And Anyway, Angels
this
is the continuing litany of my walking prayers -
prayer,
the lips in annunciation to the airstream
where
my chin hits its pride shattering the glass jaw.
Now
the head goes floating off & stars come out.
Surely
the fall was worth all this -
the
knowledge of a garden god.
Yes,
to you of the trowel I give my atoms as seeds
through
hands. Here's how we each are born
to
this lamp-planet with its halo universe of shining motes
god
wears all the accessories of, vast in that habitat
of
breathing, stretching, tilling, god dancing
as
a fiddler-Chagall, & I will find myself a cat burglar
by
night sneaking clippings of my neighbor's poppy pods.
Yes,
if I am mad as my felines purring rampant in their nocturnes
where
wisteria petals grow like whale tails through surf,
then
my turf will be blessed too in its exchange of obsessions.
God
helps peel their shedding skins by the blows, the falls,
&
after I've been kicked down, humbled enough;
after
I've learned these acts are only prayer
turned
over as a turtle on its back to the fertile sun,
will
god walk through the floating votives of my fears?
Stephen Mead
Resident
Artist & Curator for the online Chroma https://thestephenmeadchromamuseum.weebly.com/artistic representations of LGBTQI persons
and organizations predominantly before Stonewall, Stephen Mead has been a
published outsider artist/writer going on thirty years now. He is immensely
grateful to the myriad publications who have presented his work over this
timespan, and given his need to create a voice of support. Recently
he has had work published in The Pinecone Review and Neologism Poetry Journal.