An Honest Prayer
I don’t know why I close my eyes and lace
my fingers like the seam of a baseball just
to whisper between dark palms what I have
screamed all day. The black cross dangling
down my sternum is faded on the edges, not
from prayer but wear beneath shirts grown
tight from too much eating. What comes across
my plate I can only stomach so much, and night
is when I confess to clasped hands what I wish
someone would ask me. Yes, there are people I
no longer speak to who still cause me fire; yes, there’s
a hole in my wallet I cannot seem to stitch;
yes, there's a grandchild I owe my parents still
not conceived. In the cold I grow a beard as
if it’s my job, think of the Bible, speculate about
if Genesis had just been it and we didn’t worry
about doing all the rest. There’s a person in the clouds
my prayers pass right through, and I think
these words are less spirit, more radio-wave,
dialogue of electron and magnet. Hard to bat
away these thoughts of missing old friends
and shitty lovers despite their shittiness. A
poet tells me mourning is meditation, but what zen
is there in a gaunt heart not even my blood wants
to flow back to? Maybe attachment is a red herring, or
a slow hand job I can’t tell if I want to keep
going or to end. Yes, I believe loss is an intimacy
strong enough to shake legs and roll tongues
and eyes deep into skulls. So, here’s a prayer method:
first, base pleas in something concrete; second,
wait for the urgency to harden; third, think of hope as a way
to push in a literal sense. Tonight, I pray for a
home to never run from, a warmth that is more shadow
than stubborn shade, for paper cuts on that lover’s
shitty finger, but that they only hurt for so long—because I
don’t know how to pray in absolutes, or in a sequence
that leads to enlightenment or renaissance or
brimstone, but I know that with every swing
of the tongue over my teeth I’m getting closer.
