Some people who have known me a long time are surprised to find out that I’m an award-winning poet. I don’t know why they’re surprised by this, since it’s not exactly going to EVER come up in a real-world adult conversation. “Hey, want to go to the camp this weekend?” “I’M AN AWARD WINNING POET. AND YES.” “Hey this toilet is leaking pretty bad should we call the-“ “AWARD-WINNING POET, RIGHT HERE!” It’s a good thing, but not very relevant to my daily life. It does, however, have the huge advantage of enabling me to make an emotional connection with strangers.

In a world and time such as ours, when communication is often faceless and many are known by little more than OP, it is hard to reach out and touch the soul of another human being.

I hope this poem succeeds for you, gentle reader.

BURIED

Buried, this world:
I need something less temporal,
Someone who can unbury,
Someone who can retreat
The charge toward entropy.
A person of True Love.
(The Real kind,
The kind that doesn’t make it
Into rom-coms
Or romance novels;
Not of naked bodies
Rolling on sheets of pleasure,
But one naked body,
Shaking in agony
So that his partner can
Know Him and
His heart and
One day,
Pleasures
Forevermore.)
I’ve waited a lifetime
(From this deathbed)
For Him
To take his coat off
And place it on my shoulders,
Give me one kiss,
The kiss of pure Joy…
Tasting vinegar on his own lips,
He tasted of fine wine on mine.
I’ve waited
For Him
To weep and shake with Love —
The Love that made Him and
The Love that was completed in me —
As tears stream from eyes that saw
Calvary, spitting, throngs of onlookers
Unwilling to help him.
I’ve waited
For Him
To wrap me in the arms of a body
(On my account)
Bashed and battered
Defiled
Dehumanized
And finally,
Left for dead,
His drying blood forming
The mortar of the bridge
We built to one another.
I weep in gratitude
When he pours the first glass,
Tremble as I read
The contents label.
My first meal, then.
I have never been
So scared or so happy
To eat before,
Digesting mightily,
Remembering
When my mother would say,
“You are what you eat.”

I’ve known food and sex and childbirth,
Now even death, even glory.
My mind tries to add
Its limited experiences together
To arrive at some conclusion
Of this Man;
I give up.
I finished the coursework
Already,
But it barely prepared me
For my Real job.
After dinner He talks
And leads me,
Walks me to my room,
Lays me in my single bed
Softer than sun-warmed loam,
Gentler than His grave, and His Carpenters’ Hands that built it,
Gentler than my grave that (finally!)
Granted a key.