You never know exactly when you’ll take confession

Daniel Barnes 

If only I had that name, so easy, 

Dan Barnes they remember Danny and 

He wouldn’t challenge them, their beliefs, but rather camouflage into the 

Violent everafter of America

I look over his shoulder at his boarding pass again and see his middle name 

Lock Stock and barrel  

A bullet of American pride 

No I’m not saying it

You never know exactly when you’ll take confession 

When the membrane holding another’s thoughts might scratch across the surface of your face 

And burst like an aquarium  

Thoughts stillborn into the poison air flip flopping about 

And leave you wading in their tears to the knees 

There must be someone better to hear this? 

We are called not when we are ready but when He is

But talk is just talk and actions are ridiculous  

Until a flood breaks to a vacuum 

Tell me this sun isn’t the West

Tell me how and when we shape the shadows to tell the stories we want to tell 

The successes at the end, when the fire pops it’s teeth at the night, sawing in the wind, and we sing to forget and vibrate the wine in our veins

Alighting angels in the dark 

How do those stories actually go?

I’m listening, go on 

The dream I had still holds me

The subconscious so strong it moves without words 

The language we gender and veneer our lives with is but 70000 years old

Our brain stems, the fleshed pulp that roots out to the void, to the divine, endlessly conceived and re-conceived, have been moving us for millions upon millions of years  

Without a word 

In a dream I see my tea cup, glass demitasse, unravel and spiral in a circle, like it must have been blown and hewn but it peels like an orange

And I wake

With no explanation 

Just thrown west to the work that paints the shadows of victory 

Just to the lonely travelers who need to speak to hear that their voice still works and the pain they carry has not corroded their heart beyond holding all love  

The air is thin and processed and the overhead crackles to call the absent travelers to board

Maybe it’s time to go home