The State of My Brain

The State of My Brain

(“The Lord makes our human spirit like his lamp inside us. It shows us what we are really like.” Proverbs 20:27)

I’ve got enough time to read a chapter or two,
to turn on the overhead lamp and see what the words say.
I’ve been reading from the day I knew that one word and
another
could take me to world without moving a muscle.
A man down the street asked me what kind of books
I liked the best. I was eight or nine and I said “adventure”
though I wasn’t entirely clear what the word meant. He gave
me two books, one about the thirteen original colonies and
I don’t remember the other one. Maybe a Hardy Boys mystery.
I made weekly trips to the library; its front steps were marble.
Sometimes I walked since it was only six blocks from home.
I would take a volume of an encyclopedia and start reading articles
in alphabetical order. I wondered who wrote all this candid information
and how they knew so much stuff.

Reading captured me as a teen. I read all of Shakespeare in one summer and most
of John Steinbeck. The next summer it was Ray Bradbury along with the
poetry of Lawrence Ferlinghetti. Rod McKuen got an occasional look.

I read early twenty century playwrights and imagined their words in
my mouth.

Ten years later I was a newly formed follower and read books on
prayer and spiritual gifts and how to manage your emotions by concentrating
on Christ. Truth? I found myself falling woefully behind.
There was a method to pray an hour a day. I managed 15 minutes.
There was a way to speak in tongues, and I mumbled them well. I
never got my mind swept clean from thoughts that invaded constantly.

Today I read memoirs and liberal theology. Today I quiet my mind
with music before I read. Today I talk slower and less certain.
Today I am not sure of my purpose, but I do not shame myself
for the state of my brain.

The Battle, The Fatigue

 

The Battle, The Fatigue

 

(“But I have learned to feel safe and satisfied, just like a young child on its mother’s lap.” Psalm 131:2)

If I could sleep a hundred days, I would.
I’ve sat all day alone in my head 4000 days ago
Until now. There is no sword, no weapon to wield
that can slice through the shadows that weigh so much
they never bleed.

(And I would rather write an instead word here,
something to grant the reader a foreshadow that
rest will find me awakened like coffee and bacon.)

I do not want you to think that my faith has been shaken
(but it is)
I do not want you to imagine me wandering the path that
only leads me deeper into the darkening woods
(but I do)
I do not want you to think I’m an infidel, a heretic,
a miscreant, a fool or a poor soul swayed by a nasty spill
that befell me.
(but I am)

I have electronic friends to pass my days.
I have random music to explain the ways
the cells in my body buzz when my brain
stumbles and weaves into the 15^th round of a fight
it never intended to enter.
I have resonant instruments and harmonic strings
if ever I will play them.

How much rest does one person need when the battle,
the fatigue, the constant watching, the high alert lasts
from best life until late life? Where are the medics when
you are left bruised on the field?

I push my pencil forward one inch at a time,
who would think I would become so weary only
standing in one spot for the last decade?  
Who could predict that brain changes would
take so much out of me?

I am weary like the nub of the last crayon in the box,
I am tired like the black smoke from a candle wick dying in the dark.
I am silent, I am aboil, I am weighted, I am uncoiled,
I am medicated where the wounds lanced my dreams
and still I look at the phone to hear the past voices
that once laughed with me, but will not cry my pain.

So Mother, I am napping. Do not wake me until
the day has passed by at least twice over and the sun
is golden behind the river and fog.

Planted Before Time

(“For by the blood of Christ we are set free, that is, our sins are forgiven. How great is the grace of God.” Ephesians 1:7)

Though days begin with pain
and evenings reflect the same
the world still is filled with shapes
that sponge sorrow of its fears and take
us within the arms of forgiveness.

Oh to embrace that which has embraced me,
to be satisfied fully with such primordial love,
to walk from past to place, from there to when,
slip to fall, ache to ecstasy without a doubt creasing
my brow.

Like water to immigrants in the desert,
like beaches to a prisoner midcontinent,
like sky to the burrower, like pardon to the borrower,
how shall I spend what I never bought nor earned?

Though honesty demands a full accounting,
and hiding is simply insanity,
this day; aching, breaking, wishing, undefined,
and unbending to my best devotions,

Still cannot uproot the footings, the old growth tree
planted before time to remind me,
dancing is still allowed, though the brain
is a step out of time.

That is Where I Hear

That is Where I Hear

(“God showed his faithful love to me in front of the king…The Lord my God was with me, and that gave me courage.” Ezra 7:28)

Even though the brain waves crash upon my skull
like an endless buzz saw,
and the air is heavier than an anvil upon my head,
I have no other hope, no better word than
the softest whisper speaking from beneath the pain,
“I am with you, and I will be with you again.”

Even though the songs no longer come from my hands,
and the words, my love, my still life, explain less and less
between the lonesome stretches of writing.
I have no poetry than the simple rhymes of
childlike times. My mind is full of mystified
tangles, sentences dangling from the corners of my mouth.

Yet, I still read the unchanging motion, the words spoken
that are rooted at the base of every grunt or elocution.
“I have said, and will said it again; never will I leave you,
and never forsake you.”

And yet, nearing the end of my mission, when, from the first
the seeds grew rapidly, the message ignited wildfires of love;
at this final appointment, the last post of my journey

I fail. Though the soil is rich and watered well, the seed
does not germinate, the crop is dwindling and
I watch from a brittle chair awarded me once for
Outstanding Support, while the tears dry before they
hit the floor. My trajectory, though cruelly gravity-bound,
always rose between days of relative ease.

My books are old and tattered. Perhaps my words are as well.
Expectations shattered, percentages shrinking, while I keep thinking
the old seed should produce the same crop of my earlier mission.

And that is where I hear

Such a sad, sad silence. 

Who Knew the Brain

Who Knew the Brain

(“So reach out and welcome one another to God’s glory. Jesus did it; now you do it!” Romans 15:7 [The Message])

The moment we walked out of the room the silence
crashed like glass broken;
and if we were to repeat what we did not see
the memory would cover the day with smoke
and shards imbedded upon the reverie.

Is there a chance it was not all a daydream,
that the words we remember never found our ears?
Could it be a manmade catastrophe manufactured
by decades observed through goblets of sour wine?

All the same there was a time when I would swear
upon every fact the faith I followed was more elastic
than hollow-minded guesswork and post-modern uncertainties.

One way, it is true; the only Way, still old, still new;
a shepherd for sicklings, a savior for wanderings,
a homestead for threadbare, friend to share the old haunts
and new hunts of discovery. And one way to bear
each burden across uneven shoulders.

I sat in rows each Sunday, 70 facing one well-placed expositor,
jotted notes, memorized quotes and blazingly defended the faith;
while the siding was replaced dutifully once the paint was out of style.

One meeting, who knew the brain could break,
a new arrival spewed verbal bombs between question
about the bible; who knew the brain could break,
and some sought to find her answer, but few sought
her name or number.

And, the moment we walked out of silence,
the glass shattered as a leader sputtered, “We don’t have room
for
retards
here.”

Oh Christ, O joy of fallen nature, break our brains well, please,
until we swell with empathy; the byproduct of faith lived
beautifully.

Cut the Strings

Cut the Strings

(“Yet God knows every step I take; if he tests me, he will find me pure.” Job 23:10)

I should have researched this bit before I wrote, and, if I rewrite,
perhaps I will;
but what is it they call the strings by which they machine marionettes,
and what are they made of; what fiber, what source? Plant, like hemp
or linen?
Animal, like sheep gut? Or a manufactured blend, rayon, cotton and
spandex for stretch?

It does not matter much, except for the words I might have used
to describe
the life
of the girl with strings attached to every joint, every limb, her
several fingers and several toes. Without the slightest knowledge,
no hints or shadows upon the wall, her moves were less human
than she ever imagined. Yet, human to the core, the subtle
resistance of muscle against the tugging of string
produced the tiniest blisters, imperceptible stings over
years of performing the dance of the puppeteer’s perfection.

Once or twice, looking over her shoulder, she thought she caught
a breath, a change of wind from outside her body. Most assured her,
some remonstrated her hallucination, most carried on the
dance of the puppeteer’s perfection.

Days were tossed without second thoughts, nights were slept
with annoying plots that seeped into sundial perception;
a slow blend of reverie and real. She put up with what
she never saw.

Until she was set aside, strings untied and hanging on the wall,
dark and light were just the same, night and day were unacquainted.
Ashamed and cast off in the attic above the garage, her dreams
and her daytime reflections tugged for power over which
would oversee an
unfeigned sanity.

That is when, between dream and waking, she heard the crack,
the boxed thunder of a mighty limb, old and weighed down,
finally falling from tree to ground. She knew the truth,
sorely hidden, that was the moment, her brain broke
literally.

She ran the race of paranoia, seeing puppeteers in each
grain of sand. She grabbed only one hand, her own, with
thoughts still vying for competence.

Slowing as she ran, as she ran out, as she ran out of breath,
the knots which were knit upon each joint and limb
were more familiar than her own name. They were
her making,
puppet and puppeteer, she ran, and ran herself down
the same.

The strings we hate; attached to people’s words now gone,
are strings we tied to a passing glance on one day,
a smiling invitation the next, a trial, a conviction,
an inscription on our skin left by leather applied
when our conniption fits would not subside. The strings
we hate

Are enough to write the definition across our brow.

With no sign of reliance, we can stand or dance,
unenhanced by performance or perfection,
the simple human dance, resurrected messy and late

We are better unstringed and sometimes unhinged.