his goodness?" His answer
already calculated in my mind.
You know, when you are young, you go through hard things, like everyone…
“What about in your life?” You go through hard things. The
death of a loved one,
or something. But, you know, you learn
death is natural.

Sometimes we use language to divide ourselves
from the world, to stand
apart from our own failures, excuses fashioned
into lying swords.

I understand how short these words fall
and how inaccurate poetry is.
I already know

that when my dad was seventeen, before his eyes,
his precious brother, his best friend, sixteen, died. Fell over
like a dream toppling upside-down into the rush ground.

Because this is not my memory, all I have are words
collected from my father’s stiff, practiced narrative
as he begins to speak in the second-person again.

I don't think the pain can really, like a soft cloth, fold into the waves and disappear.