consideration, consecration

i have never been baptized. i have never felt

my sins washed away.

this is what i have felt: second-hand

sacraments, arms crossed over my heart, head bowed.

fortune-cookie condolences, paper airplanes

folded from hymnal lyrics. et exsultavit spiritus meus. oh,

does anybody have the time?

all rise, be seated, come forward.

faith is something whispered into your ear

and you never know who’s saying it.

consider: one day a man meets his maker and is taken to a cave.

his maker grabs him by bloody fingers and, weeping,

pulls him back down to him.

i have never been reborn. i birth and rebirth myself every morning,

my immortal soul gaping open raw and bloody, heart beating

in time with the ticking clock.

consider: he kneels in the garden.

crimson beads on his temple, falling,

turning the soil to ivory and gold.

the spirit is willing, the spirit unbreaking

and tenuous and afraid, but the flesh

is weak. it must be so, it will be so, i

must make it so. gloria, gloria, fiat voluntas tua.

we all know something of desperation.

consider: lazarus never knew he would be saved. he emerged from heaven

mummified, entered the world trailing cloth and dust. for a moment

he could have been anybody.

i design execution on myself, fingers tracing

down, left, right.

i confess every borrowed sin

to every god i have on loan and, god,

it is body and blood and chorus tones,

shaking just so.