Love is Enough

 Love is Enough

(“A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another.” John 13:34)

Love is enough,
was always enough,
will ever be enough,
and yet we stuff the heads of congregants
full of lead-weight conspiracies
so all they will see
is a world so dark something needs to be destroyed.

Love is ageless,
was always ageless,
will ever be ageless,
and yet a certain few, who will remain nameless,
are convinced we’ve turned the corner into everlasting
dark
ness.
Flash-fire weapons are the only solution.
Forgetting that the ammunition and collateral damage have
caused the pollution
that keeps us from sitting in the sun.

Love is divine,
was always divine,
will ever be divine,
and still we insist on justifying more hatred toward
completed souls whose love we do not understand.
We still insist on strangling the message from women
whose prophetic words open the world wide to seditious
hope, (the million dollar men broadcasting their rants against sin
only see the prophets as pernicious heretics who, no longer burned,
are shunned with fire and fury.)

Love is costly,
was always costly,
will every be costly,
and yet we kick the homeless out of our towns,
make them find shelter in locked sheds when the snow flies.
And we put our money into new chairs and chandeliers,
a fancy sign and then resign when the pay does not match
our preferred lifestyle.

Love is enough,
was always enough,
will ever be enough.
Let’s smooth the rough edges that
make the meek cower and the brave
go elsewhere to find
the kind of love
that suffers on crosses,
never draws lines,
but always draws the circle wider for
all humanity to enter.
Love is always front and center.

Woke/Provocation

 Woke/Provocation

(“And let us consider how to provoke one another to love and good deeds.” Hebrews 10:24)

Buzzing between sleep and the dawn,
someone took it upon themselves to
unshake me from my late dreams.
Chilled with ice, the water hit my face
and every nerve was alert.
I had not forgotten to set my alarm for the day
and had no pressing issues ahead of me.
Provoked and awake, my made-up world
unwound like the mist above a lake.
It did not occur to me that I could not
be late on this particular day.

So,
I awoke.

Woke,
what a word for the mornings, what a seeing of things
as they are and not as I wish or remember.

Woke,
what a spiritual state of things
that turns ingrained mediocrity to love
that is like the sky,
embracing everything.

Woke,
what a personal way to see my neighbor
who is ignored for some abhorrent doctrine of
hell
and
sin
and
inside knowledge.

Woke,
what a lovely word that the enemy
has obfuscated with deadly
flumes of smoke.

I saw my twelve-year-old friend Amy on
my walk today and her big black dog
raced to greet me.
I reached out my hand and
petted his solid ribcage. “Hey,
Samson!”

I do not think Amy heard,
but she shouted,
“Hercules,
come here.”
And my memory, provoked,
awoke
to the name that defines him.

Unreserved

 Unreserved

(“So I will not stay quiet. I will speak out in the suffering of my spirit. I will complain because I am so unhappy.” Job 7:11)

It’s all in your head.
They said.
Just turn off your brain.
Refrain.
And they disconnect the only living link
to a breath of fresh air that might keep me sane.

I am not playing.
Restrained.
My mind and body ache.
Piece of cake.
And I’ll shout into the sky if I have to;
dive off the pier and jump in the lake
to get a hearing from another living creature.

I’m not deserted.
Rehearsed.
Just misunderstood.
Unheard.
And they replace a caring touch with a cacophony
of sermons, prefab hymns, sanitized theology
that keeps doubts at bay and closes the way
to the soul’s deepest hunger.

Unreserved.

The Polytheistic Blues

 The Polytheistic Blues

(“Jesus found a young donkey and sat on it.” John 12:14a)

I’ve got too many gods to choose from
and it used to give me the polytheistic blues.
From now on I will make up my own:
a conqueror, a colonizer, a warrior, an executioner,
a man. Amen.

And if he (or they, I do not mind pluralities) met my
strict requirements and stuck to my
national boundaries, and only spoke my native tongue,
I might be persuaded to offer obeisance.

Perhaps you can help me fashion a few new
objets d’art we can put next to our american flags
to remind us we have manufactured them ourselves.
Look at all we’ve done: catapults, gatling guns,
atom bombs and remote-controlled drones. Look
at our power to unearth the planet we stand upon.

We can gild our icons with gold if only everyone tithes
what they cannot afford.
Feed the poor?
Sure, we have a potluck once a month. We can
bottle our time, sell car washes and cookies
to support the new chandelier that highlights our deities.

Don’t give me a god in a hippie van,
mine has an army of tanks.

An Oblique Ghost

 An Oblique Ghost

(“Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return there; the Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.” Job 1:21)

I have sat bent in half
on the stairs into the garage
with its concrete floor and mildew smell.
I have waited to confess what everyone already knew,
and had not passed the test,
but had not lied. Had hoped grace was in the air
though I feared I would lose everything.

I was naked while they stared.
I was white, pasty, such an oblique ghost
that my skins showed the stains from every tear;
they were rivulets down my temples, my arms,
my chest and my thighs. I should have learned how
not to cry.

I don’t go out much these days. Don’t look for new friends,
old friends sometimes scare me. My wife, my children, my
beloved grandchild and my dog, my social circle is safe
but small.

I have sat with my darkness longer than most. (Although,
that is not fair, I have no measure to compare your darkness
to mine.)
Pain heals nothing.

I am not cynical, and maybe bitter. But there was a moment
lifetimes ago when I heard laughter rise from hallways and alleys,
alpine lakes and friends always too silly to dwell on the
consequences for long.

Today I might call you, take you away from the crashing crowd
yelling at the asphalt concert,
to a quiet café for an hour or two,
and ask you,
or even beg you

To let me cry as long as I need
and to allow me to say anything, anything at all
once again.

Loneliness Begins

 Loneliness Begins

(“We have this hope as an anchor for the soul, sure and steadfast, which reaches inside behind the curtain.” Hebrews 6:19)

Loneliness begins like bees in your head
while you long for one friendly word
to mute their buzzing. The longer the day,
the more the noise, and the sickness grows to
an ache that weighs

Like lead in your chest. You would fall over with
the sickness, faint front first, if not for the last time
you broke your nose that way. A phone call would
be the alchemy that turned the weight around. And then,
into the night the illness fills
your legs’ hollowed

Bones. And now standing has locked the door behind itself.
The couch does not speak, but it knows your form. You beg
for sleep, and when you waken, you beg for sleep again,

Except your dreams leave you feeling you’ll never please those
half a dozen friends that haunt you nights. And then you
beg in postcards, texts, emails and anonymous social posts,
for one who used to hear your words
and sing them back to you

To return and heal this sickness before the bees’ stings
remind you that you caught your loneliness

From failing far too often.

Today I wait for one, maybe two, who know me
in, out, through, trash, and unholy scan
and simply want to keep me company, dry
my tears,
and remind me they have anchored me (sickened
by the sea) and that
I sometimes was less than lonesome,
and often more than dead.

Could There Be a Portal?

 Could There Be a Portal?

(“He is able to deal gently with those who are ignorant and going astray, since he himself is also weak in many ways.” Hebrews 5:2)

Could there be a portal,
a black hole framed with teak or ivory
that would take my thoughts directly to you?
I know I am weak in so many ways,
I know my words get scrambled worse that hurricane waves.
I know, because I talk so much, that the words can combine
to mean most anything.

Could there be a machine,
a blue-tooth thing,
that would transport my heart to yours?
Could it help you feel what I feel,
even if you think I shouldn’t feel that way in
a hundred years?
I want to hear your heart, and I want to feel your fears,
I want to know what is behind the words that
suddenly steered the voyage in a new direction,
or at least a different speed limit.

Oh, if you knew my words, understood them, definition and
implication, and still closed the door just a bit tighter,
I would stay outside until I knew if you would change your mind.

But, if my words, misunderstood, undefined and simplified,
entered your beloved psyche, I would wait forever in hope.
I would not knock on the door, or ring your bell,
but I would tell you where you could find me when the
words finally rang true, rang in tunes we both could hear.

You’ve asked me about my past, and I would tell you.
But I do not want to belittle anyone else who may have been
a part of my story. Can we leave it at this: I am ashamed of
wrong turns I took on several roads. I am weak in many ways.

I know your heart, without a portal or black hole,
that you are sometimes frightened, but always loving.
I hope, if we need a portal, you will find me weak (yes, so weak)
but good.

It is my turn to open the door wide, even if yours is closed a bit,
and invite you to sit before the hearth that is always lit with
warm fireglow, the grace of love learned in sand and grit.
I will not hide the cracks along the walls, although I do sometimes
still feel shame. But they are part of me, the places that earthquakes
took almost everything.
I would serve you tea, or iced coffee, I would read your favorite book
or listen to your silence. But my door would never close, the locks
were thrown away long ago.

If I could show you the future, this is what it would be.
Two friends who cannot wait to share the mornings together,
the direction of the wind, the slant of the sun,
two friends who have beaten the odds and are closer
than anyone deserves to be.
Two friends, unafraid, weak, sometimes shaken,
but ever carrying two hearts as one when one heart is
too heavy to bear.

You Don’t Know How to Dance?

 You Don’t Know How to Dance?

(“Everyone was rejoicing and making sacrifices to God in their great joy.” Nehemiah 12:43b)

You’ve told me you don’t know how to dance,
but I don’t believe you. We were all meant to
move along this planet with undetected rhythms
that rhyme with our heart.

I know the songs bubble like champagne
when you think of your children in the sun
and your mother, the central one,
and your father, departed too soon and too long.

I know the songs are sad sometimes,
I’ve heard you sing them, and I have cried too.
I know the songs are silent as clouds,
soothing as breezes touching the trees,
and punctuated with laughter when kittens
upend the day, or a daughter makes it play
with the box the mail came in.

You’ve told me you don’t know how to dance,
and I still don’t believe you. The earth and sky
have taken a chance on you today
and are waiting for your face, shining like the sun,
to find a private space where maybe the frogs keep time
and robins fill the air with melodies between the
garden and the pond.

I know the songs are choking sometimes, the pain
sticks in our throats sometimes. And that’s when,
with your permission,
I’ll chime in and finish the lines that you cannot.
And then, gaining our composure (or not)
We’ll sing that last refrain together (there is no other
audience that the spirit wind)
and let the holy mixture of laughter and tears
create a space where we forget our troubles
for just a moment. And know, in the next pang of trouble,
we can go there again.

16 Billion Light-Years

 

13 Billion Light-Years

(“But we do see Jesus, who was made lower than the angels for a little while…” Hebrews 2:9a)

Granted, time creeps up slower than we thought.
Space optics, radar complexes, galaxies seen tinier
than a grain of sand,
13 billion light-years away.

And you took the time to stay here. You took
the time, by human measure,
and filled it with everything billions of years
old.

And now it takes no time,
you have overflowed the banks of celestial rivers
from before the foundation of the world.

All points touch in the suffering of the
Perfect one. How is my pain on your mind
when the continents conspired to set our
houses thousands of years apart?

There are times, merely moments, in truth,
when all of space and lineages, skyscrapers and
villages,
meet together in a unity I never considered.
Time slices, and then the slow turning again.

My neighbors live a shout away,
dogs and teens and grandpas and mowing machines,
meet together in a tune played by local breezes and
marine layers in the morning.

You live in my chaos, though the atoms collide
and hide your descending glory from my view.
Is it pure luck that the trees in my backyard
reach higher than my dreams of eternity?

Doing Nothing in the Sun

 
Doing Nothing in the Sun

(“You led them during the day by a pillar of cloud, and by a pillar of fire at night to provide light for them on the path they took.” Nehemiah 9:12)

Come up and see me,
the butterfly must have heard
and peeked in my window underneath
the eaves where the mourning doves nest.

Come out and play now,
the sun and clouds spoke in same-day
invitations. There is sanity doing nothing
in the sun. There is fantasy that sets
the demons fleeing who
hammered every thought the day before.

Ambient light shines inside the shadows.
Stationary branches hold
wakening leaves. Would you follow the
butterfly till you lost your way?
Would you believe the doves sing just
for you?

Come and sit with me,
my alone can be your sanctuary.
Your fears can be my balm.
And, before the sun falls too far in the sky

We may believe that we are surrounded
by the divine.

My Words Are Uncomfortable

 
My Words Are Uncomfortable

(“There was a widespread outcry from the people and their wives against their Jewish countrymen.” Nehemiah 5:1)

Some people just want to be heard,
to be felt,
to be understood.
They cry one thing, but to those who listen
carefully,
their song is heartbreak
trapped inside uncertainty.

If only there were soul surgeons
to open us up inside, to see more clearly
all that is more than skin deep. But our
hearts go on beating and we
still do not understand our own songs.

We know how the words sound,
we know their meaning is plain,
but we also know, somehow, somewhere
inside the stained edifice of a face that
has seen too many concrete days
there is just a pure outcry for
love,
nothing more.

See me
(I ask)
and take me at face value.
Hear me
(I cry)
and excuse my embattled phrases.
Touch me
(please friend)
and see how I shake.

My words frighten me, so I cannot let
it upset me
when they baffle you.

I scramble to arrange them differently,
but they do not sound like me.
And you, you probably know me better
than I think I know me well. So, my words
are uncomfortable as itchy wool, they do
not fit, they are poorly tailored. They are
sand in other people’s shoes.

I will return to the conversation, relax my suppositions,
and bury my poetry in the garden to
dig it up for a better day.

Why the Hell Don’t You be Jesus?

 
Why the Hell Don’t You be Jesus?

(“But the Lord stood with me and gave me strength so that I might preach the Good News in its entirety for all the Gentiles to hear.” 2 Timothy 4:17a)

Jesus is all you need!

They say,
and send you away with another
crunchy cliché.

Jesus is all I need!

They boast,
and hide themselves away before their
brittle bullshit

Reveals their balloon busting pride.

Then the days yawn slowly when no one
made the trip to share hugs, nor dollars, nor
humanity, nor proffers of their
body warmth near mine.

May it not be counted against them.

Jesus stands, if we will see, beside the living spring
that transforms the desert as the sycamores bloom.
Jesus hands the sweet figs into our ailing ego,
fully conscious that we may misinterpret the kindness
and claim an exclusive breakfast meeting with the
glorified son of god.

Too many heads are patted by self-serving
spiritualists who quote more than chapter and verse,
but tell you a tale that was told them about a missionary
in Africa
(it is usually Africa)
who actually saw Jesus’ face in the mane of a lion.

I would not argue with the missionary, if I met her,
but I tire of hearsay mysticism. I cry at the descriptions
only read in books, the ones meant to hook you into
their way of thinking.

Here’s a hint; no, I will say it boldly. Why the hell
don’t you be Jesus
showing up at the time the shaking body you see
truly needs it.

And yet, though some consign the slit-eyed
soul to some outer hallway of unknowing,

The Lord does stand.
She does offer her hand.
He does smooth back your hair
matted with tears and sweat
and leaves you speechless about such encounters
for ever
and ever after.

Why Are Some Days Narrow?

Why Are Some Days Narrow?

(“But now for a brief moment grace has been shown from the Lord our God…so that our God may enlighten our eyes.” Ezra 9:8)

Why are some days narrow slits letting through
only a ray at a time?
Why do the silent clouds
drown out the robin’s songs?
Here in this heart, vacant for so long,
there is room enough for
the universe.
Here in these eyes, darkened for so long,
there is light enough for
all of us.
Why do some minds that
should have been opened long ago
profess love and
push the stragglers off the narrow road?
Why are most peoples’ gods a filmy image
of animus and prejudice?
Here in this room, filled for 100 years,
sit only 8 or 9, maybe a dozen next week,
decrying the leaden darkness when
the air outside is alive. Hope is the
title of humanity’s verse. Love never
needs a dress rehearsal.

Not all epiphanies happen in a moment,
most are slow-motion.
They hit your soul first, the ocean’s breath,
before they mist the air, your mental unrest,
that drives you to voice
everything you have always known.
And then you ask the questions

About why
you let the narrow slats
limit your attention to a universe full
of butterflies visiting poppies.
The rest stops come easier now.