Mausoleum

On the floor
lie the
remains of
the glass you broke
when you lost the will
to function
today.
And you
are a ghost
to yourself today
and you tell me not to worry
as if I can trust you or anyone
when they tell me everything
anything
will be okay,
will be all right.

And you have given me an excuse I've long needed
to pretend I don't even live here
with your haunting optimism and its cynical underpinnings
telling me we can pretend:
to believe,
to care,
to live,
and so on,
because for me this is just a hobby
and a waiting game for when everything comes together
and maybe I was a gullible child
but I never believed in winning,
and do we even have a choice?
Gathering our possessions we shift
underground
nocturnal
and gather the broken, jagged pieces
and in a dust-choked marble reliquary
they will wait for us to
make a move.

St. Francis

And so we almost die:
a no-fault collision,
and a creeping guilt conquering like a viral
Emperor of the West.
Enthroned European
and beaming,
certainly
(I think passing through the corridor
with the graphic crucifixes
and No Smoking signs)
we have taken a wrong turn.
And I have betrayed myself.
Trust, as a conceptual issue
has lost all of the relevance
it has never deserved:
we need to be made
to believe
and I
am okay
with that.
Hell of a legacy
we inherited,
I guess.

I need
to believe
I need to believe
in a revision;
in an insecure Jesus,
self-doubting and full of missteps and
awkward pauses waiting to unleash themselves
upon future Canonical editors
("This too shall pass.")
and embarrassingly stuttered speeches
from hilltops, eyes fixed on the sun-scorched soil.
A minor boost to His self-confidence,
from the news of Judas Iscariot and the Legion,
because one betrayal pales in comparison to the
Twelve that kept him awake at nights,
and so gave him something to live for long enough
to die.
And yet the scholars tell me I am wrong,
casting about ideas like stones
by children in some past
free from the reality that has severed it's own,
but
here in this shrine of desperation and hope and loss
coexist this macabre symbol of I don't even know anymore
with all the corporate advances of modern medicine,
and in passing I think:
maybe I am on to something.
The teachings are not in what is said
or done
or passed on in any way,
and yet,
we've learned
to not trust ourselves,
and that sounds bad,
I know,
I know,
but think
of the options.