New Euro Poems: The Churches in Iceland and Fatigue and Craters

Written about the European trip I took with my mother in June, 2018.

1. The Churches in Iceland

Imagine them burning.
Imagine the nubs of fire
dotting the landscape.
No longer just sheepish things.
No longer just the things
of physical built.
Array of quirk mixture.
Volcanicized moss like a beard.
Or imagine them as they are:
tears falling upon new frontiers.
Tourists dropping themselves
all along the jagged edges.
Where is church beyond history books?
Where are your triangles and guffaws?
My dual question is silence.
Wait for the rain to pour.
Commingle and straddle a sequence.
Burn like architecture stratified.
The heart is open with presence.
I am dangling like my jaw is open
and the flames and the snow
and the flames and the snow
and the flames and the snow
fill my slow-bleeding mouth.

2. Fatigue and Craters

Whether you like it or not there is the crater.
And it will exist when your flesh is brittle,
consumed by the craters of a sincere history.
Kiss up, love, craft the world into futures.
Step into the grace of a significant illness.
The mortuary of the throb of stepping forward.
This is the elevation gained in mediocrity.
Flash of light through the silence of cameras.
Movement along with an older familial companion.
Staring into the distance, this is not expectation.
Finger to the glints of th gut, this is forward.
The illness crafts its own space of arrests.
Song flare the effect of capturing on the people.
You should have left the sugar to take up
after opening the door to put one foot on lava.