THE SIZE AND SHAPE OF ALL THINGS ROLLING - Buddy Wakefield

By the time my fingernails had split
and cut their way back in 
toward the knuckle grit

I had already chewed these teeth
clear down to the dirty nubs
from chattering about how hard I hit bottom again

how far I had to climb up out of it
shovel myself off and start over
been doing that long as I can remember

as if it were my calling
as if my name were Helter Skelly
rising from falls I keep taking in vain

just for a reason to stand here, 
looking like another loose jawbone
hinged on a tilt-a-whirl. 

The question was, 

If god can do anything,
can he can make a rock so big
that even he can’t lift it? 

The answer is  

Yes, all he has to do
is commit
to defeating himself.

HURLING CROWBIRDS AT MOCKINGBARS - Buddy Wakefield

If we were created in God’s image

then when God was a child

he smushed fire ants with his fingertips

and avoided tough questions.

There are ways around being the go-to person.

Even for ourselves.

Even when the answer is clear

like the holy water gentiles were drinking

when they realized

“Forgiveness is the release of all hope for a better past.”

I thought those were chime shells in your pocket

so I chucked a quarter at it

hoping to hear some part of you respond on a high note.

You acted like I was hurling crowbirds at mockingbars

then you abandoned me for not making sense.

Evidently I don’t experience things as rationally as you do.

For example, I know mercy

when I have enough money to change the jukebox

at a gay bar.

You know mercy whenever

someone shoves a stick of morphine

straight up into your heart.

Goddamn it felt amazing

the days you were happy to see me.

So I smashed a beehive against the ocean

to try and make our splash last longer.

Remember all the honey

had me looking like a jellyfish ape

but you walked off the water

in a porcupine of light, strands of gold

drizzled out to the tips of your wasps.

This is an apology letter to the both of us

for how long it took me to let things go.

It was not my intention to make such a production

of the emptiness between us,

playing tuba on the tombstone of a soprano

to try and keep some dead singer’s perspective alive.

It’s just that I could have swore you sung me a love song back there

and that you meant it

but I guess some people just chew with their mouth open.

So I ate ear plugs alive with my throat, hoping they’d get lodged

deep enough inside the empty spots that I wouldn’t have to hear you

leaving, so I wouldn’t have to listen to my heart keep saying

all my eggs were in a basket of red flags, all my eyes to a bucket

of blindfolds in the cupboard with the muzzles and the gauze.

I didn’t mean to speed so far out and off, trying to drive

your nickels to a well

when you were happy to let those wishes drop.

But I still show up for gentleman practice

in the company of lead dancers

hoping their grace will get stuck in my shoes.

Is that a handsome shadow on my breath, sweet woman,

or is it a cattle call in a school of fish? Still

dance with me. Less like a waltz for panic,

more for the way we’d hoped to swing

the night we took off everything

and we were swinging for the fences.

Don’t hold it against my love. You know I wanna breathe deeper

than this. I didn’t mean to look so serious, didn’t mean

to act like a filthy floor, didn’t mean to turn us both

into some cutting board

but there were knives stuck

in the words where I came from.

Too much time in the back of my words.

I pulled knives from my back and my words.

I cut trombones from the moment you slipped away.

And I know it left me lookin’ like a knife fight, lady.

Boy I know it left me feelin’ like a shotgun shell.

You know I know I might’ve gone and lost my breath

but I wanna show you how I found my breath to death.

It was buried under all the wind instruments

hidden in your castanets. Goddamn. If you ever wanna know

how it felt when you left, if you ever wanna come inside

just knock on the spot

where I finally pressed stop

playing musical chairs with your exit signs.

I’m gonna cause you a miracle

when you see the way I kept God’s image alive.

“Forgiveness is for anyone

who needs safe passage through my mind.”

If I really was created in God’s image

then when God was a boy

he wanted to grow up to be a man.

A good man.

And when God was a man - a good man - he started

telling the truth in order to get honest responses.

He’d say,

Yeah, I know… I really should’ve worn my cross.

Again. But I don’t wanna scare the gentiles off.

That is not what I came here to do.

He said,

I’m pretty sure

I just came here to love you.

Healing Hermann Hesse - Buddy Wakefield

Hermann wants to eat nicotine sometimes. He asks

for a lot. He paces space to make himself nervous

because some people are better at surviving than

living. If you wanna get heavy he'll teach you. He

knows it. Spends his time falling from the weight.

Got a lead brain. It's a battle magnet. He carries it

around by the guilt straps. Don't laugh. You didn’t

see the size of the blizzard that birthed him. Fits

of snow. Cotton rocks. Whipped white bullet stretches

pinned with chips of teeth to his habit of crying for help.

He doesn't land well. Hates landing. It reminds him of not

living up.

Listen.

I know there were days you wanted to die.

Days you misplaced all the right words then waited

to make sense once everyone here stopped watching.

Nights you let them beat up your body in bed

because redemption was still alive in you howling.

Uncompromising.

Gathering strength.

Happiness

is too far to fall.

Felt like ecstasy

when they pounded it out of you.

Those days of dead weather high strung out together

and spoke for you.

You told everyone here it was a good life,

smiled and waved back into the wails of your wind fight,

into the parts of the past that haunt you,

all the days you weren’t being yourself.

It’s why most of the past

still haunts you,

Milk Worder,

Mr. Self Murder.

Hiding is not an option for people

so good at showing up. You show up.

It is okay that you showed up missing.

We’ve all abused ourselves

then looked over

the wrong shoulder about it.

Call it Fatherlock.

You were picked like this.

I know you hate the hope.

It’s all the hope that makes you stay.

And you stay so far off the ground.

Hermann will not bow down to gravity. Falling

he catches up to himself midair just before the ground

smacks. Pullthroat, they call’im. Sharp turner. Nothing

touches the ground here.  Ground is at capacity.

He sees that. He falls back. He patches parachutes

together with a kite knife.  It's big enough to raise him

in the updrafts where he hides himself away in angles

of air outlined by his knack for believing that this life

is gonna work itself out.