The Near Side of Mercury

The Near Side of Mercury

(“This is what the Lord says: ‘Never be afraid of the words that you have heard…’” 2 Kings 19:6)

Shake the earth, turn it upside down until all the sand has fallen
in a long pine-cone shape toward the sun. Give it a vigorous quake,
pour out the oceans until they swirl like milk around the moon. Toss
it against the galactic walls until the edges are worn down and even;
string a line from Everest to the Sahara and discover they are finally level.
Are you finished? Have the mountains fallen, have the valleys filled with
new sludge?

Next, vacuum the atmosphere clean and dry. That’s right, let each molecule of
oxygen, hydrogen, carbon, nitrogen and all the rest that join ions without our permission;
let them burn into oblivion before they reach the near side of Mercury.

Have you done all that? Have you reduced it all to less than
thoughts in your head? Are the Capitols gone, the Thrones smelted?
Has the sea run its final race and the desert its last hum?
Do you look at the sky, sans the sun and every other star,
and now wonder where they are?

Where are the conspirators now? You feared each president
and knocked every suggestion on the head.
You never agree with what you read.

Is this a place for you, where you can make up the news
before breakfast, before you get out of bed? Is this the place
you without opposition, where all agree with your perfect
analogies.

You never liked what you breathed. So fill your lungs
now that every element is split into its separate parts:
neutrons, electrons and protons; the hollow solid world
you thought you understood is now divided evenly across the
entire universe; smaller than the tiny impulses in your head.

And now, if I may take my leave, I believe I shall
enjoy a hike along the wonderful Columbia and shake my head
at worlds made empty by fear and dread.

A Wide-Veering Paraphrase of Psalm 83

A Wide-Veering Paraphrase of Psalm 83

 (“God, don’t shut me out; don’t give me the silent treatment, O God.” Psalm 83:1)

Because the rants in my head cannot be caught
by the better traps invented by those with their noses in the air.
They talk about faith as if it is
a toy
retrieved from the vinyl toy-box in the corner,
tan and half the size of a coffin with a real cowboy
on the front
with the horse rearing high
and six-guns in the air. I used to think that I would
invent
a special ray that could find any misplaced toy
I spent more than an hour searching for.

But, those people in the corner, see them?
Usually covered completely by darkness, the molasses
drips from forehead to shadow while they forge their
plots and hope the precious ones forget
the graces of Divine remembrance. They hope
to wipe out the Name.

I couldn’t ever get them to join me for a party;
piñatas and punch; duck, duck, goose; losing the blindfold
during donkey-tale pinning; spinning cotton candy with
chocolate chip cupcakes and the final free-for-all;
squirt guns for all, ambushing the birthday boy until
drenched with the wrestling fun of barnyard boys.

But, I couldn’t ever get them to join me for a party.
They did, in perfect unison, plan pain for those whose
joy in innocence pushed them to unholy alliance.

I know You see more than I see, beneath the mean-streaks
the inhabit
the best bats in the belfry and worst golden eggs laid for
the aristocracy. I know You hear the silence more than
the words I partially miss; the switched circuits that turn
plowshares into swords before it dawns upon the inhabitants
a better use for metal and forges.

Don’t be silent when the scraggly chins demand a command performance
before their estimate rises.
Be not blind to the prosecution of which hides its own transgression beneath
black robes of position and blubber. They use their gavels to clobber
the treasured ones who swath the world outside the lines with joy.

And yet, only let them see (make me mean it, please), You, my own joy,
unharmed, yet humbled, whose Name is Higher than our rosters
of disproven genealogy.

Serenity.

Toss Away

Toss Away

(“But alas for you Pharisees, because you tithe the mind and the rue and every vegetable, while disregarding the justice and the love of God. These things you should practice without omitting the other.” Luke 11:42)

I’m not ashamed to say I’ve watched you change the way
you use your intelligence to ferret out the truth. Predilections aside,
it’s the predictions that make me wonder why no one takes you to task.

Like a sci-fi novel gone bad, we’ve suspended our disbelief so far
there is no resemblance at all, your world to this one, no mirror to the moon,
no twin for the sun. Only baloney that tastes like rhetoric and
and dust devils that look like a daydreamer’s wish of the opponent’s
final demolition.

But there is an elixir sweet, that distills every law and prophet down
to palpable drink for the ready; a panacea of pain for the smug.

There might be a chill in the wind next summer, I’ll grant that
stones might roll across the sand;
But on the other hand, the sun may smile as it did summer last,
and the conspiracies we hear, the ones only the whisperers
conceive, may fail to appear. Unborn, they die the death which
no one trumpets who predicted them last year.

There is a recipe ready for the masses, pleasant consent to order:
a seasoning that hits the palate and awakes lingering hope for
something more comfortable than institutional fare. The recipe may
look the same
as our memories of home, but
the taste, the suggestion that the food is less about perfection
than relishing the hands like mothers who made it

Helps us toss away our apocalypse prophecy to
enjoy the spread meant to feed the world hungry
for more

Than another conspiracy that makes God out to be
a spice-counting pinchpenny.