Let us agree that lamp shades should

not be stretched, that light should not

be bent or filtered, recognize that

 

color is non-existent and that luminosity

stands on its own. That illumination does

not reveal, but exposes indifferently, that

 

revelation is the human imagination

running amok in the dark, scratching

for switches to turn off, turn on, finger

 

painting in the thick syrup of slow

dropping. When we are trapped at the

horizon, we look up and demand the

 

predictability of suns circling, casting

light, then stealing it away, teasing

out our expectations. Lamp shades are

 

often made with the casing of human

frailty, stretched beyond their own thin

skin to the point of cracking mind,

 

such a small thing, twisting  knobs in the

wrong direction, but it is just enough

and we are destroyed by the enormous

 

weight of twisted plastic, snapped off with

fingers in the moment when the floor rose

up to meet the fading light.

 

 

 

 

 

When our lives click into place, we thank God, bless ourselves, genuflect secretly,

believing our gain was eternally just, that we had knowingly planted some seed, a

pinion nut say, somewhere in a forgotten field of another lifetime and now return

to find ourselves standing under a fully grown pine tree, ready to reap our reward.

Here, we kiss our memory and recall that when we had found ourselves naked with

her, torqued her body to such a high pitch that she could no longer breathe and tears

spilled from her like hot mulled wine at an orgy of tasting, when words came out

tied as perfect silk ribbons curled in tight geometric folds, wrapping meaning neatly,

when our children were born, our lottery won, we soared, knowing that from that

first air sucked moment, awkward and struggling out of the same amniotic juice that

would eventually drain her eyes, that everything had come full circle. The lies

we told our mothers, wives, and ourselves, the pain we inflicted on others,

the people we destroyed, the trust we crushed like a final cigarette before the execution,
we understood these were all part of the plan, the things that needed to happen

in order for us to stand under this pine tree, lapping up the credit. These were good things.
Bad happenings, on the other hand, are God’s will, the leftover seeds rotting

for worms that have their own good news and beliefs of their own.

They have nothing to do with you.