listening to "yer blues"

listening to “yer blues”

(“Say to the prophets who prophesy from their imagination: ‘Listen to the Lord’s message!’” Ezekiel 13:2)

Listening to “yer blues”
I’m reminded I’m not of the earth or sky,
I am of the universe, and that is what I’ll use
to decide the barrage of words that pass as
god-talk from people who just have no time to wait out
patient love.

(I’m so musical even my yawns sound like a song.)

You just cannot bring god down,
and you cannot just call him up from below.
You cannot make the fire fall,
and you cannot make a spring of water flow
from a rock.

(I’m so logical even my snores are antiwar.)

Why are you uncomfortable with silence,
Why do your god-words sound so much like your-words,
Your announcements are no better than palmistry
reading the wind.

(I’m so comical even my scars can spin a yarn.)

There is preaching in the zero syllable breeze,
there is gospel in the clapping branches of the trees,
the message is as certain in a stranger’s hug
as if Jesus himself stood among us unplugged
like a gardener.

(I’m so spiritual even my pores are open for more.)

Don’t preach when lunch will do just fine,
Don’t predict, conjure, invoke everything that enters your mind,
But walk in sackcloth, put on ashes, sit with the silent
whose words were stolen when the expectations of violence
became the sermon of the day.

(I’m so hopeful even my feet tread heels-over-head.)