My Broken Casements

My Broken Casements

When electricity burns through you nerves like
the hum of a dozen engines,
and your head is encased in wasted dreams
you would rather not remember,
days shake you like a rug and heap more reasons
to close your eyes than stay awake watching
for something meaningful to happen.

I cannot confess enough; my confessions are meaningless.
And yet there are more sins I’ve committed than sins I’ve
admitted. The numbers do not matter. My broken casements
would still let in the cold though I was young and innocent.

I barely have to look past my window to know
that life is better than I perceive it. And yet
tears are my food,
heartache is my refreshment,
boredom is my religion, and
loneliness the name I call nearly everything.

I rarely create. My mind watches the calendar for
the next date that I’ll miss, or sit silent among people
I know, unloading my defenses privately at home.

I would board a train to yesterday if I knew when it
departed. I would post my arrival to be sure someone
would show up for me with my heart in hand.

Today I’ll blame the pain, tomorrow the people who
promised to refrain from warfare. Next week I’ll accuse
the loosened nuts and bolts for not keeping me together.
Everything is out of joint; everything is knotted tightly.
I’d tell you all my stories, but I know it would not end well.

So, I hide myself within myself. I confide only in the rain.
Inside this jar of clay I see only through the cracks
inches away. Outside I might look in. Outside I might
laugh that a silly man can find so little joy in an hour
of neighbors and celebration.

But the electricity still runs, sending my mind a thousand
times around the same stories that never did end well.

Wipe the Mist from the Mirror

 Wipe the Mist from the Mirror

(“Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me.” Psalm 51:10)

Fingerless, I might play the piano with my nose.
Noiseless, I might write music by ear.
Sightless, I might learn the codes of braille.
Senseless, I might miss the first note of the rest of the song.

Painless, I would dream forever.

Imagine a room, maybe 10x10, in which everything you own,
everything you are, has been collected. There is room

For nothing more.

Imagine that room shrinking by dimension, by degree,
by minutes, with no guarantee which possessions you will keep,
and which will be inaccessible for days at a time.
What dreams can fill the shrinking hopes you
once wrote on vision boards of the mind.

Maybe a walk will expand the walls,
maybe a kiss will ignite another passion fit for smallness,
maybe another drink will cancel the claustrophobia,
maybe another vacation, a trip around the globe, will
force the rusted doors open,
maybe you can begin again.

Blind, I could sing. Deaf, I could read.
Dumb, I could hear the music of love and play it loud.

But Pain is a thief, Pain is a headband of steel,
Pain is unrelenting, Pain rarely gives my spirit relief.

If only my heart could be clearer, if only an unknown hand
would wipe the mist from the mirror. If only I could remember
the chord patterns of expansive youth. If only less time
was burgled by the black-robed pain.

Sometimes kings take advantage.
Sometimes dreams are recanted.
Sometimes second lives never make it to the fair.

Pain has deferred the dreams. Create, O God, a world fit for
these smaller dimensions of my lately visions.

Longed For

Longed For

(“Is Ephraim my dear son? Is he my darling child? For as often as I speak against him, I do remember him still. Therefore my heart yearns for him; I will surely have mercy on him, declares the Lord.” Jeremiah 31:20)

There are voices that create images,
a phone call that draws your face.
There are heartbeats that create longing,
a breath that inspires memory.

Yesterday was a runaway train;
ache was a body, ache was a mind,
ache was a stiff iron rod that nailed the day
shut.

There are photos that create voices,
a crayon drawing held by magnets.
There are windows that frame our yearning,
a stained glass that refracts every song.

Today is a blue sky after the snow teased it
early morning.
Winter is crystal, sun is weak, air is crispy,
ache was an effigy, an avatar, a hollow replacement
for loved ones

Longed for.

When Songs Came Easily

 

When Songs Came Easily

(“God, create a clean heart for me and renew a steadfast spirit within me.” Psalm 51:10)

It is hard to find your heart in the snow and fog,
isn’t it?
And when the silence sounds like avalanche clouds
it feels like someone has
hidden it.

Something disrupted the rhythm, someone pounded it like a drum,
someplace you left it behind, somewhere before first and begun.
You knew it had been perfect once, you embraced the days of
warm grass and girls with braids. You picked wildflowers for their
hair.

You weren’t sure if it was broken or just over-exposed,
but the weather grabbed your throat every time you spoke
about another day tied in knots. Frayed at the ends and
twisted in the middle, you were not traumatized by your hurt,
you were traumatized when you were left alone with
your hurt
even when
you told the
best of them
that your ache was about to destroy you,
that your skin was fragile, that you could use an angel
or a vagabond,
or anyone with arms that sounded like
mom frying eggs for breakfast.

It is hard to find your heart in the prose and smog,
isn’t it?
And when the thunder sounds like approaching locusts
if feels so illegitimate.

You would get over it if, mirrored by a friend, you
discovered it was still the same
as the days when songs came so easily
and no one was shy about kissing you on the cheek.

Deconstruction

Deconstruction

(“I will create new heavens and a new earth. The things that have happened before will not be remembered.  They will not even enter your minds.” Isaiah 65:17)

His heart had been demolished while he
thought he was building a life.
Each belief was a brick in elegant courses around
a courtyard of worship and labyrinths.

He walked in knowledge, he spoke with power,
his words came easy, actions harder than dried mud.
He was water, he was pliant, he was weeping and he was
silent
too many times when he knew the truth had been
left unspoken.

But his heart imploded after the high-rise was vacant
leaving him useless for the corporation’s intentions.
It leaned across the expressway waiting for the wrecking ball
to finish the job before anyone else got hurt.

Though he bled onto the pages, and said he still believed,
he was sometimes viewed with suspicion
because he spread his damage across the table with
the wine and the bread.

No one asked him to leave, but no bandaged his wounds either.
He needed reprieve, he needed sounds of tears in the voices of his peers,
he ached for comrades, he begged for afternoon visits,
he waited until someone would let him know they
wanted him to stay. From far away he knew they did,
but not one sent a card amid the floods of grief on his
office floor.

So, before the silence became louder, he departed;
old wounds reopening like springs in the desert,
like sap from dead trees,
like maple from Vermont,
like venom from rattlesnake fangs;
he took the things he needed, heeded the sign that said
the shop was now closed, took his best and old clothes
to another side of the country.

Because he had partly been rebuilt, he deconstructed.

Entering a potter’s house, he watched as the master’s fingers
shaped the ceramic almost useful. But it was marred in his hands and
before he could start again

Our narrator grabbed the clay, the almost jar,
and slung it against the room. The heaviness smashed
the finished works on the shelf of the workroom; shards
piercing the air, the skin, the wheel, and again; he picked up
the largest piece of kilned clay. Iridescent, it gleamed of summer
green and
sacred blue. Lifted over his head, both-handed, he flung the
final piece and shattered it against the door that led outside.
It was there, surrounded by fragments, he knew his heart was
finished with the brickwork of the past.

And he started, slowly, like an aging painter,
to construct his real life, his true heart, his ever-self
at last.