Backed into a Corner

(For all my good friends, I am fully aware how raw this bit of writing is. But, that is my poetry; my cleansing, my therapy. It is my soul on a plate.)

Backed into a Corner

(“Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness. For we do not know what to pray for as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words.” Romans 8:26)

I’m certain it would have happened before now if I
didn’t still have children in the home,
if I didn’t have a wife who would die inside,
when I finally let all the pieces gingerly glued and taped
finally fall apart on the floor. Jagged and dust,
blood and the musty smell of old spells uttered by
everyone who knew better,
who behaved better,
who danced and sang and worked and slung
their words so much higher than mine, that they
reached the people in power before mine,
and were believed by rainbow chasers before mine,
and were repeated more often than mine,
louder than mine, until finally, in quiet desperation

I dug a hole where I intended to spend my remaining time.

Some see a miracle, with the truest tears I must tell,
I am no longer sure miracles exist. Whatever the dust-up,
the fog lifted and I landed by the river, near the ocean,
where gray meets blue water, green meets yellow sun,
and where the nutrient-rich mud is pudding for every
evergreen seen from one crest to the next and in the valleys
between.

But what no one has seen
is how
two weeks ago I looked at the wreckage and decided

“i am broken”

Not

“I’m sick” or “I’m hurting” or “I’ll get over it”

Because I’ve taken the cure, I’ve talked the therapy
and I’ve tossed every rock with the offenders names
into the water to be forgotten, along with my anger and shame.

And yet

i am broken

Almighty (who I always loved to call Father), this is addressed to You now,
my friends may be frightened by these words and how
I want them to know I am empty, not complete, dry-boned, depleted.

I favored “Papa” for my God, but, following for 40 year I’ve chosen everything
I thought You wanted. And in one flash of insight realized, for 40 years,
I never chosen what would make me happy. I took the smallest churches,
I stayed with the angriest supervisors, and when I did show pain,
I was a target again. Blasted as if I should have lasted longer
standing blindfolded before the firing squad (smoke ‘em if you’ve
got ‘em, and my mouth was empty).

You can’t draw lines in the sand with God, that’s what makes
Him so frightening and unfair. But my line is finally drawn, my
bits of flesh and bone wait for the final answer in my

S
C
R
E
A
M

for

Redemption!