Here, In This Lucid World Of Mine

Here, the sky is a gathering of clouds

raining ruins over this body of frail wishes,

And my thoughts are gods that illusion me

toward the path I long for but never reach.

I’ve learned to mold heaven for things that drift

me into a hollow of dearth, things that peel

my prayers from God’s palms like an exfoliated igneous

and strip my heart from the body of faith.

Here, I confine the density of my loss

and cloak them with words

before lowering them into the

belly of a poem, into a hiding place.

But no one sees, not even in my poems— how

a boy is drowning and calling for grace.

All they do is watch frogs flutter happily into the rain’s embrace

and listen to crickets orchestrate from the dark into the open.

No one weighs the heaviness croaking in the frog’s

chest, or the brokenness of clouds that births

the rain rubbing palms with darkness

hovering in the crickets’ songs,

Or sees the boy building a paradise for each

sin he scribble on his forehead.