Stiff Pillows

Stiff Pillows

Sometimes I wonder if a filled resume is just a receipt from a shady bazaar

A record of the hours I lived in public when I should have been in private

Petitions signed instead of prayers prayed

Banter spoken instead of poetry written

A record of what I’ve gained and put on display for others

Secretly ashamed to confess the magnitude of the things I’ve given up

And then I remember there’s an XBOX in my house and ask myself who I’m kidding.

And other times I’ll discover a poem, a song, a picture

And gaze transfixed

Not so much on the subject, but on the form

The silent music in the line breaks

The subtle rhythm that sticks in your mind and can’t be noted out by your fingers

And it becomes a question of where they learned the dialect of my heart

The lilt, the twang…

 And the long pause before the emphasis

And usually I decide I’m overreacting

And other times I wonder if marriage is a white flag waving in the night

A contract two people sign swearing that when their creditors come

They’ll stand by each other, vehemently denying how bankrupt they really are

Bankrupt on faith that God’s love is enough

Bankrupt on discipline, self-control, and most of all

PASSION

Passion to break the lies of a world every bit as bankrupt as its people

That satiates hunger for love with a surfeit of lust

That counterfeits power with lifeless portraits of dead men

That makes a mockery of union as tired, battered souls find acquiescence and call it “enough”

And then someone told me God made it and called it good.

So the truth must be more than settling down.