Quitter

--

You may say I like to roam
to taste, and run, and shift from place to place
I love to live--you may say that
just do not call me quitter to my face

I love to learn a bright new trade
I love to enter rooms and shake your hand
But if you want relationship
go for the girls of the non-Quitter brand

For I will enter just to leave
and I will learn a thing to never do
I will grab a thing to put it down
and don't believe this won't apply to you

I'll put my shoulder to a plow
But what would happen if I were to heave?
Why, then I'd know the shortness of my come
That I was inadept--except to leave

So leave me be to quit and quit
To stop, to turn, abandon, to be free
Yes free, and free--oh, do not run--
Don't try to quit the quitting me

--

The Rant of Prisoners

sometime in 2010:

I will be one day the sum of all my missing, my most non-existent parts
I will one day thrive--out of a barren, shriveled seed, a crusted soil, a poison rain.

{I will decide what I am today}
{and tomorrow will stick to it}

This will happen somehow--in what men of old would call a miracle--when out of my nothing a something is born
when out of putrescence glory will appear, when the sum of everything I lack will culminate in His infusion.

{No--I will pick a self for this body this afternoon}
{and tomorrow will follow through}

I will die in the misery of marriage to this flesh, and entrapment in a sick sin/feeble mind
unless the Something comes for my nothing

Why is it--really, I'd like to know--why is it that this shriveled soil delights in its infertility? Is there comfort to be found there?
"I canot be shaped into glory because the stuff I am made of is not worth shaping, I can bloom no fruit or flower because the soil is simply not the right kind; plant something else"

Is there pleasure, some sad blankie, that I draw out of worthlessness?

Have I not seen and worshipped worth? Who could forget worth once she has met Him? Once Worth has infused her?

The God with 700 Names

My hands are red; my hands are dark
My hands are dirty, black, and blue
They're anything but lily-white
They're full of anything but you

Oh God, my God, please watch my back
This crooked back of polio
These crooked feet on paths of mud
These legs that are diseased and slow

Oh Father, Papa, Servant-King
I am the Princess of the Shunned
So wash my inside and my out
And straighten me till I can run

Your cross, it is a gurney wide
An intravenous saving thing
You word, it is a wheeling chair
Your grace, it is a mineral spring

CHORUS
You are the antidote to me
You are the antidote to me
My eyes, my mouth, my heart are free
You are the antidote to me

"I didn't notice you for a beauty, the first time we met," you said.
"Hush!" said your friends. "Don't you know,
you are talking to a woman??"

Ought I to be offended?
Ought I to prefer that you were the sort of man to fall in before the girl has opened her mouth to speak, has put her hand to any nearby plow, has echoed reason or love or worth of any kind?
Ought I wish that my face overwhelmed you,

knocked you over,

the first
instant
you encountered it?

(ought I imagine there aren't thousands of better faces to knock you again and again in the years ahead-- long after my.... elasticity... has lost the battle with time?)

Goodness, no.

I am as far from wishing that you had loved me on sight as I am from wishing I had loved you on sight... for I cherish those months of my indifference.

I prefer hearts that are earned,


(and I like to think

that we will make up

the time.)

Darling of May

--

Now what shall I say to my darling of May?
To my darling of March, and of June, and July?
For the months have been few
that belong, dear, to you
and a history is one thing we new ones can't buy.

But you come every night that is seemly and right
And you carry your books and a Soon in your eyes
All our months are like moments,
and moments like months
But I shudder to crash through the barrier of wise.

Oh! The man, he is patient, and my eye is plank'd
I have vision that stops at the end of my nose
I can only remember
that soon our December
will go in the way that month always goes

I will watch as the seasons
turn questions to reasons
And flowers go sleeping and dancing goes sweet
My darling of May and of soon-to-be August
will watch for tomorrow, and I'll watch his feet.

----

The Missing

--

Today I get to taste
the missing of your face
tomorrow I will know
the feel of touch and go

the circling, constant dance
supply that meets demand
the need that fills--the need
that needs to fill your hand

You see, in every tock
in every phase and moon
there is a timely way
to do this thing we do

this falling into love
this falling into yes
this falling into work
this falling into rest

today I get to want
tomorrow I can get
I have your heart--in part
Already, but not yet

It is the strangest thing
that part of joy is pain
as part of loving sun
remembers (too) the rain

I love to wait for you
to leave tomorrow wide
unscheduling my years
and eying up your side

The place I love to stand
The place I love to leave
If only--knowing it's reserved--
to come back soon and cleave

---

The Tourist

-------------------


I'm a tourist! I'm a sojourner!
I'm galavanting through your heart with the rosy eyes of unfamiliarity!
You can tell I'm not from around here;
I am in love with even the cobblestones, and I've got a camera in my fanny pack.

Show me--won't you, darling?--all of the architectural thoughts I've never seen
the memories-turned-foundations of this city that I am foreign to.

Even the language barrier is a romance: you speak only male, and misunderstanding itself only reminds me thrillingly that I am here, in a new place...what more does a tourist want than to be confounded by the culture?

I may live here, eventually, if they will give me my papers;
I'll know the streets like my own hand

Until then, let me wear my sandals and take my photos and gasp over vistas for their novelty;
let me linger in the arches and pore over histories and taste the flavors so unpronounceable to me;
It is right and timely and good that this holiday should come in its season; the politics and dangers and mortgages of buying in this city will come in their time; the romance will shift its kind and effort... what I know about this journey is only:

it is right for me to be here.

this is the place of which I have dreamed.

-------------