Brian Eckert

When black dreams lead to blackened day, the feeling is one of betrayal:
of the self, by the self.

Unfaithful sensibilities, disloyal reality, are not tolerated here, in the Kingdom of Conniving Fleas. Don’t make me make an example of myself. 1,327 consecutive life sentences. No possibility of Nirvana.
Only conjugal visits with a Sacred Cow.

Betrayed by night, I rue the day. Cut off yesterday to spite tomorrow.
Fear (if sleep is not safe, where might refuge ever be found?) begets uncertainty;
uncertainty reveals complexity.

The complex tears man asunder.
What is simple heals him.
Even if the balm be unctuous.

No, I am not myself today.
Or perhaps I am too much myself.
I spent hours alone in an underground room, trying to prove to myself that I don’t exist, that I’m not
the Invisible Man.

Saved by the bell. Only strangers drop-in anymore.
They tell me to sign on the dotted line and I know
I was bought off long ago.

Or it could be an evangelist, asking me if I’ve read the Bible.
Some say the Good Book is just astrology. Just the other day a man saw Jesus in a pile of windshield bird shit.
He always looks handsome in pictures.
Nowadays he’d be just another hipster,
working at a sushi restaurant
writing a bad memoir.

Poor neighborhoods, like this one, tend to have a high concentration of churches. On Sundays I like to take a long walk. Every few blocks there’s a church from which pours snippets of voices, organ music, clapping hands, stomping feet. I’ve never been a churchgoer, but I imagine what would happen if I opened a door mid-service and settled into a pew in the back. I think of what it would be like to lose myself completely in the preacher’s voice, the crowd’s movements, the high ceilings, the stained glass. To be a believer, just for an hour. I will slip out the door quickly when the service is over and walk home wrapped in a strange calm, in spite of the reinstatement of my disbelief.

Yes, I prepare to say to the True Believer at the door, I have heard the words of Christ.
No, I do not follow them.
But please talk of them…speak friend!
I will become lost in the roll of your voice,
you purring cat!
Your certainty gives me hope that someday
I may too be sure of something.

There is no man with a bible
wielded like a shotgun
at my door.

A slightly-less-than-middle-aged Mexican man stands there.
Hey man. I’m lukeing for Pancho man. A leetle guy. He says heez leeving at this address man.

Pancho doesn’t live here amigo.

Ok man. Thanks man. I’ll check the other houses.

Wait, amigo, I say.
Do you have a minute?
I’d like to talk to you about the message of
Jesus Christ, our lord and savior.