PRAYER TO MAKE LIFE A TWO WAY STREET

Spirit:

Life is a one way street

and love, too tight for turning around,

a slope too steep for backing up,

a winding, crooked path that

curls one way about its middle then dives

in a blind drop.

Spirit, make life a two way street.

It does not take much

to change free things into costly goods,

make bread, a kiss, a luxury.

Easy to charge a price for things once free,

but changing them back is impossible.

Spirit, make life a two way street.

Life is a one way street, its intersections too one way,

sex, for instance, where divided lanes turn into one another

and bring us sharp up against dead ends

and windows blackened against the light.

Spirit: Please make life a two way street,

love too, a path that lets us

stop, turn, reverse, with roads that curl and twist in circles

and crisscross,

so lost, there are many ways to find our way home.

BLESS THE GLITCHES

Spirit:

Bless the careless gravity of devices that fly apart

revealing that they are put together.

Bless the bad manners of objects that fall,

revealing grace is a managed thing.

Bless the fitful resistance of machinery that quits,

revealing automatic is always temporary.

Bless the wounded morality of moving parts that don’t,

revealing entropy counts.

Bless the fierce evolution of processes that tangle,

revealing beginnings are not endings.

Bless the forgetfulness of hands that slip,

revealing intentions weigh less than a hummingbirds fart.

Bless the hesitations, the blunders, the slipups because

they remind us that the world has taken to the saddle poorly.

Bless our mistakes because they show us invisible connections.

bless the snags because they expose imperceptible attachments,

bless the bugs because they illuminate hidden links,

bless the glitches because they reveal the patterns of things.

PLEASE WAG THE DOG

Spirit:

Great literature puts food on the tables of very few,

great music feeds even fewer,

but even a mediocre whore house

allows many to slurp and gobble,

and grow fat graciously.

A great teacher is a hero to few,

a great poet to even fewer,

but even a mediocre quarterback

lets a horde exalt,

allows a multitude to cheer.

A philosopher enlightens a few,

a saint redeems even fewer,

but even a mediocre rap singer,

can lift up a nation,

spreads a dull light over crowds.

Spirit: The world will not be reformed,

it clings tight to its habits, rides its rut.

Good money won’t drive out bad.

Everyone wants to be better but,

yesterday’s good intentions do not survive today’s temptation.

Spirit, would it be too much to ask,

once to face the tail forward and wag the dog,

put your finger on the scale,

push down a bit.

Wag the dog once.

shift the balance a little.

GIVE US A WOMAN SWEETER THAN SHE NEEDS TO BE,

Spirit:

Give us a woman sweeter than she needs to be,

sweetness as a challenge, as swagger,

as a way of juggling fire, of taming sharp.

Give us a man gentler than he needs to be,

gentleness as a challenge, as swagger,

as defiance, juggling fire, as a way of taming sharp.

Give us a chaos more random than it needs to be,

a chaos wilder than we can bear,

random as defiance, as a way of making fire,

as a way of handling things that tear,

a way of bending things.

Give us a chaos more disordered than it needs to be

to balance off the swift against the good

Teach us to endure with grace

things impossible to bear.

PRAYER FOR AN INNOCENT VICE

Spirit:

Give us an innocent vice, an inoffensive vice,

something vile that smells like a rose,

a fun loving vice that burrows deep,

something fresh and new.

A vice that rots the guts but leaves the skin intact,

that will not frighten dogs or nuns,

a vice that will not lose its bite with age,

or bugger out when we get sick,

a sturdy, loyal vice that clings.

A vice that wisdom does not protect against,

nor intelligence, nor common sense,

a vice that temperance can not touch.

So corrosive that evangelicals

refuse to call it by name,

so powerful that everyone is tempted by it,

so gentle that virgins are not frightened by it,

an innocent vice.

After a while, it will become familiar, a habit.

People will discover it offends human nature.

Eventually, the politicians will make a law forbidding it,

but for now, it can keep us toasty warm on wintry nights.

Spirit, give us a gentle vice, an innocent vice,

a vice that smells like a rose,

a vice that loves fun and burrows deep,

something fresh and new.

A PRAYER FOR A PRAYER

Spirit;

There are some things for which one does not pray;

desire very rarely conquers fear.

If God exists then he may grant the prayer,

and what one asked for would be terrible to bear.

But there are words that sound so sweet when said,

resistance caves and one walks through one’s fear,

and says the words, and asks ones ask,

and holds one’s breath to see if God will hear.

Let me stand where Moses stood,

feel the burden that he bore,

know the world that Moses knew

carrying the law,

feel the stone against my back,

feel what Moses felt.

Let me stand where Jesus stood,

see what Jesus saw,

know the world that Jesus knew,

the burden that he bore,

feel the cross against my back,

feel what Jesus felt.

Stand me where Mohammed stood,

wrestle me to the floor,

hear the demand Mohammed heard,

insisting his voice soar,

feel the arms around my chest,

feel what Mohammed felt.

Spirit:

Give me a moment with my God,

a breath’s worth of time no more,

a minute to tremble, a minute to complain,

a minute to listen to him explain

what he had in mind for me, my chore,

hug me then set me free.

I know the world the prophets saw,

is the world with its meaning scribbled on it,

in block letters, in a child’s scrawl,

on the backs of the smallest creatures.

If theres a shovel dig,

the job undone is yours,

there’s no wrong hole.

A PRAYER FOR COMPUTERS

Spirit.

Empower my computer, enliven it. Make its pixels glow. When I throw its switch,

boot it righteously up.

Give silicon strength to bear its burden of bits and bytes and pacify it’s parts; reconcile printer and modem, scanner and sound card. Quicken its CPU and bring its hard drive home. Maintain its circuits in tranquility, its buses clear, its latches clean. Gore not its box.

Shepherd it as it grazes on the net; protect it from corruption, from viruses and worms. Let it browse in peace.

Constrain its temperament by physics, forbid it surliness and mood. Preserve its innocence. Save the soul of it as a new machine, only lend it the intelligence of a newt that knows to come out of the rain, to realize I meant to type save instead of shut down.

A PRAYER FOR SEX

Spirit:

Pray for sex and pray for nature which gave us sex

to teach us about the world, about pleasure.

For sex is a pleasure, and good sex is pleasure,

and great sex is what pleasure is about. Hallelujah.

Pray for sex in every knobly variation,

which raises us up rudely and lays us down gently exhausted,

which, in its spare time, spins gold out of straw,

manufactures love. Hallelujah.

Pray for sex and pray for nature which is shrewd,

and babies, which are nature’s text for helping us make sense of sex,

as fat is nature’s lecture about food. Hallelujah and amen.

PRAYER FOR A SAFE FLIGHT

Spirit:

Planes take off and land,

go up and come down,

and sometimes go astray,

drift off their flight paths, drop from the sky,

crash and people die.

Please not today.

Technology is fragile,

things tire of working, break,

go kaput at the wrong time,

Instruments that give directions say

down’s straight ahead,

leave people dead.

Please not today.

Fill this plane

with those impatient to arrive,

people with lovers and families waiting,

no madmen who pray

that falling from the skies

God will welcome them to paradise.

Please, not today.

The windows are too small to see,

anything but sky,

no one in any seat but one,

can see enough to fly.

Guide his hand, light the way.

Make the ground a soft berth

that welcomes us, whole, back to earth, today.

PRAYER FOR A LOST DAY

Spirit:

Dear spirit, the day has just begun.

Its clear even now it won’t be fun.

Filled to the brim with chaos already,

the faucets broken and the drip is steady;

the crap will flow until the day is done.

Lord hold me up and keep me straight

to face what the day dumps on my plate.

But if, before its done I die,

I guarantee I won’t ask why,

nor whine about an unjust fate.

Of course, I’d prefer for dying a day well spent,

smelling the flowers, relaxed, content,

not much to do and time to do it in:

a whole morning to sin,

a whole afternoon to repent.

A PRAYER FOR ECONOMICS

Spirit:

Pray for economics, the cruelest science,

that denies us a free lunch, that teaches, ‘if wheat is cheap and sand dear, plant sand.’

Pray for economics, the superstitious science,

which believes in invisible hands.

Pray for economics,

which puts its faith in markets,

which prices love and spirit and belief cheap.

Whose mantra is the haggle.

Spirit:

Stir up the economists,

make them creative.

Let their dull science show them

we do not have to tax the dead and the unborn,

Let them teach us that we do not have to make our skin script in order to buy and save,

that need is not a mystery, that we do not have to shop till we drop,

that everything does not have to be made somewhere else,

that we do not need a continuous floating potlatch in order to eat lunch,

that we do not all have to become permanent tourists to go home.

A PRAYER FOR MY IGNORANCE.

Spirit:

Enfold me in my ignorance, heap it up around me.

Pack it thick around me, wind it tight around me,

tighten the string that holds it firm.

Temper it, but do not peel it from me.

Temper it, but do not rip it from me.

Temper it, but do not leave me naked without it.

It shields me from rootless, wandering truths.

It insulates me from fierce speculation.

It protects me from swindles of the heart and mind.

It sustains my faith in science,

it keeps my faith in God intact.

Don’t disguise it as indifference,

don’t excuse it as a boo-boo,

don’t pass it off as a lapse.

It protects me against disastrous innovations,

it sustains me in the face of storms of new messiahs,

it shields me from the absolute certainty of false convictions,

it keeps me from panic.

Gather up my ignorance around me,

Help me patch it when it tears,

temper it but don’t rip it from me,

do not leave me naked facing the world.

PRAYER FOR HUMAN EMOTIONS

Spirit:

Scream in my ear, enumerate

the human emotions,

The greater feelings and the lesser ones,

joy, surprise, sadness, anger,

Scream in my ear, enumerate,

the human emotions,

order them, make a list, the higher feelings and the base ones,

disgust, contempt, fear.

Spread them out in front of me, the gross the fluffy ones,

the ones that cause pestilence, the ones that hatch light,

the ones that scamper like mice, the ones that thrash like wounded elephants,

the ones that can be shoved around, the ones that can only be seduced,

the stretchable ones that snap back like a rubber band.

Startle me, shout at me, enumerate:

The free ones and the ones that cost more than we ever have to spend,

the ones we get as prizes in boxes of cereal, the ones that are charitably given,

the ones we never let go of, the ones we only find used.

Show me them, the greater feelings and the lesser ones, remind me,

that I can moan and cry, and laugh and curse and crave and despise and be afraid, and

that the current public emotion is a temporary thing.

PRAYER FOR A GOOD FIVE CENTS PRAYER

Spirit:

Give us a good five cents prayer,

words we can learn as kids and tuck away and keep,

easy to say and easy to remember,

something sincere, effective and cheap,

a throw away prayer, something modern,

nothing that’s been mumbled for a thousand years,

a prayer that goes straight to the point,

beseeches then disappears.

Nothing that would take God a lot of effort,

nothing that would use a lot of God’s time,

a few sentences strung together,

that rhyme.

Not a prayer asking for a lot,

nothing that puts faith to the test,

nothing you have to say in a church

simple’s best.

A prayer that will not offend

persons of another faith or creed,

a prayer that even agnostics can whisper,

in need.

Like,

Lord, get me out of this jam. Smash my enemies skull in, please

give me the big TV, give someone else that disease.

Keep my loved ones safe, keep me healthy, make me rich,

if anyone stands in my way, scorge the sonofabitch.

I know what I’m doing is wicked, abide by me anyhow,

first chance I get I’ll do penance, but cut me some slack now.

Abide by me, raise me up, comfort me as I walk my crooked path,

give me milk and legs but strike the others down, force them to eat dirt, show them your wrath.

PRAYER FOR THINGS THAT COST MORE THAN THEY ARE WORTH

Spirit:

To things that cost more than they are worth, add snails,

free software, hair dye, boob jobs and famous movie stars.

To things beyond the pale add fundamentalists, war,

terrorists, politicians, dumb presidents.

To things that mangle human nature,

add mosquitos, newly minted coins, organic grass,

TV Evangelists and Mullahs.

Spirit, evolution lost its way, it went amuck,

parented monsters great and small,

and neither God nor nature seems to give a f**k

that we are saddled with such things at all,

that in a thought out world would not exist.

I’ve made a list

of them, please set us free.

Heap them onto a boat and let them drift out to sea

and sink them.

A PRAYER FOR WHEN THE INEXPLICABLE HAPPENS

Spirit:

In the face of the inconceivable keep me from folding.

In the face of the incomprehensible keep me standing.

Face to face with meaninglessness give me strength.

Shine a tiny light on chaos, give it a name.

Let me see its edges, show me that it does not go on forever.

Bend me but do not let me break.

Give me a handle on formlessness,

a fingers worth of faith.

Give me a boundary, draw a line,

bend me but do not let me break.

PRAYER FOR THOSE WHO HAVE NOT UNDERSTOOD

Spirit:

Give succor to the gentile, balm to the heathen,

consolation to agnostics and infidels.

Remind Christians, Moslems and Jews,

prayer is an answer to God’s cry for help.

Spirit, show me how to pray

and to whom.

In which direction should my head point,

how high in the air should my arse sway,

what words should I mumble?

Spirit teach me how to pray.

PRAYER FOR LONG LEGGED WOMEN

Spirit:

Bless the long legged women high on their pins,

for whom the ground quiets itself and waits breathlessly as they walk,

who the earth feels as restless flowers,

as snowflakes seeking a place to melt.

Bless the long legged women high on their pins,

whose walking the earth feels as a gossip of gestures,

whose steps the ground counts silently, holding its breath.

Bless the long legged women high on their pins,

who move in curliques and embellishments, who seem weightless,

whose movement the earth uses to calibrate motion.

When I die, if I go to heaven, let some long legged angel high on her pins greet me in God’s name,

or, if that other place, let some long legged devil high on her pins embrace me, and I will follow her through the gates of hell, feeling I am close enough to paradise.

A THANKSGIVING PRAYER

Spirit

Thank you for what I possess but do not realize I possess,

and for what I own that does not own me,

for what I want but am better off without,

for what I used but did not use up,

for what used me but did not use me up.

And, thank you for what I despise but can’t live without.

Thank you for what I grasp as I reach out my hand,

for what is close, for what presses up against me,

for what does not run away or chase me away,

for what I threw away but fell close,

and thank you for what you hold just outside my reach.

Thank you for what I embrace and what embraces me,

thank you for what I lost twice but found again,

for temptations that do not overwhelm,

for the newness of strangers and the pleasure of friends,

and for the peace that rises up and surprises me,

PRAYER TO CATCH MY BREATH

Spirit:

Please let me catch my breath,

put a hill in front of the world,

slow it down for a minute.

Let me catch my breath,

give me a chance to pull myself together,

a second to be reasonable,

see how the land lies,

then with a jerk, start it up again,

then with a jerk, let it spin wildly again,

with a roar, banging and clanging fierce and agitated,

out of control,

with a screech continue its thrashing, random movements,

but for a moment, slow it down, stop it.

Let me catch my breath.

PRAYER TO GET HOME IN TIME TO MOURN

Spirit:

Let me get home in time to mourn

my impatient dead who hurried dieing,

mourn, before I lose interest in mourning,

before I lose the need for tears,

cry, before I lose the need for crying.

Let me get home in time to mourn

before my impatient dead tire of the wait

and turn their faces into the dirt,

refuse to accept the rending of cloth,

and silently rebuke my mourning late

Let me get home in time to mourn

before my impatient dead, denied bereaving,

mock my lament, my sense of loss,

question the sincerity of grief,

and suck the marrow out of grieving.

Let me get home in time to mourn

my impatient dead, grown unforgiving

pacing the shrinking space between dead and forgotten,

already bored by life’s demands, deny my memories

and abandon me to the demands of the living.

PRAYER TO MAKE THE WORLD SMALL

Spirit:

Shrink the world for me so that I can carry it over my shoulder in a paper sack,

lighten the world for me so that I can bear the weight of it,

make it small, just once, so that I can cup it in my hands,

so that I can stuff it in my pocket and walk comfortably with it,

to the park.

Give me a chance to hold it in my hand,

to wet it with a kiss, to caress it, before I have to let it go.

A PRAYER FOR THOSE WHO DO NOT NEED OUR PRAYERS

Spirit:

Pray for those who do not need our prayers, the filthy rich, the bankers, the Arab sheiks, kings, queens all those of royal descent, those who are a branch of a tree bearing golden fruit. Pray for those who win lotteries, those who live on trusts, those who wear designer fashions and bespoke suits, Pray for those who are homeless in transit from summer home to winter home, from spa to villa.

Pray for those who do not need our prayers, for those whose faces we know and those whose faces we can not forget, the famous and soon to be famous and the nearly famous and the almost were famous, those who do not need our prayers because they are already saved, the martyrs, the saints, all those who are certain of God’s grace, those who have reservations in heaven, and those who scribble great novels, write symphonies, paint portraits more real than the people whose portraits they are, and the scientists to whom nature has spilled the beans.

A PRAYER FOR ORDER

Spirit

Please settle the debt I owe to randomness, give entropy its due.

What I hocked for luck, redeem, what I borrowed against hope, repay.

Shake me loose, brush the dust off of me,

wipe my face clean, begin me again.

Bundled in anarchic imagery,

lullabyed to sleep by chaotic sounds,

symmetry’s an imagined thing, a dream.

Make order real.

Not the terrible calculus of fanatics,

not the implacable algebra of zealots,

not the logic of bigots,

but plastic, impeachable truths:

Don’t let habit take the place of common sense.

Don’t kink the rope, don’t straighten the knot.

Make those who lust after chaos pay its price.

Distribute the cost of mayhem equally:

one third to the wicked, one third to the overbearingly righteous,

one third to those who just don’t give a sh*t.

A PRAYER FOR INFORMATION

Spirit:

Please bless my information,

shine it, keep it complete, but lean.

Do not give my information legs,

speed, do not quicken it.

Do not give my information wings,

lift, so it can fly off.

Do not give my information a horn,

a pointed, razor’s wedge to gore.

Do not propel it toward me at the speed of light,

and do not make it clever.

Do not let it inform me, out of the blue, about countries that

have coagulated and then dissolved and then reformed then

converted, then were conquered then surrendered and now

are starving.

Do not let it tell me that suddenly space has bent in on itself,

or that time has expanded and given birth to four new

dimensions or that chemistry has changed or physics has

changed, or mathematics has changed, or people have changed.

Don’t let it invent new religions or manufacture martyrs.

Shine my information, keep it fresh,

keep it complete, but trim,

don’t let it gorge itself on nuances,

don’t let it pull its stuffing out, or expose itself.

Marry it to what it is information about and

don’t let it change faster than the facts it is information about.

A PRAYER ASKING FOR SOMEONE WHO WANTS MY KIND OF LOVE

Spirit:

Kindergarten teaches that race is a fiction,

first grade that gender is a made up thing,

but there are no classes about differences that are real,

like the differences in how people love and feel.

But out of school the lesson we learn first,

is of the dialects of love.

Calamities abound, we’re taught

of violent uprootings, cities overrun,

people conquered and dispersed

by Mongol hordes and Hun,

peaceful folk turned into Gypsies Jews, Greeks,

set searching for a home, a place to roost.

But of one great Diaspora they never talk,

the scattering of those who shared

the same vernacular of love,

the breakup into twos and threes

and set to wandering, looking for their kind.

Of the splintering of that clan they’re silent.

Spirit, send me a lost member of my tribe,

someone who needs my kind of love,

who speaks my dialect of love,

someone who recognizes my gestures as a familiar idiom.

Spirit, send me a member of my tribe,

who wants to be loved as I can love them,

who needs to be loved as I can love them,

A PRAYER FOR STREET PEOPLE

Spirit;

Bless the people who live on the street in cardboards boxes,

whose heads and feet stick out of their permanent,

temporary quarters.

Whose night light is a street lamp.

The perpetually lost, who stink, those whose eyes are glazed

over, permanently drunk.

Those for whom taking a leak is a problem, for whom taking

a crap is a problem,

for whom washing is a problem, who do not flush.

Those whose address never changes, whose door is always

open,who sit at no family table, who get no mail, who are

no ones neighbors,who are not invited to parties, who have

no hobbies, who do not follow a sport,

who are not patriotic;

whose boat is never lifted, who suffer no calamity greater than

life itself,whom death visits detouring on his way to addressed

people,to whom the city confesses in snatches of passing

conversations.

Scavenging, may they find

what the rest of us have lost in the streets,

rings, passion, wallets, hope.

PRAYER FOR PEOPLE THE EARTH HAS TUMBLED ON

Spirit;

Bless this cramped space in which I find myself,

Calm me, let me stretch out and rest a moment.

Bless this cramped space in which I find myself,

Make it a temporary home.

Enlarge it, give it a chapel’s height and depth,

give it width enough to sustain my hope.

make it big enough so that I have room to pray,

crack it so that my prayer can escape its confines and soar.

Bless this cramped space in which I find myself.

PRAYER FOR MANKIND

Spirit:

Pour your pity on mankind,

not the thin, runny pity sprinkled on sinners,

but the thick, gummy pity that sticks,

the pity reserved for creatures that evolution has abandoned,

for the permanently bewildered, the really hopelessly lost.

Pour your pity on mankind,

on mankind which is confused, which can not unmingle

cruelty and compassion,

or force superstition and science a hairs breath apart,

on mankind, which makes holy places of rocks where old men

have withered, of trees where unbearable pain has taken a

woman’s shape,

on mankind, starved for affection, which hunts down objects

to love, dogs, cats, birds automobiles, stones, who courts

charlatans and tyrants for intimacy.

Speak to them,

lie to them, tell them everything is all right,

whisper to them softly that everything will be fine.

A PRAYER FOR CLARITY

Spirit:

Give us one thing that is not both right and wrong, both good and bad,

a thing that has one face not two, one nature not two,

one thing, that as we grasp it, does not change into its opposite,

one choice that’s clear cut.

Once, give us black and white not off white and gray,

offer us a choice between good and evil, not two varieties of bad.

Give us one thing whose end is not its beginning,

one thing that licks and can not bite,

soft to the touch and has no thorns.

Give us a mass murderer who is not charitable,

a crime lord who does not support an orphanage.

Give us a rootless weed.

PRAYER FOR COMPLETION

Spirit:

Complete me, finish me, make me whole.

When I consider what I’ve left undone,

the books unread the notes unwritten and unsent,

what my hand put down all crumpled up.

When I consider who I ran away from and who ran away

from me,what I hoarded, wasted and what I spent,

what my hand put down all crumpled up.

When I consider what escaped my grasp and flew away,

the projects started left undone, the offenses given apologies

unmade, and what my hand put down all crumpled up.

Spirit complete me, give me a beginning and an end,

a form that does not sag and leak,

an outline I can follow eyes shut,

in the darkness without light.

PRAYER TO HELP MANAGE RAGE

Spirit:

Help me manage my rage,

do not let me waste it on assholes who shop to collect bonus miles,

who pay for penny candy with a credit card,

do not let me spill it out on those who are learning to drive their Mercedes in city traffic,

who, paying tolls on bridges, call their brokers,

who collect the souvenirs of war.

Do not let me squander my rage on these morons,

conserve it, save some of it for a rainy day when I need the anger

to quiet my stupidity, to still my own lunacy.

A PRAYER FOR SAVING

Spirit,

Teach me, against my nature, to conserve,

against my urge to devour, to save.

If you keep discarding seasons, finally only winter remains,

if you keep throwing away days suddenly there is only

Thursday left

if you keep on wasting hours it becomes 4:30 am forever,

and suddenly the second hand stops.

Reject your parents and you become an orphan,

discard your relatives your blood has no where to go,

throw rocks at friends and you are left only with strangers,

dispense with strangers you are alone.

Spirit, teach me to husband splinters, stash fragments,

collect shards

against a time when I run out of time,

when vision blurs and silence settles in,

when debates are ended with one word spoken clearly,

when any single clear vision beggars art.

SECOND PRAYER FOR CLARITY

Spirit:

Alliance’s change

In a blink, they become one of us.

Blink, we become one of them.

Whose side are they on, whose side are we on,

whose side are you on, whose side are you on?

What are the sides? Coalitions dissolve, blocks reform,

alliances change, shift, transform.

Friends and allies trade places,

the music stops and we change and they change.

Suddenly everything is a play of shadows.

Are you a friend who stands by me

or an enemy who stands by me,

or a friend who stands by my enemy against me,

or an enemy who stands with me against my friend.

Spirit; make things clear,

tell me, are you with them or us,

are you with me or them,

whose side are you on?

A PRAYER FOR CONTRADICTIONS

Spirit:

Bless life’s contradictions.

Bless the little ones that make life interesting.

Bless the big ones that make life nearly impossible.

Bless the ones that drool and the ones that bite and spit,

and the ones that lick my face and the ones I have yet to meet.

Bless the contradictions because they give me yes, but.

Bless the contradictions because they give me and, yet.

Bless the contradictions because they manufacture possibilities,

because they let me burn my candle at both ends and spare

the middle, then burn the middle and keep the ends intact.

Bless the contradictions because they make confusion nearly

intelligible.

Bless the contradictions because they wring the most from

words and sustain faith.

Bless the contradictions because they are the signs along the

road that goes nowhere but takes us home again

A PRAYER FOR KNOWING THE SCORE

Spirit:

I’m running as fast as my legs can move,

I’m trying my damnest to win,

but it’s not a matter of winning anymore, I’m lost.

I just want to know where I am, how far I’ve gotten,

how far from where I started am I, how close to where it ends?

Spirit, please tally the numbers, shout out the points

tell me the score, tell me if I’m winning or losing,

who has more, and how goes the competition?

Running as fast as I can has become what I do.

Running as fast as I can has become who I am.

I wish I never started,

but you can’t just stop dead in your tracks,

you can’t just quit and walk away,

you’d get trampled.

The wife and kids wouldn’t understand, friends wouldn’t understand,

and the cheering would stop.

Spirit, please tally the numbers, shout out the points

tell me the score, tell me if I’m winning or losing,

who has more, and how goes the competition?

Sweat blinds me, the scoreboard is blurred. I can’t see the goal anymore.

I can’t take air into my lungs fast enough and what gets in scorches.

I steer by the voice of the crowd.

Most of the people on the sidelines who are betting on how the race will turn out

are betting against me, they are giving odds.

I can not read the look on their faces, I can not tell if they

know something I do not know.

Spirit, please tally the numbers, shout out the points

tell me the score, tell me if I’m winning or losing,

who has more, and how goes the competition?

On the sidelines they wave and shout that winning isn’t

everything

they scream that what’s important is how the race is run

what matters in the end is running well, having fun,

not winning, then they mumble that losing is still a sin.

Spirit, to be honest I do not care any more.

I want is to stop and rest but I have forgotten how.

Like a plane bringing cargo I lift off and fly forever.

Spirit, make losing and winning not such a burden,

tally the numbers

shout out the points, tell me the score, tell me if I’ve won or lost

who has more, and how goes the competition?

PIGEON PRAYER

Spirit

Pray for the city’s pigeons.

Make them real birds for a day,

Robbins, Sparrows, Eagles, Hummingbirds, Swifts,

Nightingales, Mockingbirds, Cuckoos, Catbirds, Cardinals,

Woodpeckers, Chickadees, Hawks.

Wash their wings,

give them proper beaks and a sweet song.

Stop the bobbing and let them soar over the dark streets.

A PRAYER FOR THE LOTTERY,

Spirit,

bless the lottery.

Bless the democracy of it, in which no number is better

than any other number.

Bless the magic of it which can transforms number into hope,

hope into numbers.

Bless the randomness of it, which makes the impossible merely

improbable.

Bless the lottery.

Bless the lottery, bless the computers, bless the cards, bless

the marks on the cards, bless the people who make the marks

on cards, bless the people who feed cards into machines.

Bless the lottery which manufactures hope and resolves uncertainty.

Bless the lottery which generates winners and losers.

Bless the lottery.

Bless it for its strength for it holds up the dreams of millions.

Bless it for its energy which manufactures hope daily or

biweekly or twice yearly,

and bless those who look to it for an impossible comfort.

Bless the Lottery.

Bless its gentleness for it gives chance a smiley face.

Bless its kindness for it gives produces opportunity.

Bless its intrinsic tenderness which distributes dollars.

Bless the lottery because it illuminates desire.

Bless the lottery because it makes us humble.

Bless the lottery because someone always wins, just not you

or me.

Spirit, bless the lottery and keep it random.

PRAYER TO HELP ME LET GO

Spirit:

Help me let go of what I cling to,

loosen the grip of things that cling to me.

Scatter my pretences, make my masks transparent.

Drive me like a stake into the ground.

Drop me like an anchor in the sea.

Help me let go, release my hold on things,

Shake me lose from things attached to me.

Scatter my secrets to the breeze,

drive me like a stake into the ground,

drop me like an anchor in the sea.

A PRAYER FOR POLITICIANS

Spirit:

Bless the politicians, bless the makers of laws.

Fill their cup with intelligence. Make it runneth over.

Stiffen them and stuff them with an abundance of common sense.

Let them enact intelligent legislation.

Make their laws sensible and proper,

righteous, give them measure and fit.

Let them make just laws, laws that make it a capital offence

to dumb down a nation,

laws that make it a crime to waste resources, and empty

the coffers of the nation into the pockets of the rich.

But, if they insist on cupidity and small mindedness,

if they lie and sell themselves

Stuff their mouths with sheep’s feathers, bird skins and

cow dung, burnish their noses with steel wool so they shine dully,

make them rattle when they move and give them a sharp smell.

Name empty spaces in their honor, dedicate a vacuum to

them as a memorial,

let them gossip with dung beetles and make them the

punch line of a sick joke.

PRAYER FOR MANKIND’S FREAKS

Spirit:

Bless mankind’s freaks

those on the margin and those at the corners,

the damaged and the charged up.

Those who genetics have done in, those who sprouted from the pressure points of genes

those who unfolded badly, those whose genes reached out

but did not grasp humanness.

Mutants, flukes, remnants, scraps, discards, remainders, monsters,

those hunkered permanently at the margin, those who make up mankind’s seam.

The Frog boy, the Elephant man, the Human Skeleton, the Monkey Girl, the Lobster Boy, the Human Blockhead, the Merman, the Fattest Lady On The Whole Earth.

Bless mankind’s freaks,

who give us what to thank God for when there is nothing to thank God for,

who give us a reason to curse God when there is nothing to curse God for,

a bad reason to feel good, a good reason to feel bad,

an excuse to curse fate, an excuse to be charitable,

who are what we see in the mirror at the end of the day.

A PRAYER FOR COMMON SENSE

Spirit

Bless common sense.

Give it a human form,

make it sexy.

Give it a touch of grace,

hips that swing, an ass, big tits,

a pretty face.

Give it tight buns, a good sense of humor, abs.

Perfume it coarsely, give it a muscled smell.

Make it attractive so that people are fascinated by it,

so that people will want to be seduced by it.

Give common sense anything that will make it pretty,

Give common sense anything that will make it handsome,

because it is common, and people look down on it,

and prefer catechisms, platitudes, bromides, slogans, proverbs

in dead languages

to sense,

anything that keeps them from adding 2 plus 2 and getting 4.

PRAYER FOR WAKING UP

Spirit:

When I wake up from a nights sleep,

it means I’ve had my fill of dreaming.

Don’t let the day become the continuation of a nightmare.

When the screen goes dark and the lights go on,

it means the movies over.

Don’t let the rest of the day sink into makebelieve.

Don’t let what is real fade into dreamland,

mine or Hollywood’s unconscious scheming,

don’t stuff my life into someone’s imagined pocket,

a really foreign film gone off its sprockets,

or my own unreasoned dreaming.

SELFISH PRAYERS:

Spirit:

When God calls us all home,

to stand, heads bowed before him, and be judged,

then bask in his glory,

we will share equally in his bounty.

Everyone will have an equal share

none more than others,

none a rice grain more than others,

none a penny more than their brothers.

Then, no one will be better than anyone else,

then equality will reign.

But until then, we live in our familiar mess.

Until then there has to be

some with more, some with less,

some more equal than others.

So spirit, I pray I may have my druthers, in this harsh reality,

the less unequal others, the more unequal me.

Give everyone class,

make me classier.

Make other people good

make me better.

Make some other people rich,

make me richer.

Make other people smart,

make me smarter.

Give everyone bread

and me cake.

Give everyone a c*nt

but me a c*ck,

or give everyone a c*ck

and me a c*nt.

Make everyone a lock

and me a key,

then take my mind off other people.

A PRAYER FOR OLD AGE

Spirit:

Please, don’t let me spend my golden years,

answering telephone call from telemarketers,

watching reruns of I love Lucy,

reading the obituaries of friends,

walking behind a dog picking up shit.

Don’t let me spend my golden years

worrying about what has come in my mail,

watching desperate battles in new wars in obscure places,

courting dead lovers, being called upon to do my duty,

retouching scratches, patching holes.

Don’t let me spend my golden years,

tender of new sensations, fearful of newly discovered diseases,

watching hopefully for new scientific cures,

discovering herbal treatments, counting hairs in my brush,

expecting Ed McMann,

Take me still restless,

abruptly, unexpectedly,

push me still restless off a cliff,

pull me still flailing into some hole,

my body taking an odd twist, falling off,

without un-namable longings,

without an unquenchable thirst.

GIVE US A DAY WITHOUT NEWS

Spirit:

Give us a day without news,

give us a day filled with no events,

Let the reporters complain

it was a day without anything worth writing about.

Give us a day in which the newspapers are filled with stories

about women who decided to shop, then changed their minds

then went shopping anyway.

Give us a day in which the newspapers are filled with stories

about men who spent the afternoon watching TV,

switching between a football game and a basketball game

and a golf tournament and a wrestling match .

Give us a day in which the newspapers are filled with

stories about how it rained steadily then stopped,

about how the trains were clogged with people.

about how traffic was heavy, with people going somewhere, coming back,

about people forgetting things, remembering things,

meeting, parting.

A PRAYER FOR ENTROPY

Spirit:

This is what entropy’s all about,

the rare’s made commonplace,

the unique, reverse engineered.

Nature rolls off an assembly line,

meaning is reduced to words.

This is what entropy is all about.

the deadly’s made a therapy,

terror, a doll to comfort kids,

the brightly colored is made gray;

words are gutted like fish.

Spirit:

Stand the world on its head for a day.

Let energy flow up.

Roll us downhill to complexity,

let us catch our breath upon some mountaintop.

A PRAYER FOR CRAZY PEOPLE ON THE STREET

Spirit

Pray for the crazy people on the street,

those who hear directly from the mother ship,

who are instructed from Mars through implants,

those to whom the CIA communicates in plaintext,

those to whom God whispers his commands,

those who are aroused, who must sound the alarm.

Bless those who are agitated by our calm faces,

unsettled by the cold, gray, ordinary world,

in which God is quiet, and Mars dead,

and agency files rest quiet in their ciphers.

Bless those whom we distress,

going to work and returning from shopping

without recognizing the end of the world is near

without seeing the glow rising over the horizon.

PRAYER FOR CRAZINESS

Spirit, spirit, spirit

let the craziness come over me.

Spirit, Spirit, Spirit, the craziness is here, its here,

came without calling, came without a knock,

open the door, open the door,

let it roll over me.

I never saw it coming,

it just come over me.

Let it roll over me.

Never seen it coming,

never heard it coming,

never smelled it coming,

it just come over me.

Let it roll over me.

Never told it was coming.

It just come over me.

Let it roll over me.

Spirit, Spirit, Spirit, the craziness is down on me.

Let it blow me up, let it blow me up,

let it blow me up till I burst, then

let it roll out over me.

A PRAYER FOR THOSE WHO CLING TO LIFE

Spirit.

Pray for those who cling to life, whose knuckles are white holding on,

for whom the rope they’re hung from ties them to life,

for those who shot, fall forward and creep,

those who throttled scream out 911,

those addicted to air, to sun,

who at the end resist refusing to acknowledge they are dead.

Pray for those who will not give up on life, who will not die.

Pray for those for whom heaven is not a temptation.

Pray for those battered and scarred who are determined to accumulate more scars,

those addicted to air, to sun,

who at the end resist, refusing to acknowledge they are dead.

A PRAYER FOR CHARACTERS THAT LIVE IN BOOKS

Spirit:

Pray for the characters in books

for those never alive never die,

whom words give life.

Characters who sleep between the covers of books,

who rouse on being read, doze when we drift to sleep,

and are forgotten when we forget,

to whom we lend pieces of our lives,

from whom we borrow bits of lives back,

who put on the faces of people we know,

who live disguised as relatives, who pass as friends,

and surprise us by appearing in unlikely places,

on streetcorners, on busses, on beds next to us,

ventriloquisting real people.

Pray for their authors too, who need our prayers

left childless with apparitions for children

known only by the company of shadows they keep.

A PRAYER FOR GOING TO WORK

Spirit:

Focus the day and give it scope,

anchor its end to its beginning

stuff it with hope, and give it room to grow.

Give my job some heft and weight.

Make it ample so that I can grow.

Prepare me for what the day will bring

but surprise me. Give me a chance to dance and sing

Let me appear in my work. Give meaning to what I do,

save me a challenge.

Shine what I do best, shadow the rest,

push distraction away, don’t drown me in trivia.

Let me organize what needs to be organized.

Let me move what needs to be moved.

Let me put down what needs to be put down.

Keep me away from currents of craziness,

don’t let me be swept away by craziness.

Let the job move me in a straight path.

Keep the extraneous boxed up. Let my movements be measured.

Give it a direction.

Let me finish the job that was mine as the day began and

let me leave without wishing the day a moment shorter, nor a moment longer.