"I have no lover and she hasn't the prettiest eyes."

St. Paul's epistle to the Romans 9:18-24

Therefore God has mercy on whom He wills,
and whom He wills He hardens.
You will say to me then,
"Why does He still find fault?
For who has resisted His will?"

But indeed, O man, who are you
to reply against God?
Will the thing formed say to him who formed it,
"Why have you made me like this?"
Does not the potter have the power over the clay,
from the same lump to make one vessel
for honor and another for dishonor?

What if God, wanting to show His wrath
and to make His power known,
endured with much longsuffering
the vessels of wrath prepared for destruction,
and that He might make known
the riches of His glory on the vessels of mercy,
which He had prepared beforehand for glory,
even us
whom He called not only of the Jews,
but also of the Gentiles?

"Who Says Words WIth My Mouth?" by Rumi

All day I think about it, then at night I say it.
Where did I come from, and what am I supposed to be doing?
I have no idea.
My soul is from elsewhere, I'm sure of that,
and I intend to end up there.

This drunkenness began in some other tavern.
When I get back around to that place,
I'll be completely sober. Meanwhile,
I'm like a bird from another continent, sitting in this aviary.
The day is coming when I fly off,
but who is it now in my ear who hears my voice?
Who says words with my mouth?

Who looks out with my eyes? What is the soul?
I cannot stop asking.
If I could taste one sip of an answer,
I could break out of this prison for drunks.
I didn't come here of my own accord, and I can't leave that way.
Whoever brought me here will have to take me home.

This poetry. I never know what I'm going to say.
I don't plan it.
When I'm outside the saying of it,
I get very quiet and rarely speak at all.

******

We have a huge barrel of wine, but no cups.
That's fine with us. Every morning
we glow and in the evening we glow again.

They say there's no future for us. They're right.
Which is fine with us.

Too Much Dope

A cell is
the size of
a cell
is the size of
the universe.

"Tear It Down," by Jack Gilbert

We find out the heart only by dismantling what
the heart knows. By redefining the morning,
we find a morning that comes just after darkness.
We can break through marriage into marriage.
By insisting on love we spoil it, get beyond
affection and wade mouth-deep into love.
We must unlearn the constellations to see the stars.
But going back toward childhood will not help.
The village is not better than Pittsburgh.
Only Pittsburgh is more than Pittsburgh.
Rome is better than Rome in the same way the sound
of raccoon tongues licking the inside walls
of the garbage tub is more than the stir
of them in the muck of the garbage. Love is not
enough. We die and are put into the earth forever.
We should insist while there is still time. We must
eat through the wildness of her sweet body already
in our bed to reach the body within that body.

1 Corinthians 13

Though I speak with the tongues of men
and of angels, but have not love,
I have become sounding brass
or a clanging cymbal.

And though I have the gift of prophecy,
and understand all mysteries and knowledge,
and though I have all faith,
so that I could remove mountains,
but have not love, I am nothing.

And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor,
and though I give my body to be burned,
but have not love, it profits me nothing.

Love suffers long and is kind;
love does not envy;
love does not parade itself, is not puffed up;
does not behave rudely,
does not seeks its own,
is not provoked,
thinks no evil;
does not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in truth;
bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

Love never fails.
But whether there are prophecies, they will fail;
whether there are tongues, they will cease;
whether there is knowledge, it will vanish away.

For we know in part and we prophesy in part.
But when that which is perfect has come,
soon that which is in part will be done away.

When I was a child, I spoke as a child,
I understood as a child, I thought as a child;
but when I became a man, I put away childish things.

For now we see in a mirror, dimly,
but soon face to face.
Now I know in part, but soon I shall know
just as I also am known.

And now abide faith, hope, love, these three;
but the greatest of these is love.

Alive again.

"You will accomplish more if you start now."

--fortune cookie

At a Pub in Indianapolis

There is an old man smoking
outside the wood-walled pub
on Main Street.
White hair, thick-rimmed glasses,
a soft pack of Marlboro Reds
in his hand and
cigarette thin legs.

He passes his fanned fingers
from his mouth to a limp hang
above the pavement.
Graceful in motion but
such a sad philosophy.

There is a fine balance
with man and his cigarettes:
one will consume the other
and both will leave
their ashes
on the ground.

Pub Talk

"I only have time for the best," Chaz Oreshkov on books.

Every Morning Hangover

It’s 7:30 in the morning. You bring the digital glow of your cell phone inches from your face and then toss it back to the floor in hazy discomfort. The whitish late autumn sun peering through your bedroom window is nothing short of blinding. You roll over onto your back and slowly become cognizant of your body and the wreck you have made it. The smell of Camel Light’s yellow stain clung onto your moustache hair, the whiskey headed dryness, the paper cup staleness in your throat, the stiffened, beanbag body ache. Only after you have committed yourself to this personal prison do you begin to question your reasons for doing so. Perhaps your darkened psychology has led you to solace in the bottle, you wonder, you wonder why you never think about the hangover when you are at the bar, drinking and talking, laughing as if you will never die, when in fact the next morning you will come pretty damn close. “Wake up!” It’s your mother, she yells a high-bird chirp through the house, “Leaving!” You knew you had your cousin’s 8th birthday party today since last week, but last night rolled around and once you started mixing a shot of boredom with two parts desire, a squirt of risk, and a couple drops of heroism, you find yourself in the morning dragging ass to the bathroom mirror looking at mockery of a human face, a stretched out plastic Halloween mask made poorly in your former image. You don’t change your clothes because you are already late. If you take anymore time, your family will start interrogating the events of your evening that contributed to such tardiness. And you’re a good actor, so just go with the flow of things. And you can’t be late for the birthday party, of course. He’s turning eight, dammit. You don’t want to disappoint him; you’re the big cousin. He’ll hang your absence like a dagger above his head for the rest of his life. So impressionable, that age.

You’re usually the optimist, the self-affirming, well-stabilized gentleman, but today you appear the walking carcass of a bear-attack; the road kill dance partner of some wide-hipped hipster chick dancing to sweaty tunes in a dive bar. You begin to feel time pumping again through your constricted blood vessels, you begin to understand it again, realizing the 5-hour drive to Detroit may, in all reality, be the death of you. Your Dad is already sitting in the car out in the driveway, adjusting all the rear view mirrors and fixing his clip-on shades. Your Mom is running between the kitchen and the garage in shuffle-footed fury, fuming, “Did everybody eat? No food for a long time! Are you hungry? What you want? Want me to make you eggs? I’ll make you eggs. Should I make you eggs? Eat something! We have to go!” Your Sister is yelling upstairs, complaining about how her hair is too curly, it never cooperates with her, how her make-up is fighting all shades of stubbornness today. You throw on your coat and grab a bottle of water out of the plastic package sitting on top of the old box of shoes in the garage. One, two, three, four, five, fix, those gulps pour into your body and cleanse your organs like dirty kitchen bowls washed in the sink. Everyone hustles into the car and you immediately fall asleep in the backseat.

You wake up when the sun is arching its way above the clouds, golden in the crisp, blue highway air. Your eyes open with heavy effort. The shadows of tree limbs scatter across your face and the grey cloth interior of the family jeep in crystalline pattern, something like a spider web over all you see. The hum of the car engine drones across the quick asphalt. Sister is in the backseat too, listening to her iPod and trying to paint her nails in the shaky terrain. Mom is upfront in the passenger’s seat, doing a cross-word and cracking salted pumpkin seed shells across her lips all splintered and messy. Dad still manages an air of humor in his motionlessness. A sunglassed statue who bears a striking resemblance to Saddam Hussein without a moustache, and maybe just a slightly greyer head of hair. Everyone is silent, content in their own worlds, trying to maintain a baseline homeostasis, even if if they don't know what the hell it is.

From the sound of the engine and the smell of the warm manufactured air pouring through the AC vents, you can tell there’s a little over 3 hours to go until you reach the outskirts of the Motor City. The rolling motion lulls you back to a parched and inconsistent snooze. If you sleep it off, you’ll forget how miserable you are right in time for some afternoon cake.

"Sad Steps," by Philip Larkin

Groping back to bed after a piss
I part thick curtains, and am startled by
The rapid clouds, the moon's cleanliness.

Four o'clock: wedge-shadowed gardens lie
Under a cavernous, a wind-picked sky.
There's something laughable about this,

The way the moon dashes through the clouds that blow
Loosely as cannon-smoke to stand apart
(stone-coloured light sharpening the roofs below)

High and preposterous and separate--
Lozenge of love! Medallion of art!
O wolves of memory! Immensements! No,

One shivers slightly, looking up there.
The hardness and the brightness and the plain
Far-reaching singleness of that wide stare

Is a reminder of the strength and pain
Of being young; that it can't come again
But is for others undiminished somewhere.

Daydreaming Small Northern Towns

Poem to Self

Who will love you now?
Now, after the night leaves
larger shadows for the rest of the day.
All the good lines have been used on easy women.
Yes, of course
there exists nothing as poetic
as the sway of lovely hips,
vase-like and warm-blooded.
But there is also nothing
as poetic as the empty room
you spend your nights
in longing
and dull yellow lamplight.

In the peace that comes
after shallow weeping,
it is only a poor man
who knows to reuse the music
of seashell beach symphonies
for the language of hollow hearts.
Sell glimpses of the moon
to the drunk and the blind
in a few sullen lines of poetry.
When you speak softly
it will become clear
only the narcotic pleasure of the verse
can awaken those sleepy years more
to the weight of gravity
or bring to clouded eyes
the tooth-colored shine from the stars.