#8: Said to Godhead...

Hallucinated into existence? That is my wonder. Let’s toast three fingers deep to imagined reality, to the counterfeit faux as genuine. Let’s just drink backwards and spit in our glass. Does this make any sense to you, or am I reading too much quantum theory on eternity, part and parcel to particles governing the whole shebang. What polices you? The rules of physics are constant, so they must be ruled from devolving into cosmic anarchy. Is that you, warden of strings? My physics prof went mad at the sheer size of knowledge, and I don’t blame you. You never said we needed to understand in entirety. That’s why we got faith, right? Faith seeking reason is theology and there is no crying in theology. It is jailhouse rockabilly blaring from a dented jalopy driving down a dark road into a ghost town we were never warned about. We should have been warned about that town. We need your policing.

#18: Said to Godhead...

Don’t cassock me in martyred red or recruit courage to take up arms in my soul. Is gutlessness doubt? Some sin of bravery’s omission? I never met a fistfight I couldn’t out-talk (you must be beaming proud as the English sun). Sometimes the courage is in saying no, I will not bleed on this contested field of cow shit and destalked cob. Who made courage noble anyway? I’ve seen a woman on a beach half-clothed and bronzed in perfect sun who I was too afraid to talk to and her life is better off without my neuroses at her altar. See? Fortune favors the bold but money corrupts and I’d rather we meet unblemished. Staring death in the eye unafraid is what only the blind can do and when’s the last time a blind guy won a fist fight. He who has ears, let him hear.

#41: Said to Godhead...

Let’s armistice this muscled embrace and sit down together in the trench to discuss the length of Tolstoy’s War and Peace. Did you see a movie whose plot had no conflict? No one did is the pointlessness. We get bored so easily that we conjure up antidotes to the poisons we’ve invented. Barbed wire boxing rings, ding-ding, we wrestle with angels in the dust on angel dust, a wicked plot thickener. That’s the point: plot points are always about opposition. Protagonist, antagonist, you’re it. Show me a day without conflict and I’ll show you the blissful hallucination. Even birth is a violent conflict between life and taring. If storks did carry newborns they’d hit planes and we’d drone on about how dangerous flying has become. Hope too implies that being let down is in opposition. We just hope we’re let down, not thrown down. War and Peace is longer than we’d hoped. The opposite is true of life.

Christopher Grosso is the author of three novels, available at Crossroad Press. His poetry collection, Philadelphia Swank, won the Thirty West 2017 Chapbook Competition and was published that same year. His poems have appeared in dozens of publications, most recently in 3 Elements Review, Dime Show Review, Episcopal Café, among others. He is the Communications Manager for the Vincentians of the Eastern Province.

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