This is what we call “a big one.”

It started out as sketch in my journal. A lark based on the first stanza. The format is… weird, based on nothing but how the words look and sounded when spoken aloud. But I think that it works.

In fact, I know it works because I’ve read it aloud multiple times over and found myself enjoying the process of writing it more and more, tinkering with it over the last week.

The poem itself is dedicated to my paternal Grandmother. She passed in 2022, and even if her passing was not untimely, it was still unexpected. Were I to have a regret, it’s that I never found the courage to write things for her while she was alive.

That is changing now. I have the skill, I have the spirit. It’s high time that I embrace it.

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Miracle Workers

I believe in
things that were broken
and then mended

I believe in
miracle workers that bind
stitches into scars

And a goodwill
mafia that fills potholes,
and dodges cop cars

I believe in
breaking out of prisons
with four-posters

And exercising
the right to take a little
in order to give
a whole lot more

I believe that
home is a country I
will never know

I believe it
is a diary that need
no longer roam

I believe in
journals, half-filled, stretched and sketched
and scribbled and erased
and scribbled again

I believe in
a sixth sense called humor
and a seventh called rhythm

I believe in
friends trading art pieces
called favors

love letters
called poems

and soliloquies
called voice messages

(left after the beep)

I believe in
a love like contact staves,
and another like horoscopes

One muscled with
memories, kissing arms,
neck, nape and skin

And the other
changing day-to-day

A crossword game
with no other solution
but to play

I believe that
love can still resurrect
the dead

And the same hands
that hurt can heal the sick

I believe that
the last time I cried, I died
and saw the corpse,

I prepared
the body, I carried the coffin,
I drove the hearse

When we arrived
at the cemetery I
had no flowers,

So I made
A promise to no power but mine,
no color but yours

But now the years
have passed and I don’t
know anymore

I just kept on
swimming until I couldn’t
see the shore

Kept on writing
in circles and circles and circles
and circles until
the sun returned

In the years since,
I broke up with the girl,
got back in bed,
and slept in

Now she’s back
and she’s so smoking hot,

her eyes evergreen and
head just as red

Running right through me
like a chariot

And I believe
I need to look both ways
before I can cherish it

Because this is
a race with no finish line
but starting blocks

And the next time
I live will come at the flash
of a gun

And the next time
I die will soon come

I believe I
have done wrong but never
at the mouth of a bong

Only when I
lost track, loosed fingers
and let slip grace,

Let it fragment over our
common space

So I grabbed the
dust pan and said my peace

Took what could
be salvaged and locked it away
with “to fix” writ
across the face

Now the pieces
just sit there, in a casket
with no earth

Yesterday I
pulled them out, just to see what
glass bones were worth

Found a towel
to hide the end of birth

I approached
the ferryman, yawning wide
his gullet black with
a metal hide

His toll was paid, his prize
was death, his price was life

But when sirens turned the street
his victory turned defeat

And I believe
that I made it to the gaffer
just in time

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