The Recitations of Love

The Recitations of Love

(“Fools make fun of guilt, but the godly acknowledge it and seek reconciliation.” Proverbs 14:9)

He wanted to jot his emotions down before
the ink dried on the page. They were fleeting but heavy,
they were deep and they were noisy.
He had learned to be impatient about the past
indiscretions. He once thought he had a gift
for painting the unknowable but discovered the
colors ran faster than his brushstrokes could keep up.
He leaned on what he had learned to love, the daily way
his inclinations moved his heart. He knew, and would
try to remember, that prayer was nothing more than
unspoken breaths caught on the dawn of a pink and
orange morning.

He captured his pain, the reminders of how little he gained
from underneath the burdens of tripping and falling where
he wished he had stood strong. The past was a long arc
that followed him down the halls and around the alleys
like corner store bullies waiting after school.
He walked around the block searching for a new place
to bury the thoughts that haunted his steps from day
to the midnight at the end of the week.

But if he stopped for just a moment, if he stood still
and let the light bleed into his eyes, he could hear the
words that started with a look and drew him closer than
he thought he deserved. They were indelible and could
not be erased.
He learned to listen again to the recitations of love,
the mystery that turned upon the timing of the ancient of days.
He could not deny the past, but he no longer needed to
die every day. He replayed the liturgy that played like
a butterfly near his shame and dread. He smiled again and
began again to pace himself in and out of his heirloom of
life.

Destroyed in an Hour

Destroyed in an Hour

(“All these riches have been destroyed in one hour!” Revelation 18:17a)

You thought you would stand forever, didn’t you.
All the reports showed your finances were strong,
your ledger was balanced on the best side of your fortune.
The birds stopped mocking you, the dogs lapped at your feet,
the acolytes lined up by the hour to praise your silvery age
like it was the highest building, like its final floor reached
above heaven.

You spent your spare time circling the globe, you were
given trinkets made of gold. You imagined lines and lines of
supplicants waiting for you to speak the magic words that
would turn their lives around. They knew you were the poverty
breaker
and wanted to be captured by your unnatural mission. They
were certain there was a secret equation that would turn the
water to wine, their tears to diamonds, and their disappointments
to opalescent stained-glass windows that let the golden rays
fall across the paltry collections of misguidance they
had invested their time to believe.

You survived the earthquakes; you held on when the markets
tanked.
You laughed at the storm that leveled everything within
miles of your epicenter. You were untouchable. You were
slippery and had closed every deal with your fingers crossed
behind your back. If someone failed when you pulled the rug
out from under them,
you told them they had simply picked the wrong place to stand.

But there were pests you did not see, insects that lived between
the cash and the plastic you stored behind the walls of
infamous portraits. The agreements you forced you forgers to
sign soon ran out of time. They payoffs you slipped into the
hands of the survivors weren’t enough to keep them from finally
speaking the earth-shattering truth.

Your money stayed intact. In fact, your accounts became bloated,
but too many people now, fooled for so long, began to prophecy the
crash of the one who the world had called beyond and completely
blessed. You crashed as your ego shattered; your scruples were the
first to go.

When your deals shriveled, you swiveled and found
no one was left on the opposite side of your lavish mahogany
desk. Your conscience was seared and you blamed it all,
the meteoric rise and the asteroidal downfall, on
lies a flunky or two had started and could not be stopped.

Briefly you rebounded. But within the hour everything
you built for your name and leisure was over. You could
admit it if you wanted. You could heal from the haunted
cobwebs that left your mind, so deceived and diseased,
that you stood on the first floor and opened the door while
weeping that your reach had receded like a dirge from a person
that no one knew.

To Sculpt Vignettes

To Sculpt Vignettes

(“Listen to me! For I have important things to tell you. Everything I say is right.” Proverbs 8:6)

I looked ahead through the tunnel vision where I hoped
to see a light at the end. It had all been so simple then,
a new day of discoveries or a day trip with friends.
We would ride to Oakland and sit in a coffee shop in
the 70s
where words were spoken from a tiny stage. Where
I first read the early lines of my poetry and sometimes sang
songs I had just written for the girl beside me. We would
drive back home in my best friend’s blue VW bug feeling we
were the luckiest posse alive. We could have studied the
words like the night before a big test. We could have
memorized the verbs that made the evening pass like
an old freight train at night.

I was too nervous to try busking in the park. My skills
were crowded, my fingers careless across the strings.
I did know the songs so well, though, that they came out
of my dreams and into the waking room covered with
psychedelic posters of my favorite bands.

But I sang them nakedly and rarely ventured outside.
I rehearsed them alone wishing my voice could tune
the melody just so. Now I am old and my range has been
shortened by the passing of time. I can barely sing my
rhymes I hoped to retain.

But I could speak. I wanted to sculpt vignettes that
were lit from above. I wanted a better name than just
the sound
of cloudless days. If I am lucky, I’ll write
a piece good enough to stand upon the smallest
stage in the park
and be heard by someone who nearly and only wanted
to be reminded of love a league or two ago. I’ll play
the notes on black and white keys while I recite the words
I hope will make you smile.

The Jangly Sky

The Jangly Sky

(“And I heard the altar saying, ‘Yes, Lord God, the Almighty, true and righteous are Your judgments.’” Revelation 16:7)

The sky above me was jangly while the
sun sent spangly shadows between the trees
darting between leaf and leaf in waves and unruly
particles.

I pondered swiftly the ways our puzzled faces
looked when carrying what we thought we had lost
between us like luggage on the floor. We left it to
the microscopes to explain it all.

We tried to disguise our worried visage, we begged
our distrust to dissuade us like rain on the desert floor.
We had heard the words come from the distant past
and we pretended to understand it at last. We were
foolish.

We let our fears of going outside capture our guarded mind.
We listened to the clanging caught between windchimes and
crows. We pretended to know the answers while we
started the afternoon with the same doubts. We were
disingenuous.

The sky stayed the same throughout the waning day,
the sun scooted over a degree or two seeking the western
horizon. Underneath it all we remembered deer in the
front yard and rabbits in the back. We were
persuaded.

We admitted we had run short of easy answers and so,
simple as we were, we let the light play across our faces.
We moved, quick and stealth, following our canvas thoughts
to their storied end. We knew now that every view would need
to bend.

Overflow

Overflow

(“Your barns will be filled with grain, and you will have too much wine to store it all.” Proverbs 3:10)

There were nights when the only light from the stars
could be seen from the bottom of a well. So narrow the
constellations
were lost while the earth turned toward morning.
The problem with homemade telescopes is
they whittle the sky down to only a sliver view.
Pointed so accurately they could not see the
waving grain or the vats full of wine just a few
steps away from the bottom of the shaft that kept
it all watered so well.

Climbing out to see the midnight sky, the expanse
was effusive with pinpoint twinkles a million years old.
And the moon, large as harvest, lit it all like a ragamuffin’s
lamp. The wheat waved like happy scarecrows,
the wine flowed like a bride’s long veil.

We heard the sound of a distant choir that hung
above the night, the angels laughing like teenagers
caught dancing on the hills. Our point of view
opened the set list of the universe to our ears and eyes.
It all seemed an accident, a lucky alignment of
coincidences that conspired to break us open from
the inside out.

This was the beginning, the answer to the refrain
that repeated the verse and chorus over and over
again. This was the overnight song we had heard about.
This was the overflow, the existential evidence that
there was more than just the wingspan of our limited reach.
This was the abundance promised by voices that
translated divine music into the lingua franca.

The Prepared Abode

The Prepared Abode

(“The Lord is good to all, and his compassion is over all that he has made.” Psalm 145:9)

It’s not over yet, our journey has barely begun.
From packing it all up to fleeing like the sun.
We can follow the ways of the wind,
investigate every sound from burping frogs to
fizzing hummingbirds.
There have been craggy razors on the rocky edges
of the ascent we chose. There are pebbles in
our shoes as we start the way back downward.

Here I am to greet you at the other end of the road.
I’ve been waiting for the announcement that you
are just around the corner.
We both took the long way, didn’t we. We smelled
the dangers in the dust firsthand. We even contemplated
turning back more than once. The nuances of the path
sometimes took us by surprise.

It’s still not over, even after you arrive. We’ll recount
our stories
like vagabonds slogging through our messy investigations
into numerous dangers we dodged and the times we
fainted without cause. We thought we might have to
pay our dues on the overdrafts we wrote against the
skies of patience. But

We arrived finally and understood the haven of rest
that waited our winding trek over trust and uncertainty.
Between here and there we were rejected by
handfuls who has sworn their devotion. The misinterpreted
our detours that took the long way around
their biases and preoccupations.

It’s no over yet, our sojourn will continue I suppose,
walking the world like a drifter counting planets
in the midnight sky. From front to back we knew
we never lacked what pulled us on. We found our
home in the company we kept treading upon the
earth until we discovered the prepared abode.

Rounded Winds

Rounded Winds

(“Search me, God, and know my heart; put me to the test and know my anxious thoughts.” Psalm 139:23)

I took the journey willingly
(well, at first).
I had no idea what the yard would look like
once the light of day revealed the rubbish
in the wake of last night’s swift and rounded winds.

But like I said, I volunteered eagerly.
The first days were Californian Spring
and warmed from there to summer’s late nights
laughing at the same stories we heard every year.
We had no idea what shape the stories would take
further on down the road. We were more naïve than
bold.

I would go home elated and exhausted, the words
and pictures whirling through my mind.
I might wake up if the thunder roared or sleep through
the lightning storm that left the city looking like
a homeless dog.

After the winds rushed through, dislodging
tool sheds and tossing fences aside, the morning
was a mess and my mind was no better. I needed
something to show me the difference between what
was kept and what was swept aside. Every neighbor
had the same questions and wondered whether we could
tell the same stories we had the night before.

We worked in the light of morning toward the afternoon;
we replaced the rubble sooner than we expected. We
were ready to close our eyes near midnight
in peace.