how to fall in love with a vacuum (to Augustine) by Betsy Brown

I ran by the river

and thought about God,
and about how my nostrils
and eyes and ears and tongue and fingers
are all teleporters--
I crawl inside one of these warm flesh elevators,
press a button,
and BAM! there I am,
on Planet Love.
and it's constant climax there in my bright pink spacesuit,
I can jump a mile high
and pick the planets out of the sky like peaches,
and drink the dripping juices
'til it's a mad, mad, MAD teaparty of Love.

I ran by the river
my ipod pulsed with Colombian hip-hop,
and I LOVE the sultry Spanish sounds a can't understand,
how my eardrums shiver,
and a South American summer rains in my brain,
and I love it because I hear it,
I HEAR it

and what about God,
this three-letter word
He
sounds like the wind in all the films,
a giant James Earl Jones explosion,
a Lion King looming, booming among the stars
this God,
the painters paint Him a Santa-Socrates hybrid
sculpted from cumulus clouds,
white beard waving in the wind,
watching.

so I laid in the grass and listened and looked
for this booming white sky-God
but He was not there,
and I reached out my arms to embrace Him
but my arms slid through air,
I climbed into my ears and eyes
and nostrils and fingers and tongue,
and pressed the button,
but when the door slid open
I did not find God on the other side.

i've never known a Moses,
a man whose skin touched God's skin--
so I sit in a chair I can feel
and I smell and taste the apartment air
(like candles and hard-boiled eggs)
and I touch a friend's hand
and I listen to the cars drive over the manhole on 6th avenue
and I try to love a vacuum.
--Someone clearer than glass
and quieter than sleep,
empty, but full,
untouchable.

I ran past the river
and thought about God,
and listened to Colombian hip-hop,
and ran and ran and ran and ran and

ran