My Silent Repertoire

My Silent Repertoire

(“And the Lord’s servant mustn’t be a fighter, but must be gentle to all people, able to teach, able to bear evil without resentment.” 2 Timothy 2:24)

It’s been quite murky for a while. Some call it grace,
some just see the space I put between myself and the pain. My
guts would tell you that the fire is tired of burning, the lamps are
turning to evening and the embers to dirty gray.

I need to be tucked in between a lake and metropolis,
a forest with a couch and a café with first friends who don’t mind
that my eyes glaze when the gravity tightens around my face.

I sat on city councils, I advised state projects, I met CEOs and
had alcoholics in my home. Now my visits are silent, my years
are ringing like the foghorns on the river. All my energy has been
sold to the clouds as they pass by.

“Stir it up” they might say, “the gift, the fire, the holyghost desire”.
And that’s what I dream every evening before I wake with the
knife slicing my head again. And I can barely write again.

Doubt is my agent, tears are nearly absent. I’ve spent them on the
clouds that pass by.

Hold my hand again. Bring me a drink again. Touch my brow again
with a towel of mercy. Follow the wrinkles with your fingers, the furrows
caused by cringing that meet the smile lines of ages ago.

It is too slow now to organize. Too murky to plagiarize. The mask is
pulled far too tight across the fog my forehead feels. And so

I only ask forgiveness, and offer the same. My repertoire is limited,

But unashamed.