faith (february 2011)

God.
for lack of a better word,
and that's a funny concept
not a word fitting for the Word
but when it comes down to it
I don't know a lot about it-
you?-
because whenever I go looking
I can't find you anywhere
but when I turn my head away
closing my eyes in resigned frustration
there you are
seen ever so briefly-
because when I feel out
and find this fragile world
to be ephemeral
I fall back into the mist
and I'm caught-
because when I speak
and ask questions over
and over
and hear nothing back
nothing. nada.
I surrender myself to
'hear you in the silence of my heart'
and still get nothing
when all of a sudden
you're speaking through my pen-
and even though
I don't claim to be looking for answers
I tell a lie
but I've come to know
that when given a binary 0 - 1
you always take 2
and though I know it is foolish
to anthropomorphize you
I always have to remind myself
that the god I don't believe in
is different from the One that I do
and that
for the fractional moment
when the universe cracked open
that repeats second by atom-smashing second
I could see
that nothing I ever believed was true
and that you were always telling me that:
the Most Beautiful thing in the world
a word
your name.

in foxholes (february 2011)

and this is the moment
that I think we can say something,
where I'm getting
a little bit closer
to dialogue

maybe this is just a flutter
a contraction of muscles
and the fire of synapses
but for just a moment
things were tilting on their axis
and I knew.

that even though I'm playing cards
and you want to play chess
and
that we all here move
so frustratingly close
and mind the gap so well
I knew.

when we tilted the world
dropped it on its side
and saw, knowing it for the first time again
I could not help but wonder
if we should set it spinning

and you whispered
loud enough for me to miss it

and even as this madness recedes
I might recall what you said
if only I could get past
the medium

because
if I say I draw inspiration
from the mountains
or the sun through the clouds
or a crying child loved
or the hope of young lovers
I would be lying

for I have never confused
a speaker
for the sound of his voice

definition (october 2010)

This is an idea
that can't be written down.

There, right there
did you see it? -
lurking on the page
on the brink of decipherability.
No?

It didn't manifest as a comma,
splicing the semantics into the syntax.
No, nor was it a matter of breathing
an emphasis.
And even in the gravid space
between words and the lexicon
it was absent.

But I swear to you,
it may not be evident,
but it was there.

An impulse, stuck in the subvocal space
between thought and word,
a feedback of the phonological loop,
a collection of neurons firing
in response to an unknown impulse,
a demand to be realized
as a fitting description
of a void
full to the brim.