you'll be gone and then you'll be gone and all that will remain is the small and willful copy of you, another of God's gifts, to teach me about my relationship with him, so we'll shop for food and ride the barbie car that once made her shake and we'll ride and walk and fly and we'll probably cry and cry at some point if not many but it is all part of the plan, after all, and then you'll return, in memory and digitally if not in the flesh, and we'll rejoice at your homecoming though half of us should be well asleep by then and we'll try to spend the time in relationship instead of in escape...

while strolling...so many good things could follow this phrase...while strolling last night i discovered i really do love Jesus...while strolling together she told me of her lifelong dream to make love to me in a boat in venice...while strolling through the mall i found this really neat sale at lord & taylor's...while strolling with my children i related stories of my childhood while encouraging them to follow their own dreams ; dreams of pro football team ownership...while strolling my wife and i confirmed our fondness for warm, autumn afternoons together...

as i leap from the edge i suddenly understand buyer's remorse more intensely than i ever imagined but of course the reason for leaping in the first place was to understand intensity itself and if only for a few short but amazingly stretched moments to understand this travesty that has been my life by cutting short its future to something a bit more manageable and easy to grasp and oh so easy to measure with certainty because certainty is something that has always eluded me, or has it...the wind is not loud as i had imagined but instead the stretching takes each heartbeat and drowns the wind in the shallow end along with all my unheard dreams and unsung songs and unimagined victories and makes of them a single lub-dub of divorce, a leaving, or a taking...it should have been told from my own perspective but that will go with me when i meet the earth below so the imagining is once again all i shall convey here, from beyond, as it were, though beforehand, the leaping and the falling and the silent rush of wind with cheeks puffing out like a kid on the motorcycle with no care for the past or the future and here i have very little future left to contemplate anyway so this final act of selfish hedonism is mine alone..."fine so far" the joke goes, but the landing is self-murder...it doesn't hurt when you meet mother earth...but the separation from God is eternal, had i heard that somewhere along the line?

with wild and stringy hair
like weeds behind the fence
in water as deep as the moon
i found the meaning of love
with brass and moaning
with clanging cymbals in my ears
and softly whispered lies for the future
and a rush of blood to the soles of my feet
i found heartbreak
and meaning
in desire unfulfilled
and with eyes aflame
and vengeance unknown
i found rage in my machine
but the bushings gave way
from the furious turning
so impotent
bleached
lying empty of everything but my memories
of the meaning
of love
i lay at the water's edge
crying