I Make Vows for You
I want so many things, and so few of them seem to make sense.
I want to feel the raindrops tapdancing their short lives
against windows and rooftops and soil,
unleashing an ancient, pregnant fragrance,
but I don’t want my skin to get wet;
I want to hear the ice and wind singing their frantic, timeless duet,
the song that’s been perfect since its first harmony
when they performed for an empty theater,
but I don’t want my skin to freeze.
I want to write a book, and then I want to marry that book
or marry the thing that I used to write it;
I want everyone in the world to feel married to themselves
or not married at all.
I want Love to feel warm and sacred and whole,
not sticky and salty and wiped-away;
I want people not to laugh at Love
like they laugh at things they don’t want to be afraid of anymore.
I want to be a man who is pregnant with the Child of god,
and I want the Child of god to be an idea,
some arrangement of words or music or things
that people can think about and repeat whenever they feel sad or angry
so they won’t feel so sad or angry anymore.
I want to birth this Child through some creative miracle,
so I can die fulfilled and ascend to the heavens as a virgin-of-sorts,
warm and sacred and whole, and One with the raindrops, the ice and the wind.
I’m not sure what these things are, these abstractions that I want,
these ideas in a dimension of metal and blood.
All I know is this: whenever I need hope that they exist in a mattering way,
I journey to a place within myself; sometimes this place is an island,
sometimes it’s a mountaintop, and sometimes it’s a refreshing oasis,
forty-days deep within a desert cursed with tempting mirages.
But I know it when I find it
because I always unearth an ageless holy relic there,
The Truth of the First Conscious Breath;
it’s a tablet of stone and wood and steel and light,
emblazoned with a tenfold commitment:
I shall never seek revenge;
I shall forgive without forgetting;
I shall be honest about emotions;
I shall see opportunities in disappointment;
I shall question fear;
I shall amend misunderstanding;
I shall act to defend, not to offend;
I shall admire instead of envy;
I shall love, never hate;
I shall recognize myself in everyone;
and I commit myself to this concerted kindness
of bettering the world by bettering myself.
This dreamy poem uses matrimonial references to introduce my Ten Commitments.
Love always,
your Mister
Lonely Hearts Chapel 