Skipping a Beat

Skipping a Beat

(“For this people's heart has grown dull, and with their ears they can barely hear, and their eyes they have closed.” Acts 28:27a)

How long will we lock ourselves into
concrete cells,
midnight caverns,
armed boundaries where we shoot
on sight and ask no questions?
How long will we delight in
creating enemies,
launching missiles,
holding on to land that belongs
to no one? Why do we draw
butcher knife lines?
Why do we nail signs to the wall
that keep people out on the coldest
night of the winter?
Why do we aim at targets
only to practice
shedding blood on the property we
say we own?

The end will not come because
you are chosen;
the apocalypse is below your feet.
The second coming is the defeat of
death, of idiotic killing, of insanity
unleashed in the name of allegiance and
national anthems. The match you lit,
the tiny flame,
sets the wilderness on fire while you speak
of holy things. You utter sacred words like
they are your private language.

There are better prayers. Leave the
hell behind, the place you have consigned for
oh
so
many who never said an
unkind word about you.

Father forgive us, and we know this is dangerous,
just like we have forgiven those we believe have
never forgiven us.

Standing aside for just one day, maybe we
can pack every imagined target away. Maybe
we can invite the opponent to stay for the evening,
drink wine late into the night,
and let the cool spirit breezes flow like
music through our souls again.

Those With Time

Those With Time

(“The Lord will do what he thinks is right.” 2 Samuel 10:12b)

We erect the fences, dividing lines, cutting the earth like a giant pie.
But we do not carve pieces to share, but to make each neighbor fully aware
what is not theirs. We would split a tree right down the middle
to include just a jot, just a little more land to call our own.

We build barriers, at least seven feet or more, to keep me from seeing
they eyes across the board. We know all too well that if we gazed in silence,
without words breaking the sky, without fashion clues or hairstyle whys,
and stopped.

So time took one slow beat at a time,
one tick, the next, one more, and then four,
five slow strikes of the chimes, six the next pulse,
round the straight face of time so slow
you lose count, you do not move, your eyes
head high, his eyes hear the same stroke and

Finally time is one long hallelujah chanted ahead and behind.

Fixed upon that moment, glued to the gaze of two sets of eyes
seeing,
first time, graceful, aligned without interruption by cross-examinations
and proper explanations.

Your fences have served their purposes and now, the only thing you know,
all you can smell plus all you have chosen well, is in this exchange of
pulses and particles and rays; you both have thrown away everything you
learned about the person behind the eyes.

And as time, which has not stood still, but like a river, has made you feel
one with its current and all it carries to the sea; the eyes give way to the same

Slow beat one at a time, one tick, the next, and all you know,
it is not clockwork that has measured so well, but two heartbeats that
surrounded by grace
beat in time; sans orientation, religion, status and sans race.

Grace is the upbeat that tore down the walls and left the world
whole and warm, for those with time to see.