Perhaps it Was Satire

 

Perhaps it Was Satire

(“For the arrows of the Almighty are within me, their poison my spirit drinks; the terrors of God are arrayed against me.” Job 6:4)

 

Perhaps you thought it was satire as you saw the
helpless man burn.
Perhaps you thought it was a fairy tale when you saw
his black skin bleed.
Was your sarcasm worth it,
did it make you feel larger,
did you sense the darkness
when you said that he simply
should have complied?

 

How many of your brothers have been
shot in the back
7 times
by an officer of the peace?
How many, and who?

 

Perhaps you believe the playgrounds belong to you,
the shiny slides,
the perfect pavement,
the basketball nets replaced every afternoon.
Perhaps you sit in the shaded picnic spots
and listen to barbershop quartets
or a jazz combo while you douse your briquettes.
Perhaps you think race doesn’t mean a thing
even after stranglings, shootings, and warrants issued
like invasions.
Perhaps you believe.

 

So, I ask again, how many of your sisters
have been shot
in the dead of night
in their own bed
by officers who would have otherwise
knocked.

 

Have the arrows cut through your own flesh,
have you drunk the poison of blades invading
privacy, eaten the bitter fruit that steals all your sleep?
Do you need lessons, do you need more training,
has life been perfectly sweet? Did the giants hold you
underfoot while others raced ahead? Were you blamed
for coming in late?

 

Let us hear the stories of power that steals, giants who
rage, firearms that splay the last breath of the day. Let us
create the stories of power that heals, servants that sage
our playgrounds and begin the music to a new age
of open
dance
and
play.

Call it Jazz

Call it Jazz

(“I tell you the truth, whoever accepts anyone I send also accepts me. And whoever accepts me also accepts the One who sent me.” John 13:20)

Please accept me,
and by accept I do not mean
tolerate me.

I mean all that I am, my frightened thoughts,
my unsteady frame,
my journey through the wilderness,
my nightmares, my anxiety,
my sins and the irony of a follower full
of doubts,
a flower dusted with thorns,
a friend who needs human touch more than
scripture quotes or attempts to diagnose my condition.

Let me come to your house, lay upon your couch,
shed the tears I will not shed unless I know you’ll not turn away.
And if I do not get better, let me cry myself to sleep.
Let me sit at your table with only coffee and memory,
let me stop pretending for just an hour.

The fingertips of a friend equal the hand of God.

I promise I’ll send you a card, a thank you note,
a gift or a poem. I’ll write on lined paper every
word that describes what taking me into your heart
has meant.

But please accept me,
and by accept I do not mean
put up with me.

Because I cannot become anything other than
what I am today. And I am longing for
the eyes of a friend, the tears of a fellow traveler,
the silent comfort for weeks at a time, the storyteller
who does not care if my poems rhyme. I long,
far and short,
for anyone who will accept this arrhythmic heart
and just call it jazz.

I Like this Song

I Like this Song

(“Ask, and you will receive. Search, and you will find. Knock, and the door will be opened to you.” Matthew 7:7)

I can’t find the help I need, no one answers my call,
I’m stuck and I’m leaving, I’m famished and I’m grieving
over the cold feet that could be warmed
if you just asked one friend unalarmed, to find
the source you lost when someone Grasping for Life
held the door open so the winter cold would enter
and you would leave for the last time after time.

Your words are a string of letters flowing from immediate fingers,
not the dipstick pens of unresolved stories. Let the flurry
wipe your vision clear, the frigid blister steel your resolve
and look further forward this time than ever before.

I entered your story around chapter 16. I heard you recite
vignettes from six and seven. You quoted dialogues of two characters,
both with the same name, though their sentences were
of nearly equal length while you filled in the silences.
I knew you were future.
I hoped you were not fastened with invisible fishing line
to stories that would become ancient by the time your
narrative is ended.

The indelible ink has dried, the silent pillows cried
along with your unrelenting fears that played like
silent movies upon your sleeping cranium. But, with
chapters and dialogue still to be written,
seek the Muse whose style can match your
past unbidden

With a future unhidden, when
day becomes brighter from sunrise over the mountain pass
to noonday’s reflection upon the stillest river flow.

I’m out of predictions, used my last half a century ago,
but the story will be written, the lines like poets write
with jazz in the background and a favorite friend who,
each time the band begins, says again,
“I like this song.”

You Know the Grace

You Know the Grace

(“For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ: Though He was rich, for your sake He became poor, so that by His poverty you might become rich.” 2 Corinthians 8:9)

Clothed in gold, washed in spring rain,
the grass is thick, the streams parade life
and young men’s dreams from foothills
to the pregnant river of long poetry;
creation’s own form of praise.

Surrounded by breeze, underneath these old
feet each day is cool with dew that never
dropped upon the soft green blades
of this playful morning before.

We wore our castoff clothing like
princes;
Our half-scales and jazz chords like
incense.
The music we hear, though
assembled before a not ever was played,
is beyond our talents; the gift is
in the singing;
what we never dreamed of before.

And yet, the key can sour with time,
the odes and dirges overtake our jubilant hymns.
And yet, the day can bristle with age,
the plush rose petals brittle and late.

Rich with melody, yet faded with age
we may forget the sun on our faces,
the soft earth’s carpet on our back,
and the words that sent us leaping may
fashion weeping instead.

What, day of joy and night so old,
how may I find, discover, define,
and hold forever
the single afternoon memory of a
meadow spring—unvisited for decades.

How old is Your gift; the music, the rain,
the warm, the same thoughts that
once coaxed love from uncertainty?
But ageless is not old; but ever.
And the song; redemption’s dialogue of
God and man

Will remain the tune I whistle
half-forgetting its title.

So Familiar

So Familiar

(“Come and see what God has done. See what wonderful things he has done for his people!” Psalm 66:5)

Come and hear what the jazz is saying behind
the new café outside in the alley where tables have been set
and customers sip light wine in waiting for the late rays
to withdraw from their al fresco experiment. Chain-link
separates
the alley from the sidewalk; but the sweet saxophone
slides between alley and street without the slightest interruption.

Come and watch the way lazy snowflakes take their time
from heaven to winter’s soft landing. Focus on the trunks of
of the sub-alpine firs; evidence the storm sifted in from the north. A
broadbrush
stripe of white runs up the trunk to meet the branches
demarked in high contrast in overcast afternoon light.

Come and listen to the old man’s song, the words altered and
the tune so familiar you swear it is someone’s birthday. The
cracks at the edges of his mouth and the chasms between notes
in his voice salute the truth of a life well-lived; he sings and
smiles and tears up because you have smiled at his life and
all he wanted out of every day from the moment the magic happened
(the moment youth becomes adult despite the customary age)
was to live on this borrowed mud and dome, pay his rent proudly
and have enough awe and numbered days stashed away to
fill the air one more time

With the stories of good and better, how the God who hid
had been nearer, most of the time, than he had expected.