Ode for Nex Benedict

Ode for Nex Benedict

(“He has done mighty deeds by his power. He has scattered the people who are proud and think great things about themselves.” Luke 1:51)

The teenager had a cat,
a pet with a name fit for Olympus. Cats
grow well in
Oklahoma.
Sometimes people do not.
They were a teenager walking through
ancestral ways, navigating high school hallways.
There was beauty in their handsome face,
there was grace in their chocolate eyes,
there was sadness in their beautiful soul.

How could anyone erase a life just beginning?
How could fists land on the body of one finding their way?
Why would anyone pound that weary head against a cold
bathroom floor?

How do you smile, you self-satisfied governor;
how do you sleep at all? A restroom was all they asked,
a place safe from the onslaught of peers,
a place their own to prep for art class or
US government.

One teacher, one ally, one friend who listened well.
One teacher speaking out for their uncertain path,
one teacher harassed for speaking on their behalf.
One teacher threatened and resigned. One teacher gone
who saw only a child of love.

While you argue over they/them, he/him, she/her,
compassion is lost in your arrogance.
They are a single syllable, uttered in one breath.
They can be the difference between life and death.

And so, they, Nex Benedict,
were battered in the bathroom where students
sometimes sneak a smoke before class.
And so, they, Nex Benedict,
were shattered with fists full of glass.
And so, we, somehow, must mourn in ways
that twist us bloody.
And so we must grieve until the last raging idiot
discovers the silence that lasts.

Today I am angry. Today do not call me.
Today it could have been my child. Today
my rage is uncontained.

Nex Benedict, a child worth loving,
we wish they had known you. We hate
the religion that berated you,
the bile that poisoned adults and translated your
humanity
into a mangled target of their certainty.

Holy Creator, may they, Nex Bendict, live long
in our memories to
help up become so much better than we

Have been.

Mindful of Mercy

Mindful of Mercy

“The Mighty One has done great things for me, and His name is holy. His mercy is from generation to generation on those who fear Him.” Luke 1:49, 50

If we listen carefully to Mary’s beautiful song the Magnificat, we may hear the foreshadowing of Jesus’ words about His reason for coming. Mary sings of proud hearts scattered, thrones toppled and the lowly exalted. Her song envisions the hungry satisfied with good things and the rich sent away empty. At the conclusion of her Prophetic refrain, she say, “He has helped His servant Israel, mindful of His mercy,…” (Luke 1:46-55)

The Mighty Chord

The Mighty Chord

(“The apostles left and went from village to village, telling the good news and healing people everywhere.” Luke 9:6)

There is a mass of loneliness nearer may heart than
any other definition or silent wanderer; just like the furthest planet
in a solar system of dustless ions. A planet
because the loneliness is not empty; it is tangible;
a hardwood enlargement of lead-weight emotion
with gravity so strong that nothing stays long but
is boomeranged into its own orbit across the outskirts
where longing and time rarely cross.

It is what I write about because it is wound about my being;
and so many ask when the flowers will appear in my poetry,
the hearts and forests, the hope and choruses of love.

And usually, once someone has noticed the sadness in
each letter on the page,
I force the petal of a rose between the stanzas. Yet it
wilts between the writing and the reader. I was made this way,
because that space, so heavy and so empty, has always been the
first phrase of the next thing I thought or wanted.

And yet, I’ve been asked by the One Friend,
in some way, with some convincing tone,
to lay the good news down like the hook; “The next sound
you will hear is a mighty chord of 9 grand pianos finishing the song.”

I’ve been told He fills me, but my gut feels empty,
save for the solid mass of longing where the loneliness has
made its home.

I once thought there would be a friend, maybe two; and
I watched Joan Baez celebrate her 75^th birthday with friend
after friend after friend, sing their duets with her. I thought there
might be a duet started early that stayed for the last encore.

But the ones I wanted near the end, half have turned their backs,

moved down another road too difficult to navigate now. So I plow
down the path the same way I began, almost convinced that friendship
is not worth the time I took to get it from beginning to banned.

The weight stays nearer my heart than any can imagine. Lonely.
It’s true, I’m a forgiven man, and a healed one, too. But time has
robbed me of the hugs

While space has subtracted.

Come near, please, only if you know there stands a weight between
your good intentions
and my lonesome heart.