The First Time God Speaks to You (Revision 2)

[Todd]

It won’t be like the preachers say,
as they strut like college boys with their father
into the whorehouse of their imaginings.
God is not concerned

with a back ache in Virginia,
nor does He speak in the voice
of your wife through a radio transmitter.

Their eyes fix somewhere above,
as if reading from an unseen teleprompter.
Speech spraying forth to proclaim
that at a word galaxies spun 
out stars in an explosion
of so many dying fireflies,
and that we who also die
reflect the everlasting
distorted in a funhouse mirror. They love

their voices too much to hear
the whisper of the infinite. I found 

it to be like an envelope torn open, 
contents spilled out--a forgotten detail 
never learned, like a string
never tied to an invisible finger.

There was only the name of a stranger, 
her life in an intricate script, 
a half-brother, my likely schizophrenia,
and the pressure to write it all down. 

The next day she existed, Ex nilhio,
like a conjuror's trick or a book
I had already read. The world wobbled
like a top, and I couldn’t return to silence

no matter how I covered my ears.

Revision

It won’t be like the preachers say,
as they strut like college boys with their father
into the whorehouse of their imaginings.
God is not concerned

with a back ache in Virginia,
nor does He speak in the voice
of your wife through a radio transmitter.

They say that with a word 
galaxies spun out stars in an explosion
of so many dying fireflies,
and that we who also die
reflect the everlasting
distorted in a funhouse mirror. They love

their voices too much to hear
the whisper of the infinite. I found 

it to be like an envelope torn open, 
contents spilled out--a forgotten detail 
never learned, like a string
never tied to an invisible finger.

There was only the name of a stranger, 
her life in an intricate script, 
a half-brother, my likely schizophrenia,
and the pressure to write it all down. 

The next day she existed, Ex nilhio,
like a conjuror's trick or a book
I had already read. The world wobbled
like a top, and I couldn’t return to silence

no matter how I covered my ears.


Original

It won’t be like the preachers say.
As they strut like college boys with their father
into the whorehouse of their imaginings.
God is not concerned

with a back ache in South Carolina,
nor does He speak in the voice
of your wife through a radio transmitter.

If light is simply His self-revelation,
and at a word galaxies spun out stars,
an explosion of so many dying fireflies.

If breath from His anthropomorphic lungs
filled our lungs, so that we would also speak,
become His image in resounding echo,

then when we hear that whisper, 
the infinite will settle on our tongue 
a brand unquenchable. I found

it to be like an envelope torn open, 
contents spilled out--a forgotten detail 
never learned, like a string
never tied to an invisible finger.

There was only the name of a stranger, 
her life in an intricate script, 
a half-brother, my likely schizophrenia,
and the pressure to write it all down. 

The next day, she existed, Ex nilhio,
like a conjuror's trick, or a book
I had already read. The world wobbled
like a top, and I couldn’t return to silence

no matter how I covered my ears.