Love Remains
I’ve heard it said…
That even if a man came back from the dead
We still wouldn’t listen to a word that he spoke
We’d tell stories about him around fire and smoke
We’d call him a ghost
So we’d haunt ourselves with old memories instead
And leave his ghost to grow lonely inside his own head
I once knew a man
They cut off his hand
Buried it in the African sand
But it grew back as a poem
Will you see him here tonight?
Bleeding out words to set wrongs right?
Up here in the spotlight
Relinquishing religion
Whispering to the coroner
Who declares him dead asleep on a bed of stones
Beside his collection of strings and hollowed out bones
From which he once built a playground telephone
In a deadly serious game of please let me talk to my wife and kids just one more time before I die in this box
Alone
Did you see him there that black afternoon?
Will you see him here tonight in this room?
Dropping from a graveyard sky while humming a snappy little tune
Walking the plank from death’s hot air balloon
Walking straight into this poetry saloon
His shift’s about to begin, he’ll be the bartender soon
What are you drinking?
Are you here to politely cheer him?
To sit near him?
To maybe a little bit fear him?
To mock him, or to jeer him?
What the hell?
The rest of us are here to hear him
Will you hear his heart beating louder than last week’s fire
Will you still hear his voice in the current silence required?
Is there a rule about interrupting a poem? Throwing in a few lines maybe a bit out of season? Cause I’ve got a good reason. Her name was Renee Nicole Good – self-described “Poet and writer and wife and mom and shitty guitar strummer from Colorado.” She won’t be coming back though. Damn it Renee, you could have been me or I or he, she, or they. What we wouldn’t give to hear those chords strummed here today.
Not everyone gets another chance
So how can we understand this resurrection?
Was it just a change of plans?
Would it help us make the connection
If this resurrection were standing right here?
If this resurrection bought you a beer?
Dropped a rhyme in your ear?
Or would you be expecting someone else?
Always expecting someone else?
Someone with a crown of thorns?
Someone to calm your own personal storm?
Someone with a little less or maybe just a little more?
To make him someone just like he was to you before?
You want to put him back in that box?
Like a Jack in the box
But without the music
And no one to use it
No spring-loaded lid to pop off it
Cause that box is nothing but a coffin
And this shouldn’t even need to be said
But coffins…
Coffins are meant for the dead
So let’s unbox this toxic box in which we’ve held a living man buried under earth and rocks
Brush it off and off he walks
Giving the bird to the hearse
There’s no words to rehearse
Just get to know him now
Give him a ride to town
Ask him how that ransom went down
While the devil waits at the crossroads
Covered in the wake of our dust
That bastard will do whatever he can
But love will do whatever it must
So the devil will have to sit this deal out
Because love just installed a roundabout in that god forsaken intersection
Now do you understand this resurrection?
Like a polished gem swallowed by one burned at the stake
And only revealed once the wind has blown his ashes away
Love remains
