One Line

For Fr. Paul Mankowski

Cantaloupe rays interlace

     morning’s moist fingers

for an unhurried saunter.

     Each day seems the same

after death, slides into frame

     after frame of stop-motion

animation, as if actions

     were made independent

in playback, as if thought,

     word & deed believed

separate were essentially

     a one-line graphite drawing

circling & folding back

     into itself on soft vellum.

I Became

When I became the tree,

I heard the sound of men

hung to die in darkness.

When I became the wind,

I felt a whip against skin

that peeled black to red.

When I became the rain,

I smelled freedom shackle

a well-worn pillory.

When I became the sun,

I saw pus-stained bolls

of cotton cry in the field.

When I became the moon,

I wept behind the earth.

A Second Coming

This is where an acid rain begins

   to fall on skin blackened by fists,

where peaceful protest dissolves

   into crimson puddles on sidewalks

chalked in rainbow hurts & fears,

   where homo sapiens reset buttons

have rusted to steel spinal columns.

   This is when the sea parts to drown

already sinking land, weighed down

   by landfills of necessities’ inventions;

when a titanium chariot bursts through

   phlegm-colored clouds & delivers

a shrink-wrapped Amazon box labeled

   To whom or what it may concern.