God is not in the church
It’s in the sweet warm blush of Spring breeze,
the blue burning up high in the afternoon,
the mattress-soft pinks and cotton whites
blooming along freshly painted porches;

It’s in the bees that buzz zip from petal to petal
as if their lives’ meaning is to bring pollen
to the colors of the rainbow,
to spread the seeds of Summer over everything
like green over a pasture, teeming and bright;

It’s in the reason we come to a park on Sunday
and lie on our backs, float on the cool grass,
gaze up the skirt of a flowering tree,
letting the Sun take a nap on our chest

God is life, and life is all around

In the Kisatchie ocean of pine and oak that shimmers evergreen in the wind, there’s a tree that all the life knows. This tree is a sun in the forest, life in the branches veining up and out to the bright blue. Its throat pillars a canopy above that glistens with beads of sunlight, gold strings that drip down to the earth where pine needles and twigs and leaves and cones come to stitch a wild tapestry of green, teeming dirt, warm browns, colors that smell like soil and clean air. All breathing within and around this tree. Animals of every nation and shrub pass by it—skitter up and about it. Nothing claims it, and it claims nothing. It is as much as all is; a testament to the only Truth: the constant of growth and life. If it only had eyes, it would be witness to a story that never ends, a story of the truest symbols under Moon and Sun, of the turmoil between rainbow and storm, of the purest music that sings from apricot dawn to fire-golden dusk.
in medias res—Tiny things in neon yellow hats and vests arrive, riding larger, mechanical mud-yellow beasts. They stomp over the late summer tapestry on their way Forward, wherever that is? The yellow beasts’ black smoke billows up above the green, suffocating the throats of trees that lived like they held up the heavens. One by one the tiny things mark then behead and uproot and dismember and skin and haul the forest congregation as cargo into trucks, and the trucks plow down the young shrubs in their Way, whatever that is? One tree, however, is too stubborn for the tiny things’ grunts; despite the will of machines, it won’t be usurped and will not fall. So, it stays, and the concrete serpent that comes next just slithers around it. A smooth and efficient scar made from the same stuff as tombstones is carved in to Kisatchie, painted the color of tar with yellow and white lines going along it. The animals know to stay away from it, although sometimes a fawn or some squirrels who know no better will stumble up to it, instantly frightened away when a metal creature with glowing eyes from faraway comes roaring towards them. Sometimes one of those metal things will growl to a stop on soft black feet, and a tiny thing without a neon hat will step out of it and walk up behind the tree that wouldn’t fall and **** on it. Relieved, it scurries back into the thing it came out of and continues on its Way, wherever that is?

Bottles of alcohol squat on the counter, and cigarette butts
like yellow dead June bugs on the floor.
Bottles of shimmering reasons to not care about a hangover,
to leave prom early and rejoice in your parent’s absence.
Glistening necks, elegant glass nubs with no cap
tipped up into mouths screaming proud and hoarse,
We are STUPID! And CONTAGIOUS!
our ***** voices breaking under the radio sound
to a loud song whose generation no longer cares.
But we do, dumb boys and girls in a truck, rolling around town
like Haylee’s bottle of Jack Daniels in the trunk—
aimless, optimistic, and looking for reasons, so
buy a pack at the Chevron and let’s go smoke!
That’s enough, after all, isn’t it?
Reason enough to crack the windows, find a Carlyss backroad,
waste away midnight and half a tank of gas.
Still, as I drive on, a 90s rock station stimulating rotation of the spliff,
that smell puts my mind out of guitar solos and into placid hallways,
Smells Like a night in my dad’s apartment,
the stubbly couch with the nicotine blanket,
the Marlboro tone in the air, concrete crumbs and a lighter’s grating chrrt.
Divorce sounds like alcohol—
a word that burns, something sterilizing and for adults only.
But I don’t care, it’s my turn on the spliff,
and the backseat of my truck sounds more Alive
than the old horror movie rentals he would put on.
And why should I worry about what sobriety means
when we’ve been planning this night for months now?
All stocked up on Bacardi and Smirnoff Ice, Captain Morgan’s, Svedka, Mike’s Hard,
Swisher Sweets wrapped up in the **** bag—
We shoot our ***, soldiers eager to start the war,
that war against a domestic unknown enemy,
an enemy dangerous and subversive, like sober-minded aspirations.
And while Zack rolls the blunt, while Jack finds his Camel pack,
while you ask for a hit of Haylee’s cigarette,
I fill a glass with water, my intention to hydrate
exactly as genuine as my intention to forget about it.

We’re under threat of domestication
And survival means the end of our species—
We’ve house-trained ourselves ,
Throats caught on leashes of security ,
Willingly slipped into the same noose-collar
We used to catch lions and wolves .
Submissive pets of our own dogma ,
Our only hope against oppressive prosperity
Is to **** on the rug