six a.m. radio.

welcome back.

we are coming to you live and alive from bryan.

i'll be filling in this show with flesh and bone

sorry i'm no holy ghost like your usual host.

at the moment he is broken like bread

and placed on millions of tongues on fire.

me?

i have this: a handheld radio

one i use prophesy with

i hold it to my chest and the words come out in static but loud like

'In weather, there's a cold front is blowing inside of us

so kids, make sure your parents dress their souls in layers, amen...'

welcome back.

my god calls and i return.

we use our hands like farmers sculpting fields

we keep in touch.

we stretch and make like the bones i broke way back when

we bend and break and then grow back again,

but stronger

this time around

i pray on one knee and renew wedding vows i first made way back when

sayin' with a scrape on my elbow

'eh doesn't hurt as bad as i thought.'

my god says see? i told you didn't i

and the pain will you sharper

so dive in

marry this marry something say yes soon

get on one knee more often

and while you're down there tie your shoes with second-chance laces loop swoop and pull yourself together again excempt in a double knot this time

so that you may run away towards five a.m. find the nearest accident and get hurt in it break your body tear at your ears and then get better

go way outta town to heal somewhere.'

so i do

i go out and find a great rusty oil tank no one knows about in a field no one tends and i lay on top of it i share stories with it i listen to it breathing asleep i pretend that rumbling noise below is an old skin of mine in the dryer, spinning with the bedsheet ghosts that haunted momo's back bedroom, stories i believed in and sat inside of like a fortress made of blankets and sofa cushions. then dawn breaks.

i hear my god sing in the Morning makin' six a.m. shimmer like

'the sky is a hall of mirrors on fire

and makes us shine like that too.

whether we like it or not. amen.'

welcome back.

my god calls and i return.

we are a tree branch, brittle like dogma

at last cracked cross the knee of Texas but only halfway

the splinters are graves that stick from the grass with angels breaking out of them,

come back at last to pluck their wings and walk like they are alive like us

my god calls holdin' a handful of their feather quills

she will write and send a thousand more letters to each of us in here

and make stamps look like blessings again,

ya know adhesive on one side and something to collect.

every stamp is another saint.

my god calls and i return.

we are broken but still holdin' on to one another.

we have made red rover a rite of passage.

we were characters in the first draft of Genesis but didn't make print.

'Welcome back

In the Beginning, two kids shuffled in their socks on Eden's carpet since all eternity and gave Yahweh little shocks when he wasn't lookin' and laughed and kept shuffling. They were quickly kicked out of Paradise. Ever merciful, God let them keep their socks. Amen.'

See, we invented electricity with our own two feet.

we know how to increase the signal strength of our prayers, praying not like this, but by folding my hand into hers with an hand radio in my left and bathtub overflowing in her right and we say let there be lightning amen and then we clap and evaporate into thunder, utter sound, if you tune your dials left of eden you'll pick up our signal as far as Bastrop, you'll hear us beat our pens on pages of Hindu scripture pulled taut Cross the tops of ear drums and hear our thunder talk in sanskrit like Da Da Da Be Self Controlled Be Charitable Be Compassionate we make our bodies into drums pullin' dead sea scrolls over our faces like a veil and tacking the ends in place

we

tune

our

self's

and wait to get struck by some stranger angel and hear how long our lungs ring out for.

we sleep with our own radios dialed in between bedsheet programs and in the Morning the white noise sounds like HOMMMMMMM cooked food and today i woke to the smell of gumbo. it was great.

i woke this Morning already laughing.

i woke this Morning,

really woke the Sun with nudge and kiss on the shoulder and after a night spent blind deaf half-dead and walking about light's out Dawn rolled around in bed and said.

'hi.

it's light outside.

yep already, so

open your eyes and learn how to sing with them, sing in everything you see.

write it down. go ahead use your pen like a radio transmitter.

this bed is a radio station

i hid a microphone under your pillow to

broadcast your dreams good and bad 'cause

we can't live like this off the air let's get on it

we aren't alive not till we get out of bed.

let's wake up again.

we are going live and alive in

5, 4, (3 2 1)

(open your eyes)

welcome back.

i am here in the studio with our creator.

if you have any questions

concerns

comments

criticisms

confessions

stories

secrets

songs

sound advice

shout-outs to saints

prayers

or poems,

we're taking callers.