Here’s a joke:
An European academic walks the silk road.
He encounters the Buddha.
The Buddha ignores him
And the scholar trusts his finger to the heavens.
“I have discovered it!”
“ The Om’s piece de resistance.”
Then, he flies to Thailand
and buys a night with a boy in a sarong
for a handful of Red Delicious.

I am sick of the existential escapism.
Your convenient abandonment of meaning
Your kaleidoscope of filtered philosophies that help you understand
By convincing yourself you don’t need to believe.
Here’s the rub, Hamlet.
Everything has meaning.
The gods just gave us the luxury to choose.

See what I did there? I invoked the pantheon.
So, I can hide my Judeo-Christian upbringing
And eat my Jell-o in peace.
It helps steady my nauseous stomach.

I plot my course by three stars:
Charlotte,
Edison,
and Alexandra.

Charlotte oscillates
With the energy of a frozen heaven.
Her hair, a weave of dust
Between my outstretched sextant fingers.
She slyly winks with a dark humor.

Edison is the sun.
His warmth creates worlds.
He bathes those who surround him
In compassion
And the wisdom of the gods.

Alexandra is the smallest,
but she sings an old song.
She may be hidden by her siblings’ shine.
Yet, everyone hears her whisper.
She speaks softly to Cassiopeia.
She lightly strokes Lyra.
We all dance to her pulse.

All three form the constellation, Potential.
I look to the heavens and I see a future unrealized.
I see a distant possibility.
I want to pluck them from the heavens.
I want to cradle them in my arms.
In each one, I see an aspect of the universe -
The mother who birthed them.

Mourning

Eos, you cognate of the dawn.
Each history had a word for you.
For you leathered the face of every priest.
You energized every holy land.
You illuminated all our prayers.

Why do we no longer write poems in your honor?
How have you become some post modern cliche?
You built our language as sure as our pyramids.
Should we not pay homage? Should we not worship you still?

You’ve been replaced by petty deities.
Human kings divined of flesh.
No wonder we darken the skies to hide from you.
Little wonder you wax scorching, inhospitable.

Immortalized silicone
I’m simulated dystopia
Erasure immune

I want to tell you everything.
I want to be vulnerable ala Brenee Brown
I want to cure my toxic masculinity
By embracing my “femininity”
And exposing trauma so deep you can drown.

After all, you have the degrees
A veritable mistress of butterflied psyches
Schooled in pin boards and dichotomies
joined on the patriarchy.
Motherhood meets mastery and empathy.
Listening without judgement
While leaving me to a jury of my own peers,
Erected egotic edifices eroded by the winds
Blowing through cryptic crossroads
that challenge me to slay my father.

Be my therapist.
I want to tell you everything.
Let me cry into your arms.
And hold me with the strength
that I will never know.