Saturday, May 1, 2010

bread of angels

Her hands move in a fury of excitement as she talks and
The rope
Swings round about
Tattered and frayed,
Shriveled and twisted,
She forgets it’s even there.
I ask her, “Did you wear that when you…??”
She laughs a bit hesitantly,
Guiltily,
And my insides get defensive
And long to take it off but
I’m no better.
No I’m no better.
Throwing stones inside my head then I wonder
Just a bit,
If maybe He didn’t mind so much.
Maybe in the middle of it all the guy looked down
And wondered why a Cross hung round her wrist
Who am I to know?
Isn’t that why He came?
To bathe in our sins?
Maybe then we’d notice.
I think in the bathroom
At a Walmart
I really wonder if there is an uglier room in the world
With its plastic walls and smells
I hear the stalls lock and open,
We wash our hands and carry on our business never stopping
To look at where we are,
What we’re lying in…
A little girl sits beside me,
A strange divider between us where we see each other’s legs and share
A commonality we don’t like to speak of.
But she sings in Spanish
And I know enough Spanish to know she’s singing
Nothing at all
Lifts of her voice in sheer nonsensical delight
Her little shoes move back and forth
In the ugliest room in the world she makes a wonderland.
I check out in a hurry and behind me
Is an old man in a wheelchair
Humming softly
Familiar words of Grace
Amazing.
With milk jugs on his lap.

One night I awoke and heard a strange noise
And wondered what in the world it could be
Stayed up worrying…
Worrying I placed my hand on the chest of a
Much beloved dog
To make sure, always,
Of his breathing.
Checking everyone
Hearts still beating
I have deemed myself
The guardian of disaster.
They tell me not to worry
Of the strange noise in my nighttime
But silly them, I say
Don’t you know the dog
Will die?
So imagine our bodies in coffins, my friend
To prepare for the worst of all.
The utter shock of empty eyes
And drooped face
Like seeing a towed car
Without the truck
And you think he’s driving
Backwards
Without a driver
To drive him
And you wonder if maybe
The world has really turned
Upside down?
Except the car keeps coming and
Blows you into a
Million little pieces
Death, a backwards car with no driver,
Turns the world
Upside down.


Stuck in a line of awkward bodies
I take a
Body from an
Almost dead man
He falters as he tells me what it is
Body gets stuck between the rings on my finger
And sticks, soggy, to the roof of my mouth.
In front of me tennis shoes squeak.
I take my place and half-kneel out of nausea.
And we sing sounds like grunts and moans
Compared with angels
Panis Angelicus
I wonder,
Could it be?

Outside, men scrub
Graffiti off a cross.
People drive by
And nobody looks to see
What might be written…
INRI
They wrote above His Sacred Head
Surrounded
By lust and white lies.
By gossip we laugh about at lunch
Laugh at the Man who thought He was God
Crazy man they say
Insane.
Panis Angelicus
Spends the night in my house
And suddenly I see
I believe.



In a trendy hamburger joint
We talk about the boy who almost died
Till we get a call that tells us that he did
And suddenly death is something
More than cartoons and thrillers
More than old people we forget about.
Suddenly we realize
The Fairy Tale must be real
For how can we go on without it?

But we forget the villains and tears
And saviors when we ride on busses
Crammed in smelly crowds
Watching the bus driver’s massive stomach flop against the broken seat,
He smacks his double bubble gum with a sinister smile
And rejoices in the great
Mundane.

I get off the bus and my socks fall down inside my boots.
In order to pull them up I have to take the boots off and I don’t have time
So I walk on in annoyance at the lack of transcendence
That I search for in a keyboard that can’t play like a piano,
Besides they chastise me for playing way too loud.
How it hurts, this world, how it hurts.
Panis Angelicus.
Really?



But one day I’m driving and I notice on my windshield
Something that looks a little bit but not so much like rain.
And it’s not rain.
Stretch my arm out to feel the ice I smile with delight,
I look back and see the girl behind me.
Her arm is out too.
And we share a moment.
Not so far from the girl singing Spanish in the bathroom.
Or us, gathered at a funeral for a boy who
Almost died.

They say there are six degrees of separation between you and me
And everybody else.
But sometimes I wonder if there aren’t any.
Not at all.

For I see Bread of Angels in the stormy sky
And the chocolate dessert
In the kiss
And the Mozart Requiem.
And Bread of Angels is in the homeless man and the king
I sit beside Him.

My socks fall down in my boots as I walk to class
And I laugh at the losing
Mundane.

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