Category Archives: poetry

Empty churches

Mary, the mother church, eking out milk to last the week; Monday morning, spent, she rests convalescent, quiet A void of another kind, Shakespeare’s tomb hastily built into Babel; who sees the stranger seeking sanctuary from its old iron face? St … Continue reading

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Family entertainment

“Off with his head!” cried the Queen of Hearts. It had all begun much earlier, with a powerless princess, pawn pushed about in a dizzying dance by the Queen and her King; the Bishop turned slantwise away, his excited disapproval … Continue reading

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Innocents

three little girls, pink suits and brown bodies, shrieking false fear under the sprinkler while hoses play over the flames, prayers rising like hot steam

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Old moon

Yellow moon tonight: jaundiced, gibbous, waning; still shining like the sun.

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Haikonic afterthoughts

On blasphemy against the Holy Spirit Blasphemy: wilful submission to delusions of divinity Blasphemy: pinching out air, pressing the human back into the clay Blasphemy: wilful misinterpretation of the mercy of God

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Rolling

At the bus stop, a boy making noises like a man who never learned to leave such nonsense behind; young woman turned, lips pressed, one hand to hip, one hand to God I do not know him. Children walk in the street … Continue reading

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Reverence

Yesterday I knelt at an array of unlit candles reading the morning prayer before the noonday sun. “Test me, O Lord, and try me; examine my heart and my mind.” “Do not snatch me away with the wicked and evildoers, … Continue reading

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Costly

What if the sound of a rushing wind blows you out of the water, running back to that place you last called home, fallen now, weeping again by the roadside? What if the very thought of tongues of flame raises … Continue reading

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Ascending

because the grip of gravity cannot hold life down when heaven waits

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Is it?

it is not as though love can outrun the shadows  thrown by the long stones

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