i'm you

it was whispered in my ear
i'm you now
do you feel my pain
i'm you now
what i do i do for you
i'm you now
the lash hits my back
i'm you now
the hunger in your belly
I'm you now
the gaze upon the house on the hill
i'm you now
your anger, your life
i'm you now
your gifts and the blight
i'm you now
when you are cheated, abused
i'm you now
and when you carry my weak dark lies
i'm you now
cannot raise my hand in hate
i'm you now
cannot fail to see how weak
i'm you now
must see the glow of your being
i'm you now
look for the heart
i'm you now
my arms enfold us both
i'm you now
let me whisper in your ear
i'm you now



last first

no class ever went into a frenzy
to be the last one in their line
beating pushing frantically
to fall back to the one
that brings up the rear
they have no line ender notions
it's loathed

yet upon the importance of failures of our designing, of the cabooses
a last place people founded a belief system
with a non leader that said
while dressed in a discarded cloth
how you treat the least of us defines us
don't led from celebrity and
never fail to be here now

so it is stated he lived it
depending upon the kindnesses of strangers
optimism in their offering
taking on their demons
a cloth to their brow, cool the fever
not consumed by his death
deeply aware of the money changers

a teacher and a preacher
saying that his love was a beautiful stinking weed
that grew into a kings garden
choking away the selectively bred
a metaphor maker
clear in the message of care for others
non accumulation of wealth as wealth

teaching about this
your simple grandmother that freezes her
bananas in the fridge
gives you her life meaning in oral stories
bandages and nurses her lifetime
serving others to fulfill herself
saying this is really living our purposes here

a last place finisher in a rat race
penniless buried on borrowed time
lived life, her brisket life well
she read, loved, tried, cared for me, this drives the now
in the moments she touched the face of her god
by baking a pie of sweet potatoes

and inviting you to the table



heal me


if you cannot feel or care
with me
can you heal me

if the last become first
in the life of this child
are you there

if you had everything perfection
would you give it away
to know its loss

what is love
without the body to carry it
and thus be redeemed

if a love made me not feel this ill pain
so sharply
could this lift us

or would it be felt
in its rejection
when cruelly pulled a right

bliss and pain came
as i asked again
can you heal me


tend the sick, cloth the poor, feed the hungry

yeah hard words to believe in
harder still for anyone to follow
resisted by titans and totalitarians, by titled and cameoed
photo opted and photo shopped.

but bringing a case of waters or some nice coloring books
to a classroom of kids
a nice mac to allow them to talk to the world
it doesn't spring from word to deed

easily and freely in this world
of critical scientific reason
it takes something more
you have to care enough to give.


own nothing, give it away

giving a lot here to the landlady
for her investments she'd like some understanding
it's been a real hard few months

we got to talking about it when the toilet blew
and it was time to negotiate the fix
not that she would talk about my teaching, life

her mind is filled with her money
her expectations for it, her investing
as Thoreau said her house our home owns her

i just enjoy it as i pay the rent
and consider ways we lose ourselves
as we grow into adults that have to much

that we can't see the rest at all
but its okay because its not a lost or even bad thing
shes just struggling to figure things out like me

and shes been fair enough
and helpful enough this wasn't fair to her
it was just the way to a poem