Borderline

The Sound of Becoming

Sometimes it is a bang. A thunder clap
inside the heart—an earthquake. An idea
so strong it spasms, ripples through the body
like the body is a blue-moon rock-kissed lake.  
It might be a shotgun blast. A buckshot boom
goose-bumping its way outwards, towards feet
and fingers like a prison break revival
spreading through you from the deepest of your centers.

Other times it is a whisper—a kiss. A breeze
when the ghost of the ocean starts to flow inside
your bones and suddenly they’re seashells.
Suddenly, you are a giant seashell
being held to the ear of a small child
who is smiling for the music in your lungs.

There are moments it is nothing but a silence.
The onset of a Buddhist calm. A stillness
as the cherry blossom bows before the moon—
your pulse begins to tune itself
back to the frequency of Universe.

Purpose is the song of a million tongues—
the wild, drunken dance of some transcendent grace.
A preacher calls it God, but I just think
it’s resonance….maybe that’s something
like the same, except that resonance  
has never sent a man to Hell for givin blowjobs.

My God is nothing but a voiceless echo
stirring through the hallowed halls of every human
kingdom, seeking ways to shake six billion  
separate cages made of very different ribs.

My God is nothing but a holy joy
that molds us all in different ways. Casts
us all as different things. A light
that hits us all a little different—
as it spills into our hearts and fills
the sky with patterns only we can see.

Ask an architect about the stars.
She’ll tell you that they feel like cosmic blueprints—
or the brightest of the light bulbs flickering
in the windows of an infinite skyscraper.
Her husband is an artist. His eyes
are made of paint that never dries; the night
is nothing but a canvas full of lonely, reaching
fireflies burning their way back to Van Gogh.

And I am no astronomer. My stars remain
the markers of no brilliant constitution, but
from the many mouths of poem I make prayer.
I hear bang. I hear whisper. I am seashell.



I am ears open for the sound of becoming
and I hear God like I hear metaphor.
A wild, drunken dance. A song of
million tongues—I hear God like nothing but
the ink with which we dare to sign our footsteps
into scripture. We are scripture. We are walking,
talking, breathing, scattered books of bible.

Brother! Open me and listen to my story.
Ask me of the ways an atheist can pray—
and I will tell you of the sunrise,
of the ballpoint, and the notebook. I will
tell you of the day my right hand first exploded
into tingles for the passion in another
poets voice. Ask me about holy!

Listen as I share the way
the page became an empty dance floor
begging me for music and for movement.
And the pen let out the softest siren song,
it was a low and lusty moan-leaving the lips
of the sweetest alto sax. It was a jazz
in desperate search of jazz.

Brother! Divinity is jazz. We are
the chalice overflowing with the Lord.