The Love of God

Alone he waits behind aged stained glass
Back and forth and back
He likes it here
Like church
In his earthen apartment
Under the cobblestone stairs of an old delicatessen
The world, when he would look out,
Was always warbly, bubbly, indigo and maroon and lavender
The world, if it were to look in, would see him the same

He has so much Love
Here is a cricket crossing his floor
And there it goes again,
Uninterrupted,
Between stacks of vinyls,
Barriers of inventions and wires and wheels
Invented barriers
Darkness,
And that bright purple square in the south wall
The dimmer purple parallelogram on the floor beneath

The muffled ding of a bell means order up
Another order of meat to go, up above
There's a contraption in the corner,
Hooked to the telephone
so that any time it rings,
LED lights will put on a dazzling show
Fireflies and fireworks and angels
He's set up incense to cover the smell and calm his nerves

The man himself is a tattered and lonely man-
Nearing, fearing forty
Facing this world all alone
Facing away from the world, now, really
You can look at the back of him
His Gene Wilder hair, patches in his suitcoat to make him feel more scholarly
Socks that only ever match if it's a coincidence

Look at him working,
Over the past nine years,
Cutting holes in his pockets in defiance of ownership
In defiance of change
Building his dream machines out of old lampshades and a record player
Childproofing the outlets and asking them to be his portals to a tiny land of love and magic (the same?)
Leaving the doors unlocked at night, just in case.
Is it warm in here, or just dark?

There sits his bible, under the light. A magnificent tome
It's the kind with the words of Jesus in martyr's blood red
Leather binding
And pages and pages for genealogy in the front, with some brightly colored saints
(No pages for progeny)

He reads of the love of God. Pure.
To possess charity is to have love FOR god, love LIKE god for his fellow men, love FROM god, he understands
He has so much Love
Jesus loves me, reads a scrawling script on a note that will be discovered much later by some stranger whom he also loves.
Up up up goes the handwriting, and then a sharp ragged down, telltale down

In a final experiment (thanks be to god for his unspeakable gift)
He uses some wire
The effects of gravity and sharp, sudden pressure
The details are meaning less

He really couldn't help himself
It's just that god loved him so much
And nobody nearer ever seemed to...
In all of this setup, years that led to this test of a hypothesis,
The phone never rang. Still no fireworks, no fireflies, no saving angels.
And now silence,
Same as before,
Save for another muffled ding from a bell up above.

He has so much Love