Independence

I’m reading some awful poetry
by a painter I admire,
something about zombies
and supermarkets,
a long-winded way of saying,
“Gee, the world is sure a pretty
fucked-up place.”

Why do we feel the need to craft
elaborate fabrications
in order to convey a simple truth?
Perhaps we are simply retracing
the cosmic thread, the godhead
bridging the gulf between the pew
and the altar, between lives
too absurd in their futility and
dreams too fanatical
to be believed.

With God keeping watch like a feudal lord,
Not one of our precious inventions
or creations is ours to claim,
taken from us upon conception
like the adopted infant of an adolescent mother.
Weeping, she is comforted and told
to take solace in the fact that
it is going to a better home,
where it will be pacified
and loved, and given toys
and pretty little baby shoes.
All she can keep thinking is,
“I hope they teach it how to dance.”

I’m as needy as a cancer,
Invading, replicating,
destroying the One that gives me life…
To prove what point?

I’m a youngest son, and
I’ve just beaten my father in a game
of basketball that I know deep in my heart
he let me win. Yet
he takes me in his arms and
spins me around and tells me
that he loves me, and we both laugh
until it’s time to play again.