Auto-Autopsy

"How do you feel?"

"I'm a little cold.
     I feel stiff.
          I am a stiff--
     I'm dead.
I've been murdered."

Unspeakable Gift

So much noise in my head—

It’s hard to keep you in focus.

Even beyond the veil of the world

Sometimes you seem shrouded in

Too many motifs,

Buried in a garden of symbols.

Must I attend a symposium of

                the world’s finest religious theorists

                and theologians?

Can I climb inside the T.A.R.D.I.S.

                and travel to that hallowed glowing stable

                under Bethlehem’s star?

Stories upon stories

Testimonies stacked together.

What shall be my avenue to know my LORD?

Is my brain that elastic,

                my heart so broad?

And while I worry about

                what color of train to take,

                or oysters dying,

                or white, warm houses,

                or what flowers will adorn my grave,

There are bits of you flying around everywhere,

Ready to jump out at me, dancing,

                then fade out of sight,

                as elusive and ephemeral as I make them.

Even in my contemplation

I can adhere to no one symbol.

Don’t you worry that my mortal train of thought

Is running circles around the station??

I do!

Once lost, now found—

That constant ebb and flow,

                A delta of mercy,

                The oxygen exchange in love’s lungs.

How many names have you?

How can I see all of you, your form so impossibly big

and more than four-dimensional?

How many  lines of poetry must I write

                before the ink and lead scratch away

                this paper and paint your portrait?

Even then it will be a mere fraction of your dimensions.

Perhaps that is why so many artists

Have chosen you as a subject.

But all their painting combined are still just a number, not ∞.

How do you quantify holiness?

                or bottle mercy?

What is the arithmetic of righteousness?

                or the pH of forgiveness?

All of us— scientists, artists,

Engineers and ventriloquists—

                Shall we bounce endlessly around

                our rubber room,

                hoping one of us will hit the target

                and set us all Free?

It seems that distance intransversible

Is the one between you and me…

And yet—

In some curious way—

Last night you wrapped your warm carpenter’s hands

Around that familiar place between my lungs,

And I could smell the sawdust of the cross

Under the bright and holy mountain.

And as I close my eyes and try to

“Feel” or “Sense” or rub against

That veil again…

Perhaps it is more real now

                for just being once.

You managed to fold time and space

                and made that hopeless distance

                totally transversible.

Something tells me I may never find you.

You always find me.