We Auction Our Hopes

We Auction Our Hopes

(“’Tell David that all I want for the bride price is 100 Philistine foreskins! Vengeance on my enemies is all I really want.’ But what Saul had in mind was that David would be killed in the fight.” 1 Samuel 18:25)

I wondered why the universe wouldn’t be placed like
a hologram before us sitting on the kitchen table.
Why couldn’t we put our hands upon the orb, examine
it with our skin on?
Why not orbit its perimeter, experiment with its trajectory,
change the refraction of light and realign the spectrum?

Isn’t that what kings and presidents, ceos and John Does
try to do every day?

We would make the rain fall on flooded plains if we could,
just to show the pains we’ve taken to rise to the top of the mountain
billions of years in the making.

I don’t have to hurt myself to see if I still feel pain,
that’s already been done for me. I could meditate all day in
the desert or
the forest
and be done in a moment to find the spike in my head that
now slices my heart.

I wondered why we can’t just be in the world
and not of it.
Why we can’t refrain from turning the dials and just
learn to love it the way the Master does. The Lover does.
The Mother does. The wild goose and the peaceful dove does.

I wondered what happens when the pain beneath our skin begins
to be the atmosphere we walk in, the ocean we swim in,
the dirt we dig in and the noise that never leaves us a moment
of silence.

100 foreskins, 200 foreskins; we auction our hopes and double
the bribes,
all because raggedy rulers decree a bride-price for
the guarantee of our freedom.

At Least One

At Least One

(“Then the King will say, ‘For sure, I tell you, because you did it to one of the least of My brothers, you have done it to Me.’” Matthew 25:40)

I noticed the color of his voice, dark as midnight,
sorrowful as rain. I saw the sadness in his face, wrinkled in pain,
eyes squinting, the hurt unrestrained.

I expected the warmth I knew, the grace of noon in spring,
the mercy early and new. So much time had passed from the first
to the last
time I understood the best I could do
and the worst I had done
were not loaded upon a scale nor
could cancel each hellish act
with deeds done well.

I knew it now, embraced it how,
son and daughter, brother and sister,
are the new names for my anonymous past.

Today I could not understand, the frown, the hands
clenched like a widow’s upon the casket’s edge.
What loss could change the songs of heaven to
simple silence, a long pause of eternal time,
(a mere second of you disapproval took forever
as you scanned my face from eye to eye).

You looked at me, and the pain was a cannonball of sorrow,
as you looked upon the disregarded, the unrobed, the lately regarded
worst of sinners and simply said to me plainly, amen and
world without end:

“He was my friend” 

Bursting

Bursting

(“God began to do a good work in you. And I am sure that he will keep on doing it until he has finished it. He will keep on until the day Jesus Christ comes again.” Philippians 1:6)

I.

While your expectations may be bursting,
pain a hammer and your soul its anvil,
the landscape is still flush with living springs,
the quiet stream sings the lullaby your may have forgotten.

While you search for momentary cover, a reminder
of safety, a friendship or another sign that the designs
you imagined are still within sight,
the plight with its vise-grip deadens the colors
you used to plant, presidential roses in a row.

While the numbers decrease, the failures constrict
the fancies you snagged with your singing imagination.

The days snap at you hearing, the morning is a bully
and evening is a tease with its offer of ease until
the day takes it all away again.

What can we say to the invisible agony?
What gain is there in repeating the couplets
out of time
when no one hears them the second, third
fifth or 10^th time the title is announced:
“There is no cure for the atrophied brain”.

So says the pain that strangles the flow
from thought to light, light to dream,
dream to vision, and vision to…

And that, dear concerned friend, is all I remember.

II.

I’ve heard there is a work within me
and I pray it is so. The exterior is flaking,
the colors are fading, the frame is limping
with skeletal burrs.

I’ve heard it will continue, the will and the do,
and I suppose it is true.
But what once was easy, what once was free,
the words that set fire, the crowd that came to see;
these
are memories of days I played the music of the skies
and the came with cousins from hills and plains
to learn the dance and teach it to others.

Today the tune is confusing, my dance steps are ragged,
and a few watch for a day or two
(some, I’m sure who like the tune).
I am not a solo artist.

The tunes which spread town to town
now are only sounds of puzzling origin,
yet, I believe it honest,
the Author is true while I wriggle the same
as I did without the pain. 

The Little that is Left

The Little that is Left

(“At the resurrection…all our ecstasies and intimacies then will be with God.” Matthew 22:30 [The Message])

I must apologize to the inventor of today that
I seem to always greet the day (sun or stinging sleet)
with a bucket full of empty.

I know the impressive canvass I inhabit,
deeper than holography, more dimension than imagined,
pigments to the power of rainbow beads on spider strands,
music so deep it slips between the half and quarter tones,
music that, with a single note, calls tears unbidden,
joy once hidden to fill the heart with ribbons of
folk tunes everyone knows by heart.

I must apologize to the artist who made
me,
that I find nothing to fill this
little that
pain and shock, blame and awe
have left behind.

Bright sun or happy song,
the tears still flood the bucket
at my feet with the little that is
left of me.

Bit by bit, I must admit, I was not made stronger,
but each bite left holes in my flesh until
fissures outnumbered the safe and the sound.

I would go now, if You would take me,
the little that is less than the day You called me,
so I could smile in your presence where no one ever
ever
can bite or hurt or walk away from me
again.

of Blame, Curses and Comfort

of Blame, Curses and Comfort

(“But Jacob became upset with Rachel and answered, ‘Don’t blame me! I’m not God.’” Genesis 30:2)

If I could raise your son from the dead,
restore the years when you thought he never would return,
remake the words you nosed him further and further away,
recast your rants to a wayward son
into invitations home for mom’s goodsome pie

I would have done it they day before he died.

But I am not God and you are not the Director of Activities
for the Heavenly Hall of Callings.

Your grief turned curls like anger,
Your sorrow blackened the bookends where cures
for every ailments went unread
after you thought I knew nothing of faith.

Your present points became past precedent as you
planned the future for one who could not do what
only should be asked of God.

Your demands were unprecedented and your prayers
against the ones you loved
resounded like curve balls cursing the very air through
which they flew.

If I could renew your mind from the dead,
restore your memories of what we just said yesterday,
or 10 minutes ago,
remake the sword into a plowshare,
recast your spear into a pruning hook
to prepare the fruit you and I might have eaten
round a table of mutual questions

I would set the table myself while we consoled
by twos and more, the loss of a son too early.