Hidden in Windowless Rooms

Hidden in Windowless Rooms

(“However, if it’s from God, you won’t be able to stop them. You may even discover that you’re fighting against God.” Acts 5:38)

Hidden in windowless rooms
awaiting our number to come up,
we feel the clouds close in on us,
we feel the breath of those who shoot
opinions
like dragons full of fire.

We were well-respected, weren’t we?
We’ve owned our stories and told the new one.
Have we threatened the few at the
peak of the pyramid
who send down their edicts like
gods on fire?

We carry no arms,
we do not stockpile caches of weapons.
We walk barefoot, our feet are calloused.
We walk barefoot, our hearts are tender.

Don’t misunderstand. Some of our stories got
the best of us. Some of our history divested us
of any hope to ascend the temple steps that
ripped our unshod feet. We knew how we looked
in the campfires of deceit.

But we are a band bound tight by our miscomprehensions,
we sing in our cells, we pray on the floor. We remember hymns
at midnight while
the rulers knock to find what we are praying for.

I offer my plate, complete with undercooked meat;
I offer my cup with dust napping on top.
The bread is still warm, the crust crisp from the
oven of stone.
The wine is simple. The dialogue drops tears,
one, two, or three,
onto the servings we share when we gather here.

We walk barefoot with our leftover loaves,
we invite more beggars like us to
share our discomfort with wrought-iron fences
and walk the fields where conversation is as
filling as the meals we remember.

Someone to Blame

Someone to Blame

(“The Lord's acts of mercy indeed do not end, for His compassions do not fail.” Lamentations 3:22)

The troubles came out of nowhere like
the rain that hides behind the mountains.
Creeping hands of clouds loomed over the crags of
unconsciousness
and suddenly
we were drenched with invisibility.
Everything we could not see gripped us
so eyes that once saw clearly beyond the
eastern day
blinked away allergies and smoke.

We thought we knew it all,
we thought we knew cause and effect,
we thought the evil get punished,
we thought the righteous were without defect.
So why did it come to our town,
our holy little amendment on the river?
Why not upstream where the pollution
started, why not underground where the less polite
were hidden?

Our backs ached, our brains burned,
our hearts stopped when the power lines went down.
Once in a while the fog lifted
only to remind us what we were missing.
Still it seemed to all of us there must be
someone to blame. Someone had misspelled
the same day over and over again.

But above and below, while we sheltered at home,
the robins still sang, the dogs still pranced,
the children still played, though everything seemed to be
left to chance.
Someone hummed walking along the river,
someone looked for frogs on the bank.
Others slowly ate their lunches on picnic
benches wet from dew and rain.

It was not deliberate, but in the renewed silence
of water upon water
(the ions of joy and photons of vision)
we learned to breathe together again.
We saw again. Fireflies
lit up the night.

Sometimes Hidden

 

Sometimes Hidden

(“Weren’t our hearts glowing while he was with us on the road, and when he made the scriptures so plain to us?” Luke 24:32 [J.B. Phillips])

I was thinking about yesterday when
I spent the day on the couch,
my head in a vise,
the sun fully risen,
the questions aligned without reasons,
the town below alive,
the sleep and dreams between
the hammers that played my head like
steel drums. I would do things on a whim,
but all my big ideas are locked in
a makeshift cavern waiting for reunion.

I was walking around today when
I saw the clouds kiss the hills above the river
like lovers who only want some privacy.
Chilly for mid-July, I wore faded jeans instead
of my summer shorts. I still saw questions
buzzing like gnats. I still shivered (not from
cold, but from mastering the art of dreading
the day.)
Some insist I pray in this hollow,
others that I read more emotionless cookie
fortunes and staple them to my face.
Some simply erase me. Memories are as fickle
as clouds hugging hills and dancing away.

I started writing today and reflected on
fire.

Who is this sits with me in my brokenness?

One who breaks bread in a stranger’s house and
leaves without addressing a single query. One who,
like hills, like clouds, like sun, like quasars,
is sometimes hidden in the most ordinary
things.

Where Was the Scent of Kings?

 

Where Was the Scent of Kings?

(“The holy writings say, ‘He was counted as one of the bad people.’ And I tell you, that means me. And the things that are written about me must happen to me.” Luke 22:37)

Where was the scent of kings,
the incense and the musk of triumph?
There was no uprising,
there was no parade with the captured in chains.
There were no guns or drones,
tanks and soldiers in a row.
There were no fighters or bombers
in formation overhead,
there was no parade on this independence day.

The back-alleys knew, though;
they recognized his face from the galley of rouges.
While power showed off its pageantry
with chariots and swords,
he eschewed concealed carry and
entered conflict a prisoner of war.

We still ignore you because we expect a display,
something to celebrate with fireworks,
a reason to wake up the neighbors,
a magistrate to enforce our suspicions,
a fire-thrower to engulf every sedition
and make it bow so loudly the universe can see
we anointed the king of our own choosing.

But you can be found at the back of the crowd,
initialing the wet concrete.
You never catch our eye with gold,
never wear the trappings of battle.
You refuse to ride the warhorse down
our streets,
and enter in a borrowed jalopy.
We were happy with that for a while.

And now the scent of myrrh, the fragrance
of death-and-life meets us in our doldrums
(Had we been awake, we would have read the
servant poem that describes a prince
who never gave a proper salute.)

And now all our paper mâché mannequins
stand in abandoned palaces. You wait to meet us
outside our hidden prejudice.

Sometimes Being Hidden

Sometimes Being Hidden

(“For you died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God.” Colossians 3:3)

I must be hidden because so many friends
cannot seem to find me.
I don’t blame them, I’m as dead as I am alive,
more dead if you look inside
and see the sticky black tarmac
where may takeoff seems to
never get off the ground.

I must be hidden, I cannot find my own self,
my true self,
my do it well self; my death knell self
has done all the heavy lifting.

I am hidden in the world but seen so well,
I am not yet invisible, still vulnerable.
I am on display the way they catalogue fingerprints
from suspects who try to hide in dens and alleys.

I trust my smokescreen, the dense debris of intellect and
good intentions; who would guess the rest?
I’m too easily discovered, my hiding place is indiscreet,
when I’m finally discovered the street only laughs
and the grandstands grow deadly silent.

I could be far too dead to change,
but alive enough to try.
Sometimes being hidden
feels like being lost.

Hidden

Hidden

(“Who can discern his errors? Forgive me from hidden errors.” Psalm 19:12)

Some are imbedded for so long, it seems like they’ve been there from day one;
we recognized them well at first, in front; but time covered them with sand,
and ash and soot.

I spent six years in Texas before I knew you there existed
strange worlds where
you need not drive and hour to reach the nearest town. Six blocks
north of my new East L.A. neighborhood I crossed the street
and stood in San Gabriel with Alhambra behind me.

In second grade there, (it might have been third) I asked a
schoolmate if I still had an accent. (I think I wanted one, to
be distinct, to stand out. Not a deep Southern drawl, just enough
to be cool and from somewhere else, somewhere where no one
had ever been.) She crinkled her nose, looked up to the sky and said
“I think so, maybe a little.” (I avoid “ya’ll”, if you all were interested.)

But intonation has left its mark, without my knowing it well. “Uffda”,
from my Norwegian friends, and “ennit” from my Native brothers.

“Uffda, that’s a huge bowl of tripe soup, ennit?”

But, unless you recorded my speech with my knowing, and made me
listen through the hour that traced my talking (tied to a chair, I
would never
volunteer), I am certain there are expressions my kids laugh about
when they have their “adult” lunches and giggle about moms and dads.

I’ll be honest, my dad insisted “cassette” had a long “a” and so sounded
like a girl name Kay. He had many old Gospel Quartet Kay-settes.
He had a double tacks: one was to deny he ever spoke that way, and two,
to say he knew for certain it was pronounced his way.

So, Heavenly Father, You don’t have to tell me twice; if the
words I use every day
can trip me up without a single moment of awareness,
I am certain I need You to dig deep where my sins are
hidden better, and with more resolve, than
my inattention to the certain silence of my
latent drawl.