Beyond the Years

Beyond the Years

("But let us give thanks to God! He gives us the victory because of what our Lord Jesus Christ has done." 1 Corinthians 15:57)

Do not march on in anger,
no need to parade in fear,
the triumphant procession extends beyond the years
that have held you down below
the sod of so many opinions.

Awake now, meet the day;
alive now, come and play in the sun
and join the immortal one who has opened every tomb,
emptied every grave,
and leads you, oh reluctant warrior,
in celebration you may not see, but fills the
reflections of the waters,
echoes from the planets to galaxies,
small talk in tiny cafes,
suspects of doubt along with
trumpets of faith.

The rich man's cave where he lay
is void of its treasure. There was no holding down
the apex of creation. Laugh at monster death,
cry at dying's destruction, but live, for life
is the gift, hidden in the earthy darkness and now
ablaze in the light of day.

These pain, these pains,
these bones that creak with age.
These pains, these names
that seem to upstage our hope,
our glory, our truest story while we
wait with poverty at our feet and
loss knocking at the door.

That day, that day,
mere hours away from the cruelest pain.
That day, lambs play
with lions and entertain babies
who we kept away from snakes in the garden
for fear.

Though this day may squeeze the breath from your believing,
though tomorrow a storm may rage unpredicted,
though politicians deceive, mega-seat theaters play
the movies we payed dearly to believe, and even though
the pins and needles sting like adder's poison

the reason to hope still stands like the world wiped clean
once it did all it could do to mute the song of all creation;
the life breaks through like high-speed videography
cracking the sidewalks in moments,
revealing the life that existed far before the
concrete of time.

Tell Us How Good We Are

Tell Us How Good We Are

(“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring glad tidings to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, and to proclaim the favorable year of the Lord." Luke 4:18-19)

Yes, please tell us how good we are, how deserving,
we've been observing your rules for decades now.
We've put down uprisings,
scolded the protestors;
Lord knows, we even prayed before we did.

Yes, please tell us about the new good news, how others refused,
but we who dust the pews in your house are you muses,
how we inspire your love and how you dote on us.
Look, we even brought the national flag into your house,
we sanctify, almost deify, the man in the big house who
most of us voted for.
(The others, finally, have walked out the door to some other
place they call church but which I'm sure you haven't frequented
in ages.)

Yes, we know your words are wonderful. They fill us with expectation.
We can't wait to tell more and more about this chosen generation,
this nation you saved, the country you chose above all others.

What? we have gone too far? Yes, it is true, some of our fathers
and mothers
crossed the invisible border. What? were they less blessed because
of it?

Yes, now I hear you questioning us, our standing, our unquestioned
place in prophecy? What? You do not feel welcome here where
the stars and stripes sit next to the communion table?

"I tell you, no prophet is accepted in his own native place. Do you remember the famine,
when Elijah was sent only to Mexico? Do you remember the lepers
during Elisha's time, yet only a leper from Iran was healed?"

Yes, now we hear your message. We hear it clearly. Leave now,
out the door. We nearly believed you were the Christ, but
now we know you are an imposter, for you love those who we hate,
and have spoken the harder words to us.

Yes, leave if you please. You have disrupted my angry religion,
you try to replace it with universal acceptance, and our God would
never put up with it.

You may think this word is apropos,
You may wish to have it disposed,
all I know
God helps those
who
need His help the most.

See Us More Clearly

See Us More Clearly

"For the sake of your name, don’t despise us. Don’t dishonor your glorious throne. Remember your promise to us; don’t break it." Jeremiah 14:21)

Please see us more clearly than we see

ourselves,

here we bring our votives and underlying motives

wondering why our turns of left and right and our

circles of up and down

leave us just as grounded as before.

We would fly if we could, (some pretend that we do),

we would beat back the momentum of our own

dishonesty, except our own family tell us

all we believe is true.

Please see the red in our eyes, (anger or crying,

sometimes a mere disguise). We give no excuses,

though we choose to sometimes blame it on the way

we have been created. (Me, not you. The yous abuse

every freedom they are given. The theys are tireless and

wicked without reason.) But we confess, and confess, and

confess, and it sounds like all the rest who cannot find a

place to admit, we vote for ugly then never regret what we get.

Please send your grace just now, and open our hearts to receive it.

We have lived so long as if we are right, we have forgotten how to admit

a journey filled with center-vision that refuses to see the

abused, the crying, the unwell, the dying,

the never-church, the basement pray-er, the mudcake poems

fascinated with grubs and ants and slugs. Earth is too dirty

to allow on the carpet between our pews.

Please send your Spirit; this time we will not refuse her friends

that always accompany her presence. She brings lilies of the day,

but dandelions too. She shares the scent of love that fills every room

and edits every ungodly no-love forward from Youtube or

presidential campaigns. She brings pain, she brings hope,

she brings tears, she brings old jokes we used to tell.

Please send her and we will never pretend

again,

that it was our singing, or our shouting, or our goodness
that brought her here within.

Come Ride with Me

Come Ride with Me

(“A voice crying out in the wilderness: ‘Prepare the way for the Lord; make his paths straight.’” Luke 3:4)

I’ll tell you a secret from the mud bottom of Spring,
I’ll whisper the honesty of gravel where I’m scrambling,
I need a road trip,
a route 66 trip,
a Grand Canyon, Painted Desert, Navajo Nation
and curio stand trip.

I need a sedan without air-conditioning and keeping each
other awake
across the long stretches, whining across the deserts,
curling up the mountains with
tires
that should have been replaced thousands of miles ago.

I want to hear your mix tape,
your stories, even though you’ve told them
to me before.
I love to hear the story, morning by morning,
and at the rest stops where we pause for two hour naps.

I know your music well and hear it for the first time
every time we travel.
I’ve memorized your sagas, down to verse and dogma
that cement them too familiar to be surprised again.

But you surprise me even though I’ve know the road since a child,
you sing along with AM radio, crying and laughing before the song
is done.
We pull in stations from Mexico and wonder why FM
was ever invented. We keep it tuned until the signal sounds
just like the tires across the inky asphalt. We turn the wheel,
we tune the knob
searching for another list of night songs to take us home.

It seems I’ve always been on the road, and now I sit
in a tight rectangle, wanting the sun to burn my face,
the wind to wake me as the white lines hypnotize me,
and feel like the first time I ever ventured out alone.

I never feared a wrong turn, never wept my failures;
always watched for the screen doors that looked
on like lemonade stands operated by children. We were
the proprietors
of a season that leaves a hat blown into the desert,
a heart that watches for midnight dwellers in the
air from afternoon until night.

Come, let us ride. The highway still needs construction,
the scenic route awaits your company. Though you have
always been with me,
I ask you

Come ride with me again.

The Simplest Dances

The Simplest Dances

(“Now these three remain: faith, hope, and love—but the greatest of these is love.” 1 Corinthians 13:13)

I did not do it brilliantly,
not even just short of perfectly,
but initially and everly I yearned for the
greatest to evidently be
the trajectory of my life.

I’ve seen Jesus in the eyes of my drunken friend at Taco Bell,
I’ve heard Jesus’ cry from the man who yelled, “fuck you” when
I had no more to give.
I’ve seen Jesus beg me when the unbathed teen knocked on my door
and asked for a ride home
for the thirteenth time in a month.
And his mom rarely answered the door.
I know the ache of Jesus when a husband and wife take two
weeks to cool down; one stubborn, the other a steel trap, but
both want something to unleash the love that lies beneath
their lifelong scabs.

And the lonely one who everyone thinks is unsocial,
and instead
cannot speak for all the judgments in her head.
And the bellicose who thinks he’ll save the world
and instead
drives people away with the angry hues of red
that swirl around his face. They replace the words
that should adorn the air with grace.

I’ve seen the wounds on Jesus’ face when a wife
who should be a princess is cut with wounds so deep
that even relief feels like another reason to wither in the sun.
I’ve walked with Jesus on solitary roads, wondering why he
traveled alone. And he told me, (I only surmise, and do not know)
that as we traveled, he was not alone.

I’ve watched the hands of Jesus as a man, my better, my elder,
knelt in a simpler way that I had seen, and washed my feet with
apologies for the obscene cruelties of super-apostles
who had laid my heart open for the world to see.

I’ve heard the voice of Jesus in the mentor who knew me best,
an Oklahoman, a gentleman, a father of fathers who I would rather
have never let down once; but did more than twice. And every time
he called me all I could hear was liquid love that filled the empty
room my heart had become. Long gone, a score of years ago,
I still hope for his phone call when I am shopping or crying
or talking to another one

That needs to hear the same voice that keeps me connected
to Jesus in every act of love ever given, ever received;
that keeps us entranced (if we’ll only give it the chance)
and invites us to the simplest dances. Choreography be damned.

Clipped Wings

Clipped Wings

(“If one part is suffering, then all the members suffer alongside it. If one member is honored, then all the members celebrate alongside it.” 1 Corinthians 12:26)

Someone had clipped the bird’s wings
and now he could not fly; not only for distance,
but for sheer folly and for time.
For more than a decade he simply hopped from
root too root underneath the trees where
the nests of cousins and brothers,
comrades and others,
settled in comfortably every Spring
and sang the songs that make men and gods smile.
He still could sing, but the tune never carried further
than the retaining walls around the yard.

Not only was his flight stolen, but the stumps of wings
were chronic wounds. He was not raised to be a stoic bird,
his voice was loud as a mockingbird. And time, and other time,
he wailed in his pain; a decade of catching the wind had been
removed from him.

At first the others, sorry for his loss, spoke to him from the
safety of their branches and offered sorrow, lozenges and prayer.
They would say he did not look in pain,
and that his wings were as beautiful as ever before. He wore
them high off his back as often as he could, but cried once night
shrouded him from the view of the mothers and their fledglings.
His singing stopped after no one listened anymore, but
crying, that awful sound that comes from a bird that is hurting,
cracked the midnight more often than the annual flocks imagined.

Each spring they began again, “How is your pain today? Have you
tried flying upside down? Have you tried seeds instead of worms?
And why don’t we see you at our morning gatherings to chirp at
the sun?” And then they would say, almost every day, for almost
an entire decade, “And we will pray for you.”

Agony takes its toll upon the most remarkable birds,
the eyes shrink to black, the legs wobble like toothpicks,
and the song is undiscernible as music at all. Then the soul,
the soul dries up like watermelon left on the vine too long.

Finally he squawked like a parrot, hissed like a rooster,
the pain had torn a hole where his heart had learned to sing.
This time the flocks did not even ask their questions,
but berated his attempts to sing of his grief. How does a bird
get over losing its voice,
how does it move past its wingless existence?

And occasionally, from the sky, a fellow flyer would hear his cry
and shout from above, “We are praying for you.”

For
ten
long
years
they
said
they would pray.

For
ten
long
years
nothing changed.

For
ten
long
years
he
longed

For visitors who would come and
take him under their wings.

Thinner Shields

Thinner Shields

("Stop taking advantage of foreigners, orphans, and widows. Don't kill innocent people. And stop worshiping other gods." Jeremiah 7:6)

Their shields are thinner than skin,
their protection evaporated into the diminished air
where they live without defenses
while people play with presidential images,
preferences,
idols and monetary enhancements.

Where can you find the invisible,
will you take the time?
Where do the most innocent dwell,
will you tell the governors, the rulers,
the emperors and CEOs that
their power is worthless spent on
their statues and legacies

while bread (not cake) sits unbroken on
too many church altars,
while they pray away demons they have
conjured on Youtube to agitate the masses
and whistle the dogs to devoted attendance?

Samaritans help before the devoted do,
and centurions ache before Pharisees for
a friend of the faithful.

Say the word and God will come winged on the dawn,
(if the worship leaders doesn't miss a note)
put the ushers in ties, inspect their scent,
don't offend someone who might not like a brain
less developed, front row and center. And we wonder
where the Spirit went.

Let your skin meet their skin, let your tears mingle with theirs,
uncage the lions in your brain that you thought you had tamed,
and let the lamb who reigns with wounds and weeping
be the very God of very God

in every prophecy and vision again.

Renewed Geometry

Renewed Geometry

("...to show mercy to our ancestor and to remember his holy covenant." Luke 1:72)

Like a floating decimal point we are unashamedly aimless,
separating quotients, demanding notice, only to disappear
into the winter mists again.

We would find our way, if not for the theorems we suppose
apply to everyone. Fathers and mothers had their own family
instructions,
handed to us in woodframe prairie living rooms. Sometimes
there were logs in the hearth, sometimes there was fire; some
times there was more smoke than we hoped and we coughed
our little heads off. But no matter the background noise,
the rules turned us into their little girls and boys. Into their
men and women, into arrows they hoped to shoot in just
the right direction. But perhaps their diction was off, perhaps
we read too much fiction; perhaps our hearing was dull, perhaps
their mouths were too full

but

we needed mercy and so did they. Day by day, hearts damaged and
hearts overflowing, mouths salvaged and eyes still borrowing
their interpretations of everything from theorems on the run.

So here I am on the side of the road, waiting for the next ride home;
Here I am waiting on the edge of the corner, a long way from home.
Here I am, a boy and a man, not certain who and when I am the other;
Here I am, embraced and arms-length, uncertain how to love the others

Who had theorems at home just like me, but theorems at home
different than my own.
And now they float in decimal solutions, rings around my corresponding
sphere where sometimes we touch, once a decade or once a year.

Lord have mercy, God have mercy,
Christ have mercy;
on us.

We need renewed geometry. Grace that replaces our sloppy
calculations and creates the nexus where we meet in all our
muscle memory and brainy computations to simply offer
earthy oblations to the King whose only laws are love.

Deconstruction

Deconstruction

(“I will create new heavens and a new earth. The things that have happened before will not be remembered.  They will not even enter your minds.” Isaiah 65:17)

His heart had been demolished while he
thought he was building a life.
Each belief was a brick in elegant courses around
a courtyard of worship and labyrinths.

He walked in knowledge, he spoke with power,
his words came easy, actions harder than dried mud.
He was water, he was pliant, he was weeping and he was
silent
too many times when he knew the truth had been
left unspoken.

But his heart imploded after the high-rise was vacant
leaving him useless for the corporation’s intentions.
It leaned across the expressway waiting for the wrecking ball
to finish the job before anyone else got hurt.

Though he bled onto the pages, and said he still believed,
he was sometimes viewed with suspicion
because he spread his damage across the table with
the wine and the bread.

No one asked him to leave, but no bandaged his wounds either.
He needed reprieve, he needed sounds of tears in the voices of his peers,
he ached for comrades, he begged for afternoon visits,
he waited until someone would let him know they
wanted him to stay. From far away he knew they did,
but not one sent a card amid the floods of grief on his
office floor.

So, before the silence became louder, he departed;
old wounds reopening like springs in the desert,
like sap from dead trees,
like maple from Vermont,
like venom from rattlesnake fangs;
he took the things he needed, heeded the sign that said
the shop was now closed, took his best and old clothes
to another side of the country.

Because he had partly been rebuilt, he deconstructed.

Entering a potter’s house, he watched as the master’s fingers
shaped the ceramic almost useful. But it was marred in his hands and
before he could start again

Our narrator grabbed the clay, the almost jar,
and slung it against the room. The heaviness smashed
the finished works on the shelf of the workroom; shards
piercing the air, the skin, the wheel, and again; he picked up
the largest piece of kilned clay. Iridescent, it gleamed of summer
green and
sacred blue. Lifted over his head, both-handed, he flung the
final piece and shattered it against the door that led outside.
It was there, surrounded by fragments, he knew his heart was
finished with the brickwork of the past.

And he started, slowly, like an aging painter,
to construct his real life, his true heart, his ever-self
at last.

The Recurrence of Curves

The Recurrence of Curves

(“Violence shall no more be heard in your land, nor devastation or destruction within your borders; but you shall call your walls Salvation and your gates Praise.” Isaiah 60:18)

I wandered into the
silence of violence,
the recurrence of curves.
I heard people speak to thousands about
heaven and hell in an
isolated haven where love was offered
as a plate of hors d’oeuvres.

I heard the word exclaimed from the balcony behind me,
and lived to see the crumbling of cathedrals.
I walked around every block and preached in
neighborhood parks
the almost-good-enough
but
often-not-quite
good news (those who never raised their hands
might eternally scorch their feet.)

I circled enhanced audio that improved the tone
of the scrambled message I’d learned.
It was always love, but often-not-quite
love. It was always sung in the key
the chosen few knew. Once or twice
a bluebird flew the coop,
but usually everyone remembered the tune.

Yet I had, subconsciously, quieted the song that was
ever-love. My circle was too small for my heart to inhabit
and make room for other residents, natives or civilians.
But my heart made no distinctions; but my circle
made no exceptions to the rule; until my circle was
broken when my own pain broke through.

Pain, sadness, I am done with the madness that defines differences
and rallies behind nations that have not learned that
when someone turns their back on you; everyone knows.
So I stayed facing the sun though I preferred the clouded corner
where no one would see me weep over weaknesses I thought
were drawn outside the lines.

And today, though some stand opposite the sun from me,
we still see, though some forget, the same blaze without regret,
the same consuming love that, now and not yet,
draws, full-orbed, every agitation and argument,
every skirmish and squabble, into the orbit of mercy
and defeats, by dying, the technologies of death.

How it Sounds

How it Sounds

(“I, I am the one who comforts you. Why should you fear humans who will die, mortals who are treated like grass?” Isaiah 51:12)

I know it often sounds as if my life is in the shadow,
the night has blanketed my hope for the light,
and I know you would rather hear flights of faith
than the grainy verse I write.

How can I be true and not publish the truth?
How can I believe and not admit my doubt?
How can I heal unless I admit my pain?
I will not know one thing within and show another without.

From a thousand miles away you cannot taste
the tears that have dried upon my face.
From twenty-five years away you cannot feel
the spears that have left their jagged traces
of scars and fragments of flint still stuck deep
within my heart.

Do you want my words to trumpet mountains
when there are none within sight?
Do you want my poems to scatter friendships
like seeds in a garden with a sleight-of-hand
that produces fake letters I’ve written myself?

I don’t blame you. If I heard me, but did not know me,
I would sound like Job’s comforters too. I’ve quoted the verses,
pointed their faces to the sun and blue sky, only to, bemused,
wonder why they never told me the truth again.

If you cannot bear my breakdowns, you cannot help me heal.
If you are scared of my meltdowns, you need to turn around now;
or seal our friendship with silence and presence,
not lectures and menace.

I know you’ve done better than me. I know you can quote faith
higher than me. I know your certainty alone guides you;
but I cannot bear to lie to myself, no matter how that makes
me look when it comes time to pray.

And truth, if you were oppressed, I would never expect you
to get over it. And truth, trauma posts its sadness whether we
invite it or not. Syndromes don’t come asking for permission.

So, I write what I write, and it will burn some day before
or after
my body is gone. They are only digits on a screen,
graphite from a number two yellow pencil

And will last no longer than this season’s dandelions
on the lawn.

I Will Listen for the Streams

I Will Listen for the Streams

(“They will not be hungry or thirsty. The burning heat of the sun will not trouble them. For He Who has loving-pity on them will lead them. He will lead them to wells of water.” Isaiah 49:10)

I think I might do my best trying to find God
as a monk in the wilderness,
a hermit for half an hour among the sand
and spiders without a page to read,
without a pencil to write,
just the hard floor the sun baked,
and a stick to etch meditations on the earth.

I think I might be happy for half a day
sitting by the dock of the bay,
no tunes in my pocket,
no guitar in my lap,
just the squeak of dolphins playing
while waves clapped against the pilings.

I think I could construct something simple in the forest

given wet mud and pine needles
and a survival expert as well.
Without a tent or a cookstove I know
I would starve before the sun was one quarter done.
But I’d still watch the blue jays play
and the fawns leaping after their mothers.

I know I’ve seen the face of eternity in my best friend,
in the toddler whose laugh fills the room,
in the longest hug I’ve ever received that felt like Jesus
was squeezing all the hurt out of me.
I know I’ve seen the king in the face of children swinging
at recess. I know I hugged creation when
I greeted my friend in rehab,
and when I hugged him after he failed.
And when those who knew all about me
kissed my cheek like a prince. I winced before
and after, but still saw the sun brighter that day.

The suburbs seem so much farther from imagination,
my meditations do not fit the square corners of intersections
and property lines.
But the same love dwells in this silent weekday afternoon
as does in the constellations, the red sand, the wild waves,
and all the affections that have led me to this place.

I will listen for the streams.

Unbreak Your Back

Unbreak Your Back

(“You were complacent in your evil deeds; you thought, ‘No one sees me.’ Your self-professed wisdom and knowledge lead you astray, when you say, ‘I am unique! No one can compare to me!’” Isaiah 47:10)

I can’t say we were shocked when your genius
(your highness)
fell from a stable
to a mahogany scarlet velvet throne;
but some were surprised (yet they would never
admit it.)

Your infancy was cradled in monumental deception,
you were conceived in arrogance and nursed on privilege
with little detection
of flesh and blood other than the band that
did your bidding.

I can’t say it took us by surprise, your rise from boasting
to a pill too bitter to swallow. And flocks of fallen angels
laid their hands on you, leapt like fawns for you,
posed in photos and roped in the followers for you.
But some were shocked (and they were ejected for it.)

Look over the vast expanse, walk next to the immigrant’s child,
ride in the front of a farmer’s combine at harvest,
sit with the mother and children who have stopped waiting
or the man to come back. Unbreak your back for once and leave
your agenda (hand-written, one thing to do today)
to find the place where the one-king lives

Back in the stable, just a few blocks south of the house
white with history’s stain. Right in your backyard

Left there since the mystery of incarnation; resign
and refind why the one man Jesus loved, having too
much stuff to carry

Turned away and did not follow.