That is Where I Hear

That is Where I Hear

(“God showed his faithful love to me in front of the king…The Lord my God was with me, and that gave me courage.” Ezra 7:28)

Even though the brain waves crash upon my skull
like an endless buzz saw,
and the air is heavier than an anvil upon my head,
I have no other hope, no better word than
the softest whisper speaking from beneath the pain,
“I am with you, and I will be with you again.”

Even though the songs no longer come from my hands,
and the words, my love, my still life, explain less and less
between the lonesome stretches of writing.
I have no poetry than the simple rhymes of
childlike times. My mind is full of mystified
tangles, sentences dangling from the corners of my mouth.

Yet, I still read the unchanging motion, the words spoken
that are rooted at the base of every grunt or elocution.
“I have said, and will said it again; never will I leave you,
and never forsake you.”

And yet, nearing the end of my mission, when, from the first
the seeds grew rapidly, the message ignited wildfires of love;
at this final appointment, the last post of my journey

I fail. Though the soil is rich and watered well, the seed
does not germinate, the crop is dwindling and
I watch from a brittle chair awarded me once for
Outstanding Support, while the tears dry before they
hit the floor. My trajectory, though cruelly gravity-bound,
always rose between days of relative ease.

My books are old and tattered. Perhaps my words are as well.
Expectations shattered, percentages shrinking, while I keep thinking
the old seed should produce the same crop of my earlier mission.

And that is where I hear

Such a sad, sad silence. 

Silence!

Silence!

(“Be silent, all flesh, before the Lord, for he has roused himself from his holy dwelling.” Zechariah 2:13)

Who are we to instruct the Wind-maker when
we cannot see the breeze at all?

 When did we ascend the throne on antediluvian peaks
and survey the globe. Our panorama’s are sadly flattened?

How can we instruct the creation to match our templates,
the stars move from view while we position our deviated rules
written on cardboard before the nearsighted followers?

            No, I taught no one; only the man, only the woman,
            only the image-bearers on our best interpretation.

And where is our learning? What have we assumed? While we
exhume the bodies of our best knowledge, the failure rate only
rises as we stick to our guns.

How do we count the countless? How do we dare?
How do we enact a directive when the conversation was confidential?
How do you still box the air, never sparing your opponent
nor scoring the apparent.

            No, I announced it well; did you not hear my trumpet call?
            I raged at the uppity boys who silently wait the anthem’s end.
            I put them on the spot, closed the door and did my duty to
            God and to my Country.

Silence!

The quiet of the Almighty will break ever unholy assumption.
Do not lift an eyebrow, do not look around. Do not gaze in the stadium seats,
keep your eyes on the ground. Yahweh arises and you will soon see,
everything you though you understood, everything you knew to a “t”
has been trampled by His coming upon the winds of the dawn.
Everything you thought was right, you better prepare to get it wrong.

Do not put a finger to the piano, unplug the guitars,
drop the mic, (humbly this time) and stay right where you are.
He comes to judge your judgments. He comes to inspect the scars,
the wounds and the harm your pronouncements made when you made them
in His name.

It is no different, we are all the same. We walk the straight line if
the straight line means a detour around riches we’ve gained by
ignoring the least of any of these and promoting our feasts: VIP
only.

The Almighty is roused; He sees the waves sent to drown
the bad taste in our mouths.
The Almighty is pained; He feels the sores on the arms
and feet of the chosen.
The Almighty is slow; He knows the time we mistake
for divine approval.
The Almighty is ready; He comes to make His grace
the thunder before rain.
The Almighty heals; And cuts, and lances, and finds the
root of our growling glances from faces He designed to
shine like the sun.

Silence now! And listen unspoken. He will heal, he will refresh,
he will transform, he will fix;
Listen, for He will heal, but only that which is broken. 

No One is Looking

No One is Looking

(“Our earthly fathers correct us, and we still respect them. Isn’t it even better to be given true life by letting our spiritual Father correct us?” Hebrews 12:9)

If I wish for just a few more moments,
a day, a weekend, eight days or seven,
I could prove to you I function better
with the pain annulled and my mind clearer.

And yet they ask me, in geometric proportions,
how I’m learning the lesson, with disguised assertions
about meaning and karma, all things and bad things
and the reasons they happen.

My answers are weaker as the pain has become
a red ribbon stretching past memory’s happy sky.
I have stop analyzing, asking why, and cry far more often
now that all my reasons have run dry.

Pain leaves me lonely, it is my only conversation.
8-5 is torture, my body an enemy-nation occupying the
joys once, the stories twice, and the months pass
faster while I wait for an explanation;

Or a new creation to take the leaden weight,
once free to think, beyond river’s rapport with the ocean.

I’ve cried at each limping interval;
the silence is unkempt and literal.
My sentences have no periods,
my commas are not large enough.
There are no interludes; only agony
without the ecstasy.

So, with faith a microbe and hope a single Pennsylvania firefly,
I wonder what You will do with me. Why you have done this to me.
For, in all honesty, I see no purpose now for this hotly searing
fire in my head
that sheds cold tears

When no one is looking.