Dust and Thirst

Dust and Thirst

(“Come down from your lofty place and sit in the dust.” Jeremiah 48:18a)

You sit in your dust and you laugh as if you drink all day from
a tap of crystal liquid; so cool your burning eyes assume all will be
healed under the flow of its spring.

You bivouacked  a place higher than your enemies,
you set up camp to display your long stature, your tall statues,
your walls which shine with whitewash sheen. In the desert you
can pretend all summer and nearly all autumn as well; the veneer is

smeared upon the stacked rubble walls. You stole the shimmer from
mica and polished bronze in angles to reflect the sun's long rays
for the fat portion of the day into the last few sightseers' approving view.

But the rains reveal you are austere; enough water to persuade your
pretty pebble to let loose of their sham of a veneer. You are done.

I stand in humanity's circle, showing off my latest braintrust just the same
as ancient Moab and Dibon, its royal city. Here's the thing, we who sing
our praises through the summer until the rains of revelation expose our
bling as nothing more than drug store trinkets, we will thirst in the dust
if we do it long enough.

Come down from your heights, you boaster of National rights;

Start the hike today, off the mountain; do not delay, your boast is only
brighter balloons filled with the same gas as the names you've claimed
are behind every conspiracy. You are the tyranny you decry.
Your hunger to be right is the heresy that prevents tomorrow's meal
from gracing a family so hungry their faces are smeared messy after
the feast.

Water that Runs

Water that Runs

(“But blessed are those who trust in the Lord and have made the Lord their hope and confidence.” Jeremiah 11:7)

Before I thought about the morning moving on

so quickly and afternoon racing toward the final turn

I could swear I had wasted another day. There is

a pillow on the couch where I lay my head, a case

washed twice a week, and a blanket with occasional shreds

where the quilt has dropped a thread or two. I sleep till

noon, I wish.

When I do not, on Monday most, I choose a movie near 10

and watch till noon. The pillow holds my thoughts, the blanket

my security and the cat, white and black, visits me prone,

nesting upon my chest and, face to face, insists she is queen

of the moment. Who is to say she isn’t.

It is impossible to tell now, lazy or pain. I would rather

putt a green or cycle the hills, the afternoon valve to release

the cooked-up schemes of my swarmed imagination.

See here, the way I trust. The way I used to. A drive to the ocean,

tennis with an ever-drooping forehand, or just hardcopy

and coffee

where the shards of afternoon are pieced on tables of conversation.

Why should I bow to electrons that strangle the proper music and dance?

Why should this phantom (there is neither mass nor matter) make each

thought chatter while outside rivers and sunshine are a chef’s perfect savor?

But the vise grinds and my brain whines at a ghost that hitchhikes my neurons.

The passenger is invisible, the itinerary a drumline from eyeball to eyeball,

cervical vertebra to dura mater; it does not matter that it will not kill me;

the unknown traveler has squeezed my arms past uncle.

Here are the pieces of my afternoon, a few forgotten invitations,

a commercial for shampoo and a movie about a speed jump-rope athlete;

it is all so fleeting, and yet I move through mud with the few thoughts

I can capture,

still (sometimes, some not) enraptured in this drought by

the streams of water that runs from (somewhere, always here)

throne to (all) His own.