Firecracker

All this
For you
All this
So I could crawl up your steps
Dig my fingernails into the orange-peel-ing paint of your banisters
Former golden gates
Form forgiveness in the palm of your kiss
Peel poems from your scapula

It’s where I read the story
You scribbled on the face
Of a boy named Beloved

He grew up dragging through a machete field
In Zimbabwe,
Stumbled up to a landmine,
Believed it a radio,
And tucked it into his mouth.
Beloved… he’d met God at the river many nights and
Wrestled him for a chance to feel harmony inside.
Knew he couldn’t miss this, teeth clench and all

Carrying war on his tongue, he
Returned to his village
And while trying to share the blessing
With those he loved
Felt his prayer ripped from his lips

There are those of us
We know the painful explosion of opening our mouths
How violent it feels when we breathe
Deep breathes
We mangle angels when we speak
Because our heart beat keeps beating it’s way out of up and out of our throats
In the form of butterflies bearing boxing gloves
Beating their wing covered fists
Against our ripples. Bruised hurricane.

My stomach, a sack full of vibrating jellyfish
The tremble, the sting, they’re electric pens
Writing out the reasons why
Creativity is the closest we will ever get to God
In this life
While it’s the promise of the next one
That keeps my hands working
Keeps my throat sturdy
Keeps me spilling my veins
Onto the page
Even though it gets messy

Keeps me waking up dead
Weight
Almost can’t remember my name
Almost forget the way your voice tastes
Like honey

So
From this day forward
I refuse to beat you just because I feel ugly
My words rattle because they groan holy
Don't remember the last time I felt that way
But remember the last I felt you

It was when I watched a man
Stand on a stage
Pull the shoestring from his very own shoe
And use it to hang a guitar from around’ his neck
Said he’d use the strings from his own heart
If it were all he had left
Cause he knew he was made to play

He then turned into the room
And unhinged a melody that
Sucker punched me in the very last spot I felt surrender
My hands clenched so tightly
My knuckles became white flight
And I realized
That in order to make enough room for my religion
I had changed the shape of my prayers

What once were gigantic saber-toothed tigers
Became mere house cats
Blind mice at best
Remembering they were wildebeests
In the jungle beneath my bed

I used to believe in God
The way I believe my mother’s cooking.

Now, I still believe in God, but some day’s
His eyes look like run on sentences and my mouth isn’t strong enough
To read out loud, for that long.

Hold me to your word. See where we don’t quite line up.
My silence is not a protest
It’s just me trying to figure out this thing called trust

See
Father
I find it hard to trust you
A man of your WORD
Hard to trust you with ALL of my heart
When EVERY man in my life
Up until now
Has found small reasons
Big enough
To slip out the back door
Just when I got comfortable enough
To stop assuming they would.

I think it may be me

But I’ve been trying to beat the snow
Drop the rain, make it home.

Wondering why my prayer buckets keep coming up empty
When I dip them into your wells
And why the only harmony I find
Seems to blow up in my face

But on those days
I think of Beloved
Lost most of his face
For the taste of a dream
Yet not one day’s gone by
Where he regrets letting that landmine
Crawl between his teeth
Cause he says
If that bomb hadn’t
Of blown his mouth off it’s hinges
Then the bass drum in his chest surely would have
And that every explosion
Is an answered prayer.
You’ve just got to choose to feel it that way.