Let’s stick with the commas, kid;
keep me on the script.
I can take them and toss them
throughout your Google doc
with precision, no problem;
I can answer every question
about grammar and plot—
but I don’t know what to say
about your grandpa,
why a good man
came home from
all-the-way-in-Africa
only to be lost again.
I could give you a guess,
repeat some tight
theology I think you
know by now
(the curse we all still cough on,
the corpse who conquered death),
but you never were the type
to need help reading
any text.
It feels like every year
I end up understanding less:
why mercy doesn’t earn respect,
why we take the side
of see-through lies
and sleep in the arms of our destruction,
why the patriarchs and prophets die,
why he had to wait
beneath the whip so long
before they let him lift
his own undoing up
upon his shoulders,
I don’t know—
and was each moment of it
necessary to balance out
the great cosmic equation
for my soul?
Would a pistol to the temple
not have been enough of hell
to pay my dues
and let me go?
Did he question?
Did he know,
or did the stars above Gethsemane
hear so much doubt laced in his pleas
that they lost the heart to shine that night
for fear all hope
had been a lie?
Backyard Apricots 