These Days I Rarely Understand

These Days I Rarely Understand

(“All scripture is inspired by God...so that everyone who belongs to God may be proficient, equipped for every good work. 2 Timothy 3:16-17)

These days I never understand a word you say,
while everyone else prophesies about dead end days.
How many days on the calendar,
how many decades in the rear-view mirror,
how many centuries of waiting in caves,
how many isolated on mountain peaks with
their stashes of canned goods and guns?

These days I never understand a word you say,
while everyone else preaches about conspiracy certainty.
How many people does it take
to keep a secret from the rest of us?
You swear everything you see with your eyes
is invented by newscasters and forecasters of death.
But everything you find in your head,
or is invisibly said by unmasked hatred
you swallow like chocolate cake.

These days I never understand a word you say,
while everyone divides the garments of the poor
and casts lots for the leftovers to carpet their bedroom floors.
How many lungs without breath
until you put on your boots and join the rest
who cannot stand for one more chokehold in the name of
law.
Remove the blindfold to see what is in front of you,
and sell all you have to join the hidden,
and tell how long it took to find the forbidden words
that set the prisoners free. Don’t speak of equality
until you can imagine traffic that accelerates the moment
you become a pedestrian. Watch the crosswalk son.

These days I rarely understand a word you say;
but love. I’ll scrape my knees for love,
cross the street for love,
eat what you eat for love,
take the heat for love.

I remember every face that said Christ was a white man’s
religion,
and when I tried to convince them otherwise.
Today I would listen. I don’t know how, but he has become whiter
in this stolen land haunted by its ancestors who knew grandfather better
than we think we know his son.

Please dream with me about undivided skies,
plains that grant us bread,
rains that soften our beards and faces,
and streets that bear the names of original blessing instead
of original sin.

Listen with me and let us understand (grandfather, son and holy ghost)
if we will not love, we have not listened. And if we have not listened,
we have not understood.

We Build Again

We Build Again

 (“The breaker goes up before them…” Micah 2:13a)

Justice will wing its way through every shout,
every aggression, and take to the sky with
the hopes of the forgotten trailing behind. 

Justice is no blind counterweight; it is the perfect
vision of love when the children of trauma are forgotten.
It sees the invisible, the erased, the stolen, the refugee,
the frozen and the effigies of cousins roped to the trees.

 And we keep marching, we keep coming,
we will not be moved, we will not be undone.
And we keep shouting, we will overcome,
for one by one we’ll cross any bridge to see
the work of mercy done.

 But some backs are bent, some feet are bleeding,
some eyes are dim, some arms are reaching
for the goal set before them that is receding
with every determined step and limp. 

So we keep marching, we keep moving,
we are not yet done, we will not be erased.
And we keep singing, hard rain’s gonna fall,
for arm in arm we’ll cross any sea to find
the promised kingdom come. 

Justice is our banner, never forgotten,
the rains will not wash away the message written with blood.
Mercy is our weapon, our hands up and empty,
our faces soiled with tears for the wounded and wounding,
the rain will not wash our grubby cheeks and noses
until the floods have come to drain the streets
and leave behind
only empty lots where 

Arm in arm, we build again.

My Life Has Become Smaller

My Life Has Become Smaller

(“He must become more important, but I must become less important.” John 3:30)

My life has become slower, smaller,
creeping along the afternoon blades of grass
between morning and noon.
No longer racing from book-page to onstage,
from hammer and nails to scanning emails
for anything meaningful.
My life has become smaller, a square foot at a time,
hemmed in by the pain that wrapped a braided
steel cable around my mind.
Stuck in the driveway, walking the same ellipse,
seeing the same cracks in the sidewalk, waving at
people who pass in cars with blackened windshields
never knowing if they wave back.

My life has become smaller between the long ranches,
the southwest desert and the coastal ranges my feet
once roamed. Now I stay home. 

I try to wash my hands,
I try to wash my hair,
I try to wash my heart
and all I see is dirt
and all I’ve been told is
make sure to scrub behind your ears.

But over the years the dirt has stayed
between wrinkles, beneath fingernails;
vestiges of each moment my hands touched the
face of the earth (a planet that breathes withs
clouds and sighs with thunder). I no longer wonder
why I don’t hurry to scour the remains of stellar dust
that cling to my body. The dust I hold is the dust that,
so old ago, I am made of.

I’ve got nothing in my pocket except wadded tissues.
I used to carry business cards, credit cards, folded
phone numbers and family pictures a dozen years old.
I’ve got nothing in my pocket except lint and tissues.
I travel lighter and smaller and forget my wallet when
I go to the doctor.

I still do not see well, and will have my eyes checked
in a week.
I still do not pray well, and have practiced every
technique.
I sit on the porch now, and wait for visits from my
toddler neighbors.
I sit on the porch now, and the wind speaks for me in
whispered prayers.

My life is smaller now and somehow
I do not mind. (Although I may answer different
if you ask me a different time.) My life is
smaller,
but the earth breathes the name to my broken heart
of the one who never let me become lost,
the more microscopic
I have become.

Prayed Alone

Prayed Alone

(“He alone is immortal; he lives in the light that no one can approach. No one has ever seen him; no one can ever see him. To him be honor and eternal power! Amen.” 1 Timothy 6:16)

I dreamed I saw a man,
a small man,
a round man,
crowded on his knees
into the dark corner of
a half-pew. He prayed alone.

I dreamed he saw me,

just a guy,
a plain guy,
edging next to him
as he half arose from his
long kneeling. He prayed alone.

I dreamed, we did not speak,
two humans,
too precious
to despair alone;
I joined him in the shadow
cast by earth. We prayed alone.

I did not know him,
maybe me,
or a son.
Maybe a mixture
of everyone I’ve known who,
swathed in light, had prayed alone.

I Had to Apologize Today

I Had to Apologize Today

(“We trust in the living God who came to save all people. He makes a way for those who believe in him.” 1 Timothy 4:10b)

I had to apologize again today.
Sorry, more than once today.
I don’t mind making amends,
don’t mind much admitting I’m wrong.
What tires me is taking the barbs,
tiny snippets of arrowhead offense
and, backed into the corner again,
I admit I could have rephrased my comment.

But like storm clouds that crash without warning,
they want me to change my opinion too. Few are
triggered by the sunshine that warms their own garden plot.

But, I did have to apologize today. And then the silence.
Some who have never met me face to face,
or had an hour of music together,
or have forgotten the gentle frame that
borders our lifetime,
walk away burning and may leave the planet,
escape the gravity we both obey, and further from earth,
slung into outer space,
they are unreachable by phone, text or
a simple embrace.

Don’t we all have the same birthplace? Not the same
town or country, but the soil on which generations stirred
to drink the air from trees, breathe the one sun that bundles us all,
nurse from the fruit of earth, and sleep in the cradle of footprints
left by offspring who grew up before us.

So I offered another apology. And my chest is lead.
My fingers are shivering in the summer wind. My feet are chilled.
We kill each other, then kill back. And our hearts still beat,
but retreat more quickly the next time someone sends
a message in the mail. We used to like to open envelopes,
sneak the stationery slowly from its womb. But too soon
Some letters are just more darts spit toward the one
The author thought had broken him. And now no
safe place
exists between send and receive.

But I apologized again (I am a master of penance)
and I enter the space as I decelerate my engagements
with those I’ve offended, and hope their aim is off
just enough
to let quilt and rapture stitched by God
wrap us both inside.

The Music Never Stopped

The Music Never Stopped

(“Blow the trumpet in Zion; sanctify a fast; call a solemn assembly.” Joel 2:15)

The loudspeakers are not selective,
their frequency soars across the plaza,
echoes off the stone hills,
pushes the river further downstream,
ricochets off the banks and restaurants downtown.

The banjos announce the time to assemble,
the mandolins sing the same again,
the brass hold back until the crows settle on
the asphalt paths and parking lots.
Congas call the drum circles’ song,
while whirling banners and shawls dance down
the back streets; the streams overflow as feet
skip and hurry to the call.

Even steeples seem higher, enemies shyer,
and confreres delight in the deepening day.
The tables are spread like a village wedding
on the sidewalks, on the boulevard,
on front lawns, on courthouse steps;
The weeping is over and repentance has
washed every debate away for another day.

We celebrate like children again, laugh as we
sing like Dylan again. The borders have opened,
the doors are unlocked, we have opened our ears
and learned the stories of immigrants and widows,
and those from african, caribbean, muslim, cynic
and pagan descent. We bowed our heads just long enough
to hear everything we thought God had never said.

We shed tears for the sheep we kept out of the pen,
for the words we called those who sang the blues over
and over
again.
We repaid the stolen generations, we honored the
broken treaties, we learned the native tongues
we once called foreign and delighted in their unfamiliar
rhythms. 

We reviewed the outcropping from peak to valley
and had never seen the imported air the same.

The music never stopped; we still learned silence.
The feasting never ended; we still fasted with grace.
The churches did not close; we still chose the way
the light played over everything.
The lion, the lamb, the prayerful and uncertain,
the oldschool, the post-modern, sat on the lawn
all day long
and woke at dawn to start the festival
over again.

After the Kneading

After the Kneading

(“However, for this cause I obtained mercy, that in me first, Jesus Christ might display all his patience…” 1 Timothy 1:16a)

How long does it take for darkness to unfurl,
for the taste of violent cuisine to roll off our tongues
into loaves from the earth baked in the noonday sun?

We used to let the elders take the front of the line
in our potlucks and banquets,
with unaccompanied minors right behind.
In that thin place between age and innocence we
hoped
prophetic purity might arise.

Time (that place unmeasured except by planetary motion)
outpaces our lusts and unmade faces until
we are dissatisfied again by the meager fare
of private meals where with little love and less challenge
we eat by ourselves.

But bread is meant to be prepared with muscled hours,
rising after the kneading like a carnival balloon.
Bread is meant to be shared with all who detected
the aroma of the afternoon, arriving to a circle of
friends for a repast near evening.

Some bring guitars, some bring songs,
some read poetry, some play along,
some limp in slowly, others tumble like clowns,
some take off their shoes, some make the rounds
and hug every neck, high and low, telling
the same jokes they’ve told one hundred times before.
Still everyone laughs; maybe everyone snickers.

We’ve been around the block a few times,
some have even met each other in the ring;
some have had words with each other more times
than you would believe,
but that is why they share the bread which redefines
argument and apologetic from winning and sinning
to singing and ringing the dinner bell with the
screen door wide open and the wine already poured.

There is a banquet, there is a picnic,
and if you get confused, just watch the dragonflies play
and hear the echoes of the frogs in the damp grass

And sit with us a spell, sing with us a prayer (even
with your mouth full). Stuffed and sleepy we’ll end
the day, but will wait for the very last vagabond
who always arrives much too late.

And the Children Play

(photo credit: Mercy Aiken)

And the Children Play

(“May God himself, the God who makes everything holy and whole, make you holy and whole, put you together—spirit, soul, and body—and keep you fit for the coming of our Master, Jesus Christ.” 1 Thessalonians 5:23 [The Message])

Entering the avenue where the unlikely children play--
a brother on a bike, a little sister right behind--
and there are paintings on the back of the facades,
dripping down the necks of the alleys
detailing recent history and partisan rallies.

And the children still play underneath the signs
of times adults ignore. What, indeed, are we fighting for?
When Palestine suffers, so do their neighbors.
When Africans suffer, so do the children in highrise daycare.

Unidentified artists paint the meaning for us so we do not
have to walk through the galleries; stop; wonder; deeper;
and never let the children out to play.

They painted caves in France; dark; damp; edgy; older;
and the children played in the prehistory.

They doodled walls in Bethlehem; bright; breath; deadly; newer;
And the children tagged their playmates unwalled.

They spray-canned stucco in Minneapolis; memos from a week ago;
african and indian, spanish and norwegian, stayed where the flowers lay
upon the asphalt dark as skin. And the children stood hugging
the knees of adults who they hoped knew better than they.

And my next door neighbor turned three today; she; bashful; blonde;
skipping;
and she plays in the backyard pool just before the party begins.

Her chalk drawings smile from the cement driveway as she catches
hugs from anyone who will toss one her way.

The Terminally Crazy One

The Terminally Crazy One

(...so that the name of our Lord Jesus will be glorified in you, and you in Him, according to the grace of our God and the Lord Jesus Christ.” 2 Thessalonians 1:12)

When black lives seem to matter less to
people dressed in their sunday best
than people of privilege driving by with
rifles in their racks and stacks of collectable angels,
then I start to wonder if
I am not the terminally crazy one.

When care bears are satanic, and purple teletubbies are gay,
when a president who prays and quotes the mountain verbatim
is called the anti-christ and his family monkeys
and his wife not a woman but a man,
then I start to wonder if
I am not the terminally crazy one.

When pledges of allegiance to an empire’s flag
are enforced from stadiums to sanctuaries,
when the national flag flies proudly from steeples
that declare Jesus is lord and soldiers are honored before
teachers and workers with the poor,
then I start to wonder if
I am not the terminally crazy one.

Even my therapist asks about my church attendance
and wonders why it has fallen off
like a toddler too near the top of a ladder.
Seems like I’ve seen her forever (or a facsimile)
and she insists I’ve made very little progress.
She is right, I’ll admit; the forces that forced me to
make my first appointment have not decreased since
the first day I confessed until yesterday when I doubted.
Talk is cheap with the right insurance, and prayer is all
left to the bereft and poor. But the meds help me sleep,
though they do not repel the dreams where every attempt at
to exonerate my soul is unexempt from overnight sweats.

When leaders lie to cover their mistakes, not bishops,
but maybe a few. And others insist their lack of candor
was necessary for the saving of a soul,
when the screw was turned in the name of purity
and holiness was a name for those with the fewest
tvs and lps in their home,
then I start to wonder if
I am not the terminally crazy one.

When love is the flag we love (not a rebel rag or country’s
glorification)
when the least of these matter (the widow, the poor, the
black, the immigrant)
when sight is given to the blind (thus seeing Christ in
the crowds, the soft and loud)
when the lame are allowed to walk (thus marching in streets
for the beloved we have forgotten)
when freedom is the air each one breathes (thus untasting
the sour fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil)

When the walls finally crumble, not from war our shouts,
not from trumpets or triumphs,
but from the sheer weight of grace that descends like rain
filling the oceans and rivers, the streams and inlets
with the knowledge of God, the mercy of Christ

Then

I may decide to join
the terminally crazy ones.

The Mortal Silence

The Mortal Silence

(“As they led Jesus away, Simon, a man from Cyrene, was coming in from the fields. They forced him to carry Jesus’ cross and to walk behind him.” Luke 23:26)

There was nothing peaceful about it,
the clouds were leaden upon a graphite sky.
The body politik and the rest of us, (anger and sickness)
saw events transpire for the best of us and so we cried
to send the one most like us down the avenue of shame.

Fires bled in our eyes, boiling over from the first boot
on our necks
to our last breath (and yet our feet were tattooed as well).

I misunderstood every word, tried to right and wrong the
whole day to death. I shouted with the crowd, I cursed the
powers that occupied us like slaves, I was with and against,
as my heart burst outside the courtroom and within the
reflexes of oppression. Yet I pressed closer to
the blazing procession, a day for the dead.

I saw death where people sang like mardi gras,
I saw life in the pierced head, the welts like a
pollock painting on the back of the fainting one
whose breath came as slow as summer wadis.
I saw strength in the stumbling,
power in the fainting,
and something else, something without a name.

They cast their words at him, dashing them against him
like stones through a glass wall. They were right after all,
and the lynching lasted far into the afternoon.

I did not volunteer, nor did I imagine I would hear the
turpitude wound around my own soul like shackles.
I was conscripted and took the beam, the angry
crossbar with its weight centered across my shoulders.
I knew the drill; it was all too common on this hill
where so many were hanged like cursed fruit from a tree.

But he. He was. My breath escapes and does not return.
But he. He was. His life escapes and so has the sun.
But he. He was. His eyes were fire and life and gold.
But he. He was. I was tired, compelled, and old.

Old as sin is what they say in the country. But he. He was.
Older. 

How does the Ancient of Days walk to the auction block?
How does Eternity Past put his feet on the same path as mine?
I was compelled. But he. He was.

Not repelled by the worst of us. And I, I loved this
weakest of kings, this dying god, and stayed as he
gave his life away.

He was. He is king over my erratic thinking,
and lord-in-love to a world still addicted (some in
His name)
to mining for violence. He was. He is
only found in the compelled quietness,
the mortal silence of tears of offender
and offended.

Old Paint and Pale

Old Paint and Pale

Have you ever felt stained? I don’t mean with sin,
but with paint. Old paint. Paint stored in the garage.
Paint in rusty gallon buckets with drips down the side like
old-fashioned earring loops. Paint with scum on top
and dumplings on the bottom.

Have you ever felt stained by old paint?

Have you ever felt electrified? I don’t mean by joy,
but fences. Wire fences. Fences that hum high voltage.
Fences in muddy quicksand with muck giving birth
to mosquitos and disasters. Fences that whine with direct current
and pulses to prevent your escape.

Have you ever been electrified by fences?

Have you ever felt stranded? I don’t mean on purpose,
but houses. Old houses. Houses left to pasture.
Houses with rusty hinges and broken windows, the shards their
only decor. Houses everyone declares are haunted
with rats the only renters.

Have you ever felt stranded on old dirt floors?

Have you ever felt old? I don’t mean by measure,
but thrift store. Used jeans on a rack. Flannel shirts
that still smell of field and smoke. 8 track tapes and
players. They all bear the stains of usage, the strain
of shrinkage. 

Have you ever felt old like someone else’s clothes?

Have you ever felt godless? I don’t mean immoral,
but pallid. Opinions, like fog, faded. Belief, like fairies,
barely seen past legal age. Prayers, like babbling,
meaningful as a wordless book. The chasm is just as yawning,
In or around, air or solid ground.

Have you ever felt godless like gasps of supplication?

Your Count Was Off

Your Count Was Off

(“The king replied, ‘But look, I see four men. They’re untied, walking in the middle of the fire, and unharmed. The fourth one looks like a son of the gods.’” Daniel 3:25)

Have you ever stood outside when the grass was dewing,
when the darkness was wooing your feet to the meadow,
your arms by your sides, and your eyes to the sky;
Have you ever stood outside in the smudgy dark
and watched all night as the moon came down?

And were you certain, mostly because of the static electricity
from people rubbing on your head,
that it was your fault the moon was dead?

Have you ever lived in God’s house (in our out) where
every move was calculated, measured, and manipulated?
Have you ever walked in to pray, and cried instead, words and
devotion fled and only your naked knees understood anything?
Have you ever dreamt, 30 years later, that it all meant something
but you never were tall enough to bring the glory down?

And were you certain, mostly because of the chemical reaction
from short-robed preachers accusing your soul,
that it was your fault behind and ahead?

Have you ever held up new grapes to the sun,
wondering in a half-second’s eternity of winding vineyards
and wines that brighten the eyes?
Have you ever had a day when a king’s summons
met your serenity tête-à-tête squeezing you between
another’s troubles; a wound upon the head because of what
the king had said?

And were you certain, mostly because of the wind in your soul,
that there was no other option, though most thought the king a priest,
that it was you and the troubled who might not escape unscathed?

And did anyone tell you at midnight, after the madness, in the middle
of either faith or sadness,

That your count was off and one more stood unburned, not only in the furnace
but also in the years with you unarmed. And unharmed.

George Floyd, I Did not Know You

George Floyd, I Did not Know You

(“After ten days, Daniel and his friends looked healthier than all the young men who ate the king’s food.” Daniel 1:15)

Will you eat the king’s meat,
Will you sit at the table of deceit,
Will you change your middle name,
Hoping it will sound nearly the same
As the swarms of modified eagles
Cackling like hens?

Will you visit the robbers’ den
Pretending it’s the temple?
Will you stand outside of it for a photo opp
To prove you are not the devil?
Will you kneel as an example
(on the necks of the devoted, no less)
of dominion you think you’ve been blessed with?

How long did it take for the blood to stop flowing?
How long did the air squeak like a dying balloon?
How long did you know there was not breath. He was
lifeless?

Will you refuse the king’s madness,
Will you fall on your faces and confess,
Will you join your tears in streets
Where blood stopped flowing, where the breath ceased
as the swarms of mystified people
pleading like moms.

Stay inside if you need too, stay outside if you want,
all I know is eight minutes is far too long to compress
a brother’s throat. Mingle your outrage with the grief
of too many removed from the scene, lives taken
unseen,
justice stolen like Macy’s front door and
peace bartered for projectiles piercing the soul

Of a nation broken and plagued. A nation only healed
By its own self-confession and sorrow. Today (and last
Century, and three before that) are the time for crying,
And judgement. 

And tomorrow may justice flow like
A river. Tomorrow may peace demand the rocks give way.

George Floyd, I did not know you. I know less of your anguish.
Teach us (we who stand outside cathedrals),
Rip us (we who sleep inside bedrooms),
Paint us (we who live so colorless),
Point us (we who navigate so well…

past our privilege in the famine of shame.)

Let us (fasting and sacrament) fully taste your pain.