Folding Hands
(A Ghazal)
We made our own god from sheets of used paper,
a deity from folded squares, a gospel in newspaper.
Fingertips turned black from transferred inclinations,
pushed planes onto their backs; black-eyed bruised paper.
We put our faith in lines erased, sang scripture in our segments,
gave god the name of our bad habits; bottoms-up booze paper.
Repeating tessellations sobered our methods and our missions,
dogma-creased diagonals undizzied our confused paper.
We sacrificed our names in the folds of steps one and two,
cross-legged, we sat on impossible ground, hummed as we reused paper:
Sophia, a hymn to wisdom, we turned flatness into form,
swallowed our conceit and signed our sins away on truce paper.
(A Ghazal)
We made our own god from sheets of used paper,
a deity from folded squares, a gospel in newspaper.
Fingertips turned black from transferred inclinations,
pushed planes onto their backs; black-eyed bruised paper.
We put our faith in lines erased, sang scripture in our segments,
gave god the name of our bad habits; bottoms-up booze paper.
Repeating tessellations sobered our methods and our missions,
dogma-creased diagonals undizzied our confused paper.
We sacrificed our names in the folds of steps one and two,
cross-legged, we sat on impossible ground, hummed as we reused paper:
Sophia, a hymn to wisdom, we turned flatness into form,
swallowed our conceit and signed our sins away on truce paper.