Sit With Me Awkwardly

Sit With Me Awkwardly

(“To him who is ready to faint, kindness should be shown from his friend; even to him who forsakes the fear of the Almighty.” Job 6:14)

Your lectures were limitless as you gazed at my pain.
You consulted your books and diagnosed my improbable suffering.
You discussed it amongst yourselves and came to conclusions
no one could understand.
You never sat in my chair but just stood on the porch
launching your next catapult of guilt my way.
Did you ignore my tears
or just think them unmannered as hell?
Did you assume
I forgot heaven’s kiss and turned away far
longer that allowed? Or did you argue with your friends
assuming I had overstayed my grief? You could have spent
more time saying nothing and
I would have sat with you all day.

Who taught you about misery? Whose prayers did you
assume should have healed me? What cures did you offer
before listening to my list of hundreds I have tried?
What courses did you prescribe for me that you left
untested? Did you taste the bitter medicine yourself?
Did you ever cry for companionship while being schooled
like children?

Turn on some music to soothe this ache of mine.
Make it instrumental, make it maximum. Make it
wordless so the notes themselves fill in the spaces
between us. Or just hum a tune,
I don’t have to name it or recognize it.

Or just
sit silent
(awkward, isn’t it?) Just sit silent and let our
breathing synchronize to prove we are still living.

Can you find your way to bear my pain, to shoulder a
handful of the granite that weighs me down? I fear the
absence of God, but your presence and your words only
push God farther away. Will you learn the agony that
burns my brain and then silently be the Christ I need?
Sit with me awkwardly and let us never question the
power of flesh and blood mortality.

Overbaked

OverBaked

(“But in that day, the branch of the Lord will be beautiful and glorious; the fruit of the land will be the pride and glory of all who survive in Israel.” Isaiah 4:2)

Afraid to grow,
afraid of the hole I fell in,
I feel in the coming storm,
I felt in waking dreams
the souvenirs of failures
two steps behind the falling line.

Save me this time, O Branch with roots firmly grasping
the soil and granite. Reach down to my cannot,
grab me by my frantic, shake the haven’t out of my
narrow range of vision. I will place my feet on
the muddy bank
if you will hold me up;
do not leave me to sink on the shore
swept out to the vast no more,
beyond the cold cold roar where waves
are a distant silence.

My feet are sore, my head, overbaked, is dry
and crumbly,
my mind stumbling over itself; my feet
rebelling the next degree.

I want to run the sand, laugh the wind,
sing the babies, smile the sun even when
the shades are drawn.

I want to feel the blood rushing through me,
heart in tempo and strong, taking life-liquid
to the cells and nerves where the thinking waits
for a bit of refreshment to delete yesterday’s
fuzzy entries. The best brain is a hack when
running the same track deeper into the same
ruts steeper into the hole I fear I fell in when
I felt the coming storm.

I would rather eat an apple or a peach,
the sweet sticky clogging my fingers
reminds me that life that runs through me.
With nectar stuck on my lips and hands,
how can I imagine the Branch has lost the way
of the taste and ways of me.