number 10 of April 30-30 

I will take on Joel Osteen

and I will bang his head in

on my bible,

if I keep seeing his

books in the library

where the good ones should be

where I forget the one I should be reading

soon, i want to feel
the bumps on your cold hands
next to mine
just like
Neruda in Braille
so to touch worn beauty
-
talk with me, honestly
My mind lives on my ears
like an old barn house does
hearing the wind and owls
i wait for your thoughts
-
listen to me,
I have nothing but a stomach
full of fuzz moths
flitting
around the youth you wake there
-
I want to taste the air
that floats like model ships
still stuck in their bottles.
set it free from my lungs
let it wind like a nocturne
-
the morning
will smell like a revolution
but tonight, i wait
waiting like fine old wine
in my cellar soul here
maturing
to not say these silly things

#8 of April 30 in 30

these branches

with whom I share 

chai tea

and tall lies,

sleep.

i command myself:

write them as people

paint them in dinner jackets

with big gestures

paint them a Lautrec 

while they won’t know

i’m tired with them

-

their branches are ringing tonight

like a belltower

or an old Victrola

        i’ll waltz in  them

                 with them      

           staggering

thinkin’  bout

providence

an’ Chopin

an’ all sorts of stuff

-

i might be a little drunk

off the rain on my tongue

i know it isn’t clean

but it ain’t the tap

-

i don’t wanna go back

i’ll stay here

in my belle epoch

among the pines 

where i can crack

endlessly

like a 78

-

i ignore my commands

instead

i write till i’m dry

or whenever the clouds sober up

i will run from hill to hill

cross the Rhine

count every needle,

and call them a bloodstream

i’ll hang fish

into the stars

and i’ll call it a day

#7 of April 30-30

Part 1: (Acts 8) 

Yeah, I get it. 

You have Jesus on a fish on yer’ bumper.

Does that make you a “good christian”?

I get you think Jesus is your homeboy

your copilot

your boss

you still cut me off on the highway

you still are afraid of tattoos

and you still are a sinner

I am too

so don’t give me leaflets on the street.

-

Part 2: “Your’e Old, I’m Old, So What?”

Spurgeon had a gnarly beard

so does David a few pews up

Luther would have loved the way we curse

maybe not

yeah, I would hope he would

I still like Augustine

he is modern enough

for me

Brother Lawrence washes dishes

so do i.

we both

practicing a constant conversation

they were just like us,

sinners and lovers

don’t call us liberal

-

Part 3: Bob Dylan Liturgy

when did:

only singing hymns

trash talking U2

selling your laser lights

and buying a mandolin

keeping a blog

drinking beer

being “missional” 

meaning “enjoying coffee”

throwing around heretic like it was cool

planting a garden

dyeing your hair

or being hip

mean you were

a “postmodern christian”

you take Christian out, 

i think you just have a young person

i’m still liturgical

you are too

-

Part 3.5 Institutes on a Christian Anger

a Calvinist does not mean

i gotta mug a scary profile

gotta have a beard

(although it is recommended

in the handbook) 

gotta scare the children

can’t laugh

or smile

and carry a baseball bat

i am young, reformed and restless

but i won’t shove it down your throat

i’m just saying what i read

and it says to love

i’ve misread it, too

-

Part 4: (a saw mill in our eyes)

you call me baseless

when I preach a gospel of grace

when I preach to the broken

and not those in the pews

i will nail my poems to the door.

you call me a fool

for following the One who gave

if that means selling my car and walking

I will juggle like st. francis. 

call me strange

when I speak to anyone who’ll listen

When you speak

to the same God as I.

call me a hypocrite

for my sins

you and i both

#6 of april 30 in 30

a whiskey voice 

poured over iced slide

spins on the fan

-

he

lets his blue coat hang, 

and stares at the door

wonderin’ where the sun is going

- 

she 

waits to talk

in a bed of false needles

her fingers twitch

-

there 

in time between them

the size of yawn or two

lay

         a

                     dangling

    conversation 

-

“how was your day?”

“good”

a poem from yesterday I forgot to type out . #5 of April 30 in 30 

i’ve thought of wars

cheap seats, soul songs 

and classic cars

nothing catches me

-

I have let Erik Satie limp

in the background

a ciggarette hung itself

and nothing comes.

- 

its always this way

a poem falls oout 

i don’t write

i just stumble

-

ive sunk ten ships

still looking

the scars of those lusitanias

nothing comes

-

maybe i’ll write 

a coffee stain

and shock it to life

then it will fall out

-

i know i still sigh

Like, seriously
how can one man suck that bad
Nick Cage can not act

poem #3 for April 30 in 30 

I have had

too much

theology

      bad meters

                 (breath) habits 

I am crushed

calcified

by what I lay on me.

let me down

easy

-

lay me in books

I’ll sleep and breathe

india, sepia,                    coal

perhaps I will become

         free in their form 

- 

lay me in shells

meant for guns

whose aim are towns

far and few between

-

maybe the streets

lamposts, and flow

will straighten 

this wrinkled man

-

set me free 

from the wells 

i’ve jumped in

let me down

easy

Steep me in soil

spread out the skin

let me learn to love

with effort

you english garden

- 

i’ve been still-struck

from losing

“giving to get”

from my blue veins

finding “to give”

is all I need

-

yet

you, meteorite

caught by a glove

let me hold on 

a little while longer

give me the sign

I’ll give in

-

i’m still quite new 

soon enough,

i will forget.

hopefully

just once in a while

i’m still learning

to uproot myself

each day.

Too young to write an ode

still trying

green at the ends,

I find stuff tired

and Post-Modern

-

Perhaps I’m addicted 

to love poems and caffeine

crying in my sleep, like a cosmonaut’s child

who has watched the future burn

right behind him

-

now, I’m pretentious

if given time,

tobacco and a beard

I’ll be a fake ginsberg

lying and lamenting.

-

but i’m not that, 

i’m just young.

I haven’t seen enough Whitman,

maybe too much Neruda

my chest still smells of oak

-

just give me some time

tomatoes in a garden

bury an ode in the grass

and let it grow