He Wishes for the Dreams of Heaven

Modern poetry modern verse contemporary poetry contemporary verse modern poem contemporary poem

His mistiness in thought has changed to brass,

Chinese the heartlessness, more heartless like

The universe.  What once had been like gas

From Paradise has now become a spike

Not quite as harsh as through Christ’s palm, but plain.

A tennis shoe he’s worn for years is what

His thought becomes, no longer Mind, just brain,

And more like shopping in a car sale strut.

His mental clothes become just Monday things.

He might as well have tossed them in the wash.

No longer are they painters’ angel wings.

His thoughts become the cosmos in its slosh.

  His thoughts aren’t items he can take off, change

    To Buddha’s cloth.  He finds them unclean, strange.

~ Phillip Whidden