The Sane Walked Away

The Sane Walked Away

(“False messiahs and false prophets will have arisen and will produce signs and omens intending to deceive, if possible, the elect.” Mark 13:22)

You had them convinced, you had them in the palm of your hand,
you had them believing you could cast out demons with
just three notes of your song.
The proof was in your words;
the demons were invisible,
you waved your feet like they were swords,
you proclaimed defeat while the crowd
watched in silent appreciation.

Your profit was enormous, your houses a dozen palaces,
you scolded the few who could not sing
the words you wrote that dug into the ears
of the unsuspecting.

You were not enormous but pretended to defeat
every malady, to browbeat the darkness as if
you had invented the sun. The day gave way to
innuendoes and deceptions. You feigned sanity
while handing out madness like candy. Where

Did you learn

To package it slightly, stuffed within your black coat
baying at the moon.

The sane walked away, went downtown,
and bought lunch for the hundred who were not
taken in.

They Begged the Sky

They Begged the Sky

(“Go and learn what this saying means: ‘I want mercy and not sacrifice.’ For I did not come to call the righteous, but sinners.” Matthew 9:13)

Hidden beneath the aftermath of tsunami spirituality
are humans caught underneath the rubble.
Some think they deserved it,
some only came to observe it,
But most made up epithets to throw
if they ever surfaced above the fray.
Every day I meet another victim with
bruises on their arms and contusions on their hearts.
All they needed was someone to talk tenderly
while the fire lashed like a hungry tiger.
All they wanted was someone like them,
or even someone pretending to like them,
or, so it seems, someone less dreamlike.

They saw the fires, they felt the missiles,
they were stung by needles, they were facing
the needless pain they never paid for.

They begged the sky, they dug into the earth,
they doubted their worth, they were left in the rain
to dry.

After a while they gave up talking at all.
They were hermits of necessity,
they were monks hiding in caves.
They used to speak like lullabies;
they used to sing like the summer.
But now they are out of practice,
they recite monologues to themselves.

Everyone thought they were fine,
no one ever thought it was a crime to
leave them solo for so long. But they
stood with their backs to the wall looking
for someone that sounded like home.

And they begged for mercy to rain
on their parched tongues, they hoped for
grace reminding them of sunrise. They
watched for someone to bring them news
of the day.