I've looked for a way in,
a tear in the silence
that walls whatever is behind
be it nothingness or being,
bright mornings that almost
tip into the ecstatic, a blessed
oblivion where boundaries
dissolve and all things
become one, but the world
always holds together,
its forces fail to break.
A prisoner of form,
my cathedrals are cathedrals
of space buttressed by trees,
a sacristy for the echoes
of creation still sounding across
time. Forgiveness is the gentle
wash of rain and the frail beauty
of a wildflower, white as snow,
is the candle flickering
on the altar of the unknown.
Categories:
sacristy, beauty, flower, space, spiritual,
Form: Free verse
We climbed into the church, which hangs behind the village on the edge of a ravine/quarry and a meadow with frozen alfalfa.
It opens its mouth at us with every incoming twilight.
Door like when the Helper swaps part of the cheeks and stretches the cheeks to the eyes, grin from Codex Gigas.
We admire the naked little girls and the drooping pygmies of the statues hidden in the drawer of the table left in the sacristy.
Categories:
sacristy, allusion, celebration,
Form: Free verse
Enduringly left the spiritual task
Of praying for what Catholics ask:
A fresh day in her wondrous breakthroughs bask,
An open-it-and-one-finds-rich food flask,
For lovers of the fabric: Good Damask,
The wisdom for proofs statue is no mask.
None prays that she outrage owners of cask:
Saints who smoke and you can’t its question ask…
It’s been a back-dated virginity:
If one tastes sex, flees one’s virginity;
There’s no answering-it opportunity;
The pregnant now faces maternity:
A sacristy that gets more decorative,
This no big deal to judge pejorative…
At one point wanted some word with her son,
While he had devotees in the sun;
And it was time Christ crushed Monopoly:
The more hateful than Oligopoly…
No disputing this: some film editing
But a camera for Mary fitting.
Categories:
sacristy, allusion, god, perspective, religion,
Form: Rhyme
The Baltimore Catechism,
mornings at eight
Sister Marcella,
don’t ever be late
Its message didactic,
the devil to run
Each question, each answer,
with God zero-sum
Who and what made me,
and why every day
Resistance was futile,
dissent not displayed
An altar boy’s memories,
his sacristy torn
Still missing the process
—where freedom was born
(Saint Thomas of Villanova Chapel: December, 2021)
Categories:
sacristy, faith,
Form: Rhyme
The square root of an Epiphany
—is hope
(Villanova Sacristy: March, 2021)
Categories:
sacristy, hope,
Form: Free verse
Father Father bless me
I bear a burden of sin
sin a heavy block of tin
pray God thee
I need break free
from the evil bondage
I've in been from early age
Father I'm the little mouse
a squatter in the mission house
My heart is full of mischief
I'm that wanted thief
who operates in the sacristy
Eating the communion pastry
and never the wine—none with
you shares
But you waste time to punish
the innocent postulants
for this act deemed devilish
So implore God to graciously
grant
my confessional wish
The postulants clean the
chapel
floor-pew-santuary clean
I cause the daily trouble
of spreading, litter, nuts and
beans
on the holy floor
and yet you spark up your rage
on the postulants for act of
sacrilege
I surrender all
my iniquity
and and my ungodly duty
I surrender all
So plead God to reverse any
curse
that must on my head befall
What reparation
or recitation must I do?
so I can go to the postulants to
apologize
for stealing the communion
wafer
and putting the chapel in scatter
for them to in your hands suffer
But should I tell them you
drink the wine too?
Categories:
sacristy, absence, satire,
Form: Verse
This old heart of mine meets quitting time,
cringes in a cage with no way out;
concurrence with occurrence of spurs jabbed in the muscle,
bright pain shines a sacristy of black light shreds.
What arrives will go in the undertow
of variable waves of loathing and fear;
currents grasp feet below the tidal ripples,
dragging downward to fathomless oyster beds.
Driftwood tossed, located, lost and drowned
beneath sebaceous trauma of the reef;
sails disease on seven seas of distalgesia,
until the shore recedes, no knowing of where she lies.
Whoever may weep as I take sleep forever,
and would their tears bleed sentiment sincerity?
Who goes there, who alone would care in reality
for driftwood drifting slowly from their eyes?
Categories:
sacristy, life, love, nostalgia,
Form: Verse
Spelling mysteries in the sacristy of black and white,
Cold star celebrity inevitably revealed at night,
Fifteen earth minutes seems so infinite in dreams of fate,
White-line fever, tightrope snorting on the interstate.
The kiss of destiny detestably with pecks of ice,
The screenplay strategy works linearly with plot device,
Bleak endless tragedy and comedy of camera click,
Teenage depressions and confessions so depraved and sick.
Party streamers weeping screamers on a teeming stage,
Dumb ass dreamers wait on tables in a frenzied rage,
Fifteen fame minutes when you spin it buys both love and bliss,
It doesn’t get, nor can it mean, a fraction more than this.
Categories:
sacristy, loss, love, social,
Form: Verse