The Colors Are My Tears

The Colors Are My Tears

(“Speak up for the people who have no voice, for the rights of all the misfits.” Proverbs 31:8 [The Message])

You thought it was artwork,
stained glass and holy when
all the while the colors
were my tears.

Life is messy and my voice is muted,
all I want is someone to shout to the void
for me,
bring a bowl of overflow
to me.

My soul is shriveled,
a black hole full of lead.
My thoughts are desperate even though
I had a respite for a week or two.

But this battle is well-known,
I carry the arrows that pierce me in plain sight.
I want an invitation to drink without judgment.
I want your tears to replace my own.
I want to be hugged for weeks, not sent
thoughts from afar.
I want you to speak! I want you to speak
up for me.

And now that I write this,
anyone who reads will tell me again
to
get over it.
I would get over it if only it was
over.

Here are my hands, palms up.
Here are my eyes, dried up.
What did you expect from the shivers that
come from suffering?

I don’t want to ask for help. Everyone already knows
this battle. They can see the smoke rising daily from
the fire that burns my brain.

It’s been fifteen years. And still no one
knocks on my door.
It’s been fifteen years. And still I feel
forgotten and ignored.

So, I’ll pour it out today. I’ll send it up tonight
like a fiery flare into the sky.
If you look at the moon tonight
and see orange lights where they should not appear;
call me tomorrow and find your way to my door.

I weep with my friends whose pain is different than mine.
Pour some tears on my wounds this time.

The day was bright, the sky was clear,
but the sunshine felt intrusive, the silence shouted
between my ears.

I apologize. I will wait another year before I ask again.
Everyone talks over me.

Safer Together on the Sand

Safer Together on the Sand

The tides roll in and out
so regularly
that we can set the days by them.
But every low tide surprises you,
exposes you and leaves you
uncovered on the helpless shore.
You shiver every time.

You have learned to shelter in a
nearby cave, rolling a stone
to hide inside for half the day.
The surf is drowned out within
the limestone fortress.

I know where to find you.
I watched you once on the sand
before we ever met.
I marveled at your beauty and
wept as you ran away. I did not know
what it was you feared;
I only wanted to sit on the beach with you
until the tide came back in.

I started going to the same beach
each day to wonder at your beauty
and to know the secret that made you hide
(If I had only shone brighter, would you have
blossomed and
trusted me with your hidden heart?)

I walked past the pulpy seaweed, through
the coastal grasses to the mouth of the cave
gagged by a stone.

I did not know your name yet,
but I guessed it would sound like moonlight.
I wanted to breathe that name out loud,
but had to knock on the stone and
say “hey”.
I heard barely the sigh that wanted to
be alone.

I went back every day at the same time
and finally heard the tears drop just inside.
And I knew you still wanted to be alone.
I asked if I could remove the stone.
You preferred that I didn’t.

So, I promise to never try to pry it open.
But if, one day, you nudge it open,
only an inch…

Then I would still stay silent and
send only sunshine and golden love
through the crack you have opened.

And when I find you on the beach, frightened
but stronger,
I would ask your name and take it
as my necessary breath.

I would ask only for this;

That I could meet you here on the beach
every day to walk the sand together.
We would walk past the cave each day,
and we would keep on walking.

We are safer together on the sand
than alone in a soundless cave.

Christened with Gravy

Christened with Gravy

(“Some men came down from Judea and began to teach the brothers: ‘Unless you are circumcised according to the law handed down by Moses, you cannot be saved.’” Acts 14:28)

You ate it all in one sitting and it stayed
with you for a week.
No one challenged your consumption. We all did the same.

The plates were too small, but we ate it all in courses
to the kitchen and back. We could have christened the
day with gravy and hallowed the smoker that sent its
aroma upward like a priest saying grace.

We did not pray, but the day was holy.
We did not sing, but the hours pealed like church bells.
We did not solve a thing. We dined,
we feasted,
we lasted long around the table like
babies
wrapping their tongue around yams for the first time.

We did not vet the guests coming through the door,
there was no test for admission, no confessions to sign.
There was vacancy from the time the grill was lit until
the moon laid its head on the northern hills.

I inscribed the same document for forty years,
I swore I believed Jesus would land in Jerusalem
by the end of a generation,
I expected signs and wonders, foreign tongues and
another
miracle or two
to prove we had read the fine print correctly.

Tomorrow I would meet my brother in a sweat lodge
if I still lived across the street.
Tomorrow I would chew tripe soup and corn chowder,
and feel closer to Holy Communion
while the heat taught us about friendship that rebounds
from the northern plains to the banks of a river
once populated by
fishing villages.

And we would remember.

A Rolodex of Alibis

A Rolodex of Alibis

(“The tax-collectors and prostitutes are going into God’s kingdom ahead of you!” Matthew 21:31)

I want to live so close to the bottom of things
that there is no place to fall.

Let me stumble into it every day.

I want a head start from the back of the line,
a 100-yard dash untimed. There are better conversations,
deeper fascinations after the crowd has gone home.

I’ve heard the sea floor is polluted;
I may have contributed some.
Tempted to float above it all,
I’m too weightless to matter.

I want to meander with the undemanding,
I want to discover the spectrum just
out of hearing. I want to breathe the dark
midnight air and find
the songs so unbuttoned that our voices
fail.

I used to keep a rolodex of alibis,
reasons to place me far beyond the crimes,
but now I list every visit,
smoke and wine, grain and mud,
and leave the search and rescue behind.

This may disappoint you; this may be
the final spin
that slings you outside my orbit.

This may be
the unleavened bread
that we break, human and touch,
like mudpies and pollywogs. I want to live

Undisguised.

Sitting Among the Stacks

Sitting Among the Stacks

(“Give advice to a wise person, and he will become even wiser. Teach a righteous person, and he will add to his learning.” Proverbs 9:9)

Do you have me where you want me?
Have I passed the inquisition?
Do my answers meet with your expectations?
Do I fit within the confines you’ve built for
membership in your organization?

Can I hedge my answers enough
to hide all the stuff you would suck out of
me
if you knew?
One day I’ll ask you the questions. One day
I’ll be bold enough to say
your black and white is dangerous
to me.
Your sentences are stunted; your growth is thwarted
by
minds made up a thousand years ago.

I remember so many hollow memories.
Did you put them there?

I swear you would never have approved me
lingering days at a time
between the booths and shelves that bound the
pages
of knowledge you never read for yourself.

I was once a baby and ate the pablum of the
generation before me.
I sucked at the teat. But the mother was a
monster, overgrown like the crossed-out answers
on a multiple-choice examination.

There is more in a single blade of grass than I
learned
in a lifetime of your doctrines, covenants,
catechisms, and fundamental truths.

It was not your fault. You did not know.
They hid the libraires far outside your view.
And, if serendipity dropped a new discovery in
your lap,
you were more afraid than I. You had so
much more to lose.

I was a square-headed cynic for a while,
a fuming boil of teakettle anger. That danger
is gone now.
Some plowed my back with iron teeth,
I plowed my own grieving desires.

But now, though my circle is smaller than a dime,
it gives me more room to peruse more rows of
slow inquiry. I will sit among the stacks and
take my time, the time that has been gifted to me.

It Doesn’t Always Add Up

It Doesn’t Always Add Up

(“I will show him how much he will have to suffer because of Me.” Acts 9:16)

It doesn’t always add up.
The spirit fills us; we laugh until our
sides ache.
The music spins us dizzy until we fall onto
the floor.
The food fills us; the wine tells us more than
we knew before.
The evening stills us into quiet contemplation;
the night air covers us like a comforter, a down blanket
to deposit our thoughts.

And we think, after days like that,
everything will wind up either
odd or even.
The sun will rise on time,
the sky will mine the aquamarine from the
rivers below.
Then,

Though there was no explosion, everything imploded.
The compass pointed north, of that we were certain,
but the storms blew hard from the south and the west,
the thunder drowned the bluegrass, the fiddle, and the mandolin.
We walked backward against the wind and saw the last
banquet where we had been silly like children.

No one told us that how things begin is rarely how they end.
We learned it for ourselves. We sank our teeth into forbidden
explanations.

Our calculations betrayed us. We learned we were still
only dust.
We found the letter written that we had never seen.
It eased our tiny suffering when we read:
“All the pain and the laughter are in my hands.”

We spoke of love and followed the storm to the place
we ended and
the place we began.

He Dwelt on an Island

He Dwelt on an Island

(“But the path of the just is like shining light, that grows in brilliance till perfect day.” Proverbs 4:18)

He was exiled to his own hometown,
disabled and circling the days like an understudy.
At night the northern lights,
he said,
found ways to illustrate the canvas skies.
And morning brought approaching storms that
pushed the Columbian white-tails from the tree stands
to the meadow. The grazed in slow motion. A young doe
with a dappled flank was part fir tree and part willow.
She waited the passing of the thunder until
the sun moved her home inside the forest shadows.

He dwelt on an island,
or so they thought,
surrounded by nothing but sand that brought
every anxious moment to dock so close to his porch
there was little room for conversation.

It was a puzzle that they did not see the bridges
that connected him, you, and me. It was a mystery.
And like most magic, their eyes were averted from
anything they could not explain. He once had walked
down the center of town. He once owned the airwaves,
he once sat with princes and sang with jazz quartets.

He did not choose this solitary. He did not move away at all.
He lived as close as he ever had, within walking distance
from those that once shook his hand.

Some days it darkened him. Some days he believed his
isolation.
But when the clouds moved on, when the does and the fawn
tiptoed past his door,
he knew the light had never left, nor could it. The light
had been left on. The light was all that left him
completely
undone.

The Reservoir Overflowed

The Reservoir Overflowed

(“He knelt down and cried out in a loud voice, ‘Lord! Do not remember this sin against them!” He said this and died.’” Acts 7:60)

The reservoir overflowed its banks today,
tide pools waited their unveiling.
The moon had pulled all the water to one side,
the thunder clapped while the monsoon sang.
I had rehearsed my speech for weeks.
The podium was set like a stele on the sand.
The microphones and speakers were fine-tuned,
the crowd was invited,
the fliers distributed making sense of it all.

When at once the water wicked from my socks
to the hems of the denim I wore.

I say
at once
from my pinpoint inaccuracy.

As the landscape melted, the river felt its power
spreading and filling each depression.
Definitions faded as the waters rose.
I suppose I could say this uprightly,
but I’d rather leave it oblique for the
generations to come.

The crowd arrived too late to see me fade
beneath the waves,
but they shouted, “You should not have stayed.”
They held on to their stories, though
in the telling,
they abused the patterns that only watching can
see.

Me? I felt I knew, now,
every song by heart that
I had never heard before. And though
buried and swept downstream,
dying was what redeemed everything I
thought was worth living for.

Live on and sing, oh forgiven ones.