The Director’s Chair

harassing plumes of blown leaves and paper pieces

balloon upward with carefully choreographed scenes and sets

shooting a hopeless humanity with suicidal impulses.

this one meeting her end, body colliding, full on,

a baneful speeding bus, the moment of impact, 

blood spray upwards and in all directions.

noxious graphic set directors directing

human decomposition effects, dead 

bodies decorating the shot. cut! rewrite

the script! aggrandize: more expletive laced 

language, rotting corpses, dismay and despair,

people that don’t pray and everyone dies!

while all around God is really as He always

has been - like a gravity weighted blanket of

ground encompassing fibers and threads, Silent,

drawing downward this last drop of blood; His Son’s.

beaten Body. agony! arranged and arrayed

with nails and wood for with Love to save He shed

the Blood dropping and pooling about His feet.

besieged, but to Rise, Glorified, His Kingdom evermore!

-Gary Edward Geraci

New Clothes for Christmas

Savior, Savior please!

I’m on my knees don’t you see?

Too late to save me?

This flesh I’ve fouled and spoiled,

You wore it to redeem me!

-Gary Edward Geraci

Rattle Away!

Babe in the manger

Grace like crushed orange peel spray

He rattles the famed 

-Gary Edward Geraci

Climbing steps implies a journey of sorts...

You want to know, after I’ve ingested Him, 

you know, whether I will become different, 

animated, 

magical, 

capable of working wonders...

If so, then maybe there’s something to all this after all.  

If not, well then don’t you see, it’s all got 

to be some kind of hoax and all those people 

who don’t believe in “the real presence”, (as you say)

are right after all. 

Well, I can tell you the truth...

I don’t feel a bit of difference at all in that moment...

Unless I’m communing with Him in deep prayer...

        You’ve got to “know” 

the One 

you’re in love with

but that’s the point it’s not an immediate affect change effect or feeling that is so readily apparent to others rather it’s who you are slowly becoming by the very food you are choosing to eat and over time that change it’s going to be apparent to any one who’s really taken the time to get to know you like each and every poem you’ve ever written turns out to be in itself a critical piece of the overall anatomy not one any less important than the other read together each part defining the whole

And it becomes glaringly gloriously joyously apparent to oneself.

-Gary Edward Geraci

Upper Carmen

a refuse pit across the street

this clan with kids constrained by

poverty. we’re sent to school

and church and we’ve each other.

to pick fresh fruit, to sell scrap

free falling from dump trucks where we’re

first to forage and find. my

protector, my big brother,

trades up for dried fish, meat to eat.

sea to see we run to swim

with cousins, friends - our meek compound.

world riches, lusts to smother

our fun and freedom; such sweet

lives a gift from heaven’s High.

-Gary Edward Geraci

She’s like us in most every way

Holy womb hers is.

Sweat and toil? I’m not for sure.

Like us except sin.

Gary Edward Geraci

None Other Like It

How unique; this beauty of one soul. Its con-

Tours of lines, curves, and splines with summits and low

Hollows, like vibrant paints in oil; charcoal rubbed on

Paper; blue hues, bold, but ah! with streaks of yellow.

Rare, not one the same, yet, in pro and con,

Loved. While weak in will, weakened, passions we follow.

Street gutter gullies too broad to breach, base flow

Bridged “by conversion,” this counsel of John.

Placed in our Mother’s hand, now no gift exceeds.

Our dispenser of gifts our dispenser of grace,

Make haste; present this soul thus offered, its needs

And limitations, a spark that turns His Holy Face.

With a loving tender heart of mercy, Christ bleeds!

My soul: my gift - none other like it - my embrace.

-Gary Edward Geraci

Hot Furnace Burning

I can say the words

I can speak the words

Enough times so that the next time,

Stoking them, I can even

Elicit these feelings of intensity

Oh but that would be me doing all the work

Or I can seek out a Person

And when I find Him and go before Him

Well, there’s nothing else I need to do

(At all don’t you see?)

Like going out one blazing afternoon

To meet a lover along the river bank

And from a distance, in that near minute,

Something deep inside leaps by sight alone

-Gary Edward Geraci