i want to feel awake
i like to be baptized
so that a man’s hand on my back can shoot me up from the water
you forget
there is a last time you’ll swim with your father
in a plastic pool or city lake
and even if he mostly held you under
sometimes still
he shot you up from the water
and the water looking on
and us awake
i keep pulling the sheets off of my head
but it’s not the same
-
feel awake
-
3-4yr olds (twice as much)
for every minute you’re teaching them
you need two
of play togetheringfor every time they look up at you
or come and find you
you need two
where you saw and found them firstfor every project you make them do
you need two
invented on their ownand when all eleven voices
are begging for attention
you need twenty two separate times
you offered them attention firstwhatever you ask of them
twice as much
you must giveand from whatever love you put in
twice as much
you will get -
The Corkboard in the Church Kitchen
PREPARATION
4 TRAYS FOR JUICE AND BREAD
Crackers in cabinet by window as is extra juice
Put about 20 to 25 crackers per tray
If we have the gluten free 2 go in center
Of each tray
There is a gadget that is used to fill the juice
And fill at least up to ring of the silver tray
The glass vase is filled about 1/2 full
Refrigerator has the bread to go on plate. (if you
do not see plate look in cabinet above sink)
The goblet will be up there also.
Put bread and juice on piano and organ please.
CLEAN UP
Off the communion table bring the communion
Items to the kitchen to be washed.
You need to go thru the church and pick up the
Cups and paper left behind.
Fill the communion trays with cups every other
One and put down in the cabinet with the
Bread trays.
Make sure kitchen is neat and turn light off.
Volunteers
Volunteers are unpaid…
Not because they are
Worthless…
But because they are
Priceless !! -
christ in mind
if it turns out that GOD
is legible
to my mind
then where are the words located
with respect to me
if GOD is a voice I hear
in my head
did Jesus hear it too? and if Jesus is Christ and Christ is GOD
does GOD hear the same voice that we do?
(even if it’s just the way I hear my voice in my head)Do GODs thoughts run in trains like mine
or are they somehow all at once
the closest thing I know to that
is a panic attack
when all the windows into my conscious mind quickly close
and even I can’t get access back
it looks like when two trains collide
that’s why I wonder if it happens when too many thoughts overlapI want a faith so strong it doesn’t matter how the facts turn out
If GOD is a voice to me the way that Judah has become
does that at least mean GOD was once alive? like Judah once was?I don’t want to be afraid of finding things out about the world
maybe it’s like how some people say
that people change
but we can’t know for sure if they change
or if we just learn more about them
or they learn more about themwhatever GOD is like
with or just a voice or not
I hope that GOD
will stay. -
does my body know
why am I in so much pain
my body aches
does my body know
what my heart’s been through?I want an algorithm to stitch me in a sonnet
I want to be pretty but my mind and words I think are ruinedmy esophagus keeps closing
it is hard to breathe
& hard to breathe
and my esophagus is closingit’s like my body wants to shut me up
but I find other ways
to say my peace
and ruin thingsI want to be pretty & grieve
and lie and cheat and steal for good reasons
I want to be so transcendentally things
that everything I know and believe translates into me
I could read their mind and know
they heard me out and understood
and there would be no judgement
when I am everything
because knowing all the good reasons we got here
would get us all the good will we’d need to leaveleave suffering
and ecstasies
and everything
in betweenso that every experience takes on equal incandescent degrees and specificity
takes on all the meaning an experience could ever beit is not a game of raising up
or thinking more highly of
it is to dispose of scales completely
it is not a flattening
it is where no two things have any two points of comparison
where each experience takes on its own complete dimensionalitybetter and worse lose application
I know this is just the sort of thing one might expect to find in poetry…
it’s just… I’m sick and throbbing and all I want is to stop wishing I wasn’t -
why is it so painful to watch children grow?
as you grow
I growthe two will never meet
as you grow
I growinto more of you & out of present me
the two will never meet -
oh that was before the end
oh that was before the end
a whirl dies down
my family and them at some event
some picture I’m not in
I can’t recall the final time
& dates don’t help
forever
I said
eternity in my heart I meant
I heard GOD’s present moment is big
so big my past and future fit in it
I hate GOD
or
I hate being GOD
I hate having back the present moments I passed
I cannot know whoever they are now
I hate how when I am GOD I already know where this is going
I hate being GOD and sitting on my hands to keep from putting the world I want togetherI don’t want them free
I don’t like knowing someone said they loved me and will never say it againthe only thing I like about GOD might be not changing
if I cut my hair I am another person
the old is passing and the new still becomingall of this before the end
one which I still cannot tell is ever coming -
it is the concrete we made
the flower picked at seven
is dead by eleven
& no fear
they pick another
picked for motheri don’t think humans were made
to walk single filethey reach for flowers
they run and trip
it is the concrete we made
that scrapes their kneesi don’t think humans were made
to walk single file -
i have this reoccurring dream
that judah is still alive and all of us
in his inner circle of friends
know well he is alive and we try to respect his decision to fake his own death
and then, in the dream, i find out he really has died
maybe a car accident or something usual
or i run into him in a grocery store or something
and he nervously says hi and gives me the deepest and most sincere stare i’ve seen and I know he’s requesting that I not tell anyone he’s alive
but then, like I said, I always find out later he died. like actually died
and when i find out i always think i wasted what time i had left with him
it’s as if even if he was still alive
what exactly do i think i would do so differently?
i’m not sure.. and i’d say i hate the dream except that the beginning of it always feels so nice.. -
it never occurred to me as a child
that I could even hope for life to be enjoyable
I was primed
(accidentally groomed, one might say)
to hate being alive
to think that the only thing really worth being
is dead & with jesus after it
& in heaven where
being alive might actually be niceit rarely occurs to me, even now,
that the greatest service I could do for GOD
is…well I guess I’m not sure I just…
I’m just trying to be alive
nathanael.ink 