Two fish

I am not sure how well you ever saw

How I never wanted to stand between you and Jesus,

Knowing that I could never be the man in your life

Or the father of the children you envision with him there

I have my issues of isolationist addiction wandering into my caverns

Writing, reading, contemplating: all aspersions once to another,

That you are not her for which I am grateful; I hold a dearest bud

For you grown in the depths of my core

But know into the darkness

I must go; the craving calls me like a werewolf

Howl and how I see the crucifix hung from your rearview mirror

As your tires rotate out the drive to which I

Know the books on your backseat are like lessons and gifts

If I could give you anything I would offer freedom

To find what can feed you in this nation of deserts and swamps

Seeking refuge from the arid and humid heat; I am turtle-hermit

Death clings around memories and the gritty bite rests in my teeth

The perspiration is feckless; the buttress of faith and hope is dust

So the blessed statue sits like a confidant besides you and I see no room

To bear a family in the presence and absence as if one could ever be

The paradox of love has demolished me in my thoughts in all these pasted summers

July bleeds me like an apocalypse of revelations parking waiting to grip my stone

Roll the boulder up the hill once more and see the loneliness of Sisyphus

As I ever pondered a way to stand beside you

So you see the anger of my every poem at god in part is that, even if I do not believe god exists,

Part of the love I may always have for what we may have ever been able to be

Tortures me in the rush of having to choose; as if god could be like a choice of toothpaste

Or chocolate or residence or alma mater or fashion, but even in the theoretical the mystical

Becomes tangible like a limited number of train seats, tickets disbursed

And the space next to you is his and at some point I knew, I could go no further

The universe wishes peace and understanding; so I want to know that you are ok

Whether it is my role or not, part of me wishes to be what I once believed was Christ-like

I will give you the hours I have to offer; for conversation, empathy, observance through the sands

I will lay my labor into the coffers so that you may find the dignity of greater self-sufficiency

As a beatitude of shade in this journey so that you do not burn to ash in the solitude

Of making way through this divide; as I may never know how much you needed or wanted me,

I do this not of guilt, but of one of the rare vintages of love my tongue can still taste

This is my gravity

I know I did need and want your life so dearly to find a combination which could rest next to mine

Two fish, one found legs, the other swims

I know these things cannot breathe the same; so it is we must speak through refractions of light

Illuminating images of worlds the other wishes to be part of, knowing to do so is to imbibe death

So dear Juliet, dagger and flask, blade and drink, how do we survive such things?

Making roads out of seaweed and dust, solace in the shared sun

So it is, I try to speak through a clouded distance; knowing this is how it must be

But feeling like we never had a chance or was it always a Faustian bargain?

The rural purgatory, the vagabond roadways, the leased houses

The purchases that still do not make it feel like home

The hurricane’s magnetism and the illusions of evaporating seas raining on land

The children calling in the night; the pews and the preachers on video screens replayed

The blood and the guts, the facts and the musts staring at vampires and doves

Just come over here and let me hold you warm on my face like sunsets never come

Drives in and out of barren wastelands; I wish my thoughts could escape this event horizon

I only know that part of me loves you in this fractured way

Through the prismatic glass of air attempting to respond to water

Wanting you to know that I care, I do, but I cannot swim

Everything inside is made of stone; It ain’t me babe…

Below the surface beating with the bubbles trying to speak and

All the sounds are muddled

I wish I could say these words into your eyes

Behind every pair you see Jesus

To do so would put him and me in a manner of competition

This hold of distant love fragile to the steel of scripture

I do not wish to joust

I know one day the platforms at the locomotive station will shift

Baggage claimed and waves; tears, misunderstandings and all the wires

Of living with and without

Two fish one of us always drowning