Much Suffering, All Self-Imposed

A life given to wordiness, half-assed prayers, always navigating between devils and witches, apples and deserts, the dead and what the dead are not. Holding him on his birthday, saying through sobs that I love him, am proud of him, professing fatherhood in a way I learned mostly by feel since no man taught me otherwise. 

Witnesses to the crucifixion. Stories are the problem, nobody wants to see this. I make pancakes, throw a couple outside to the juncos and blue jays, the kids laughing at me, what will the chickadees think? This road, this life, it has included so much suffering, all self-imposed, and for what?

The orchestra is warming up.

I did not know the future was real, I did not enter it with an army or a plan. I remember dating her, two times or three, she worked at a little floral shop on Church Street, she was pretty and quiet, with a vast sorrow nobody was allowed to touch but which she briefly allowed me to touch.

Nothing is lost, nothing is wasted, nothing is taken away.

Nor church anymore, nor religion.

Jasper says the disciples were idiots, had to be, and what does it say about Jesus, letting fuck-ups like that represent the twelve tribes of Israel? Steadying myself on the stairs, catching my breath on the landing, slower and slower as winter ends. It will never be Halloween again, not the way it was, once upon a time.

Walking where leaves fall, not knowing any other way.

I grew up with the idea you had to be ready to die at a moment's notice, had to kind of want it even, for was it not the ultimate pain and were we not men for whom no pain was too terrible to contemplate or bear? 

We are ruined by sacrifice. 

Generative poses abound in the wicked. We say goodbye at the door, follow the rule for kissing in public, and then I am alone for the long drive west. The joy of the rosary, which I cannot explain to anyone, not even Jesus, not even you.