Self-Inflicted Blindness

Self-Inflicted Blindness

(“I will lead the blind by a road they do not know…” Isaiah 42:16a)

Captured like store-bought thunder, the show of force
was completely unexpected. While people prayed, the
children were apprehended and kept for hours while their
parents were integrated. In the middle of the night they
invaded like
masked marauders, dropped by a helicopter to rappel
down the apartment walls.

You better believe we have eyes in the skies;
You better notice our collective eyes watching everything you do.
Can you read my sign? It’s more than a slogan. It’s a promise
I’ll always see the deadly design behind you’re your
icy gunsights and your night vision goggles.

Do you just follow orders, is that your excuse?
Is that why you manufacture every ruse to lasso
and detain everyone whose words you do not understand?
Did you check their skin tone first, have you set the
standards so low you take parents standing outside schools
just waiting for the children to come home?

You’ve masked your faces, disguised your disgust
behind facades of pretense. Are you ready for the consequences
that always land when the tide turns around?
Are you prepared for your judgment day,
for your time in court to admit your blindness
was self-inflicted and your malice was ordered from
below?

Go Easy on Me

Go Easy on Me

(“May the Lord direct your hearts to God’s love and Christ’s endurance.” 2 Thessalonians 3:5)

I wish I could replace these words in my head;
every unbidden thought,
every unbolted shelf where memories hang by a thread.
Don’t believe everything you hear;
there are better days,
go easy on me.

In the most unconscious of ways my
soul has been shattered like a
deflated skeleton. I am dust among the stars now.

In the most mysterious of ways the
rain has smeared the ink
on my paper trail. But the directions to find me
are plain for those who seek them.

I could find you in your loneliness if only
you would search for me in my blindness.
On my most private days,
in my most inhibited hour
I still look for your form coming up the road.

I am scattered, I am whole;
I am tattered, I am just a stroll away
from words that ring with truth and love.

If only our words did not matter, if only
we were sponges heavy with water. If only you
could hear every shaky verb;
if only you knew I heard every accented note of
the song you’ve hidden in your heart.

Patience, infinity. Information, passivity.
Exhaustion, and a little rest.
Exhalation, and untested, our song will land
like a dove upon its nest.

Blizzard Blindness

 Blizzard Blindness

(“But immediately Jesus spoke to them, saying, ‘Take heart; it is I. Do not be afraid.’” Matthew 14:27

Some storms are diseases,
deadly or benign.
Whatever doesn’t kill you makes you
long for
what was subtracted by the pain.
Who will hear the anguish, who will cross the line
between judgement and smokescreens,
who will resign their executable proverbs,
who will sit while the blizzard blinds every
direction out of the isolation. Who will be the
echo, who will assuage this flirtation with madness?

The highway was lost in the white-out and blowing
snow.
The bearings were lost, the directions frozen against
the windshield and the ice grabbed the jeep from
underneath and behind.
He would rather steer clear of deer than
inch through the drifts and snakes where the
asphalt broke more metal and steel the winter before.
If he slowed down it only meant
longer on the frozen path that whistled and cawed
like laughing ghosts. He held the wheel tight.
His knuckles were white. And the ditches were
camouflaged, the ditches were the dump grounds where
vehicles rolled like dogs in their sleep. Six inches from
the ditch on the right,
then six from the one on the left;
the road would not let go of him,
no one heard his voice and fear. The road
was clearly his enemy.

We slide from one storm to the backdoor of
a stranger’s house. We are slick in the ways
we substitute armaments for fear. We sweep away
what everyone knows,
so no one can see that
we all cry out in the storm alone. We all
cry out. We all deny the moans when face
to face
with the barely brave.

So we wait for the echo, we wait for the voice,
we wait for the choice to be afraid on the road.
We move in silence, we sit alone, we dig the oars deeper,
we weep or break the wine glasses on the kitchen floor.

And this, we simply implore and want to hear the
words again that only the frightened transcribe:

“It is I. It is I. Do not be afraid.”