Your Face in the Rain

Your Face in the Rain

(“The Lord's faithful love never comes to an end. He never stops being kind to us.” Lamentations 3:22)

I don’t want to sound like him,
I don’t want to look like them.
I don’t want to dance like a thousand children,
I only want to see your face in the rain.

I want you to know me by the lines on my face,
I want you to know you will never be replaced.
If you want to find me,
if you’re looking for my soul,
come look in the puddles
on the low side of the road.

I don’t want to be like you,
I don’t want to see like us.
I don’t want to read a hundred mystery books,
I only want to see your face in the rain.

Come visit me at the hovel I know the best,
come look me up where grit and grace come to rest.
Come sit with the broken,
if you really want to know
what moves me today,
what is nourishing my soul.

I don’t want to shine like gold,
I don’t want to be that old.
I don’t want to sing another dozen songs,
I only want to see your face in the rain.

You may not enjoy the cuisine,
you may prefer to be unseen.
You may return to your home
once
you see I like being alone.

I don’t want to get a raise,
I don’t want to occupy space.
I don’t want to number my weeks and my days,
I only want to see your face in the rain.

Valley of Decision

Valley of Decision

(“There are many people in the Valley of Decision. The Lord’s day of judging is near in the Valley of Decision.” Joel 3:14)

Where did you wander that you could still speak the language so well,
and still seem such a foreigner?
Your textbook grammar puts me to shame,
but you have sharpened your commas like fishhooks,
your exclamation points are spears,
and your question marks are inquisitors white hot lamps;
desiring a cowered adversary shivering in the corner.

You have no use for definitions or rational new.

You still wear your hair the same, and announce your allegiances loudly,
but time has uncovered a naked sore. You unclothe carefully,
never answering the invitation to
read new books about the same love. Unless the
jots and tittles
are on the very same pages
you’ve memorized into stone,
you consider it anathema, a demon’s tool,
and wave goodbye to anyone who reads the beauty
meant to rise above the inked letters (oh the Spirit, the Spirit,
the Spirit of the law), and jerk their chain abruptly with offers to
pray. To pray for an “old friend” who now is Satan’s eye.

I have known more men than I thought possible
(who claim the most beautiful Name)
who pray against brothers
and prey upon others
who love the same Name of Jesus
and drive the blade deeply once you’ve judged them

No longer family, but a friend of the devil.

I no longer recognize you, though you speak the same language,
and the blood runs cold where the angry wound forces hot blood
and the face ashen. Where, O Father, and why, did the precious
Name
become a blade to rip tender lives in two?

My Introduction

My Introduction

(“So he handed over everything he had to Joseph and didn’t pay attention to anything except the food he ate.” Genesis 39:8)

If I could introduce you anew to my self
I believe I would take the chance and offer the true.
Time has passed and, with each year the misunderstandings
multiply until
you and I
are left behind by the scars words marked upon redwood
picnic tables and
summer camps. We held hands.

If I could tell you, without fear of abuse, that I have loved
every person I’ve met. I regret my mouth, sometimes my youth,
in unwitty stupidity,
poked fun at a grimy sore I had not seen. He was such an angry
man
and I loved him for the pain he still carried from his first love.
I never looked for social motivations; psychological motives
are a guessing game for me. I am no scientist
and never looked for clients, only friends. Nothing else mattered,
their pain, their pursuits, diluted aspirations or cast-iron stains.

To a few I gave my heart; not lovers, but a simpatico few
I assumed
would treat it gently, having seen the maze of scars.
Because some wore their spike as they walked across my soul,
because a few wore a mask I did not recognize and tore at my spirit
like a cat with tissue paper,
fewer know me now, and my tree has two, maybe three good limbs
with leaves that may sprout in the spring.

I once loved a study groups and discussion panels,
walks in the Oakland hills or wandering book shop aisles
filled with old ink and early editions. Mostly tattered in
bins on Telegraph in Berkeley; sometimes Los Gatos;
they are the friends who, giving them my spirit, have never
wiped their feet upon it pretending to clean up my mess.

Some leave me lonely, some with horror and pain,

but, having begun the story, I am always certain my own soul
will not suffer at the hands of fiction inscribed by genius. Perhaps
turning each page,

I will walk, once more out of that space between odd and even
and let a trusted one peek within my heart again.

If I were an author, I would say my private time is all about
creating the next world that, exposing everyone, exposes none.