My Silent Repertoire

My Silent Repertoire

(“And the Lord’s servant mustn’t be a fighter, but must be gentle to all people, able to teach, able to bear evil without resentment.” 2 Timothy 2:24)

It’s been quite murky for a while. Some call it grace,
some just see the space I put between myself and the pain. My
guts would tell you that the fire is tired of burning, the lamps are
turning to evening and the embers to dirty gray.

I need to be tucked in between a lake and metropolis,
a forest with a couch and a café with first friends who don’t mind
that my eyes glaze when the gravity tightens around my face.

I sat on city councils, I advised state projects, I met CEOs and
had alcoholics in my home. Now my visits are silent, my years
are ringing like the foghorns on the river. All my energy has been
sold to the clouds as they pass by.

“Stir it up” they might say, “the gift, the fire, the holyghost desire”.
And that’s what I dream every evening before I wake with the
knife slicing my head again. And I can barely write again.

Doubt is my agent, tears are nearly absent. I’ve spent them on the
clouds that pass by.

Hold my hand again. Bring me a drink again. Touch my brow again
with a towel of mercy. Follow the wrinkles with your fingers, the furrows
caused by cringing that meet the smile lines of ages ago.

It is too slow now to organize. Too murky to plagiarize. The mask is
pulled far too tight across the fog my forehead feels. And so

I only ask forgiveness, and offer the same. My repertoire is limited,

But unashamed. 

With this Gift

With this Gift

(“Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have received from God, and you are not your own?” 1 Corinthians 6:19)

What shall I do with this gift I think is all of life?
When limited by length, the ways my legs propel and
limited by vision I wish my eyes to excel both their clarity
and their understanding.

Shall I blame it for my faltering? A pain in mind and
rigid joints once fluid and quick, wit and flow, words and
dance. For I forget, within 30 seconds, the same word I scratched
the surface to find not a minute later. Reminded of the runs
through blocks and parks, under viaducts, ignoring the barks
of backyard dogs.

Shall I paint it frivolous? Shall I lament its crooked semblance
to a boy I once knew years ago? How shall I wear this skin,
the years growing thin and progressions of past folly?
Is it the gemstone within, created and compressed,
an image well-crafted of the Father’s Son? Or, spirit and
soul and skin; are they one? A wrapless package of
inspiration, movement and semblance that astounds
when asked the price?

“You have been bought with a price” and “You are not your own”

redeem this wickedly weak frame into a
sacred space for me to belong.

What shall I do with this gift, this body slogging through time?
My hands are not yet helpless, my legs to walk where light has yet shined,
my eyes are not dim and can see the image, where once they were blind,
of the Beloved’s face; prosaic and rhyme.