Hymn to the God I love contrarily
My God, my God, I—
under the watchful stars of your eyes,
in the winnowing of my own being,
I am testimony to all, I am testimony that,
you are. Helpless, I am the likeness
of at least one night of passion,
and like unto a thought of yours.
And so, God of my night, I ask:
what of all the nights after that?
God of my yesterday, God of my tomorrow,
I can mark each sacred hour without a mind
for you at all, even if such requires yours.
What a difference you make, and none,
when somehow it is mine not to act,
and today you encounter me,
the bread of the face untouched.
Between sin and devotion there is
some impossible space of both
and neither, the votive of quiet
indifference. The mechanical turn
of a smile all hewn of happiness.
The obeisance of a soft shrug.
And I say to you, God of my empty heart,
God of the pierced and empty heart,
God of Jonah in the gullet—oh God,
of the liturgy I would attend:
here I have in the hollow of my hand
all the tears I do not shed.
Here I am stretched out underneath
your shadow, and with such trouble.
And you, you are real enough for my anger.
Are you not? Oh God, my God, embodied
of my tension, the tired limbs;
oh God, who spans my interrogative;
God with my own tongue,
parched by the taste of my distress,
oh God, “My God, my God.”
Lyric at a Dule-Tree
You loved me, in your way, but hated me too,
when you nailed me between my shoulders,
and hooked a wire just there at my neck,
to lift me, to hold me up, but too high,
so my feet barely grazed the earth.
Apotheosis of your hope in a body
too small to hold it, beloved of a beauty
near enough not to touch, and if we danced,
it was because I let you hold my hand
while we pretended that I wasn’t me.
It would be a hard thing to speak
the desperate proximity of an almost,
sliding right there, right there, right there,
at my pointed toes—and what it’s like
to want in a way that is not sweet.
Hanged man at a crossroads, cursed
under a full moon, with the devil laughing
on a dare, that the human will can spill
its heart’s-blood when lanced up underneath
the horizontal ribs that hold the breath
of wanting to be kissed.