War No More

War No More

(“They will pound their swords into plowshares and their spears into blades for trimming vines. Nation will not raise the sword against nation, and they will not learn how to wage war any longer.” Micah 4:3b)

War no more; Hear the chant in beats and plainsong.
War no more; Look upon the faces ravaged by the storm.
War no more; Believe there can come an end to nonsense and plunder.
War no more; Lay down your messages and arrest warrants.
War no more; Pick up the new flowers for Peace Gardens to come.
War no more; Burn your bullets with their casings.
War no more; Smelt your rapid fire rifles into golden.
War no more; Retool your swords and prune the fruit trees
War no more; Bench your aggressive drones on the side of the road.
War no more; Melt your spears into shapes that imitate the sun.
War no more; Leave this scenery of battles behind.
War no more; Fill in the trenches completely to the top.
War no more; Let the doves land upon your helmeted head.
War no more; Watch the lion lay down with the lamb.
War no more; Redraw the boundaries and the locks on the gates.
War no more; Rewrite every song that celebrates bombs bursting anywhere.
War no more: Go to school again.
War no more; Learn the sweet savor of diversity.
War no more; Open the door, swing wide the windows, let the breeze whisper,
War no more; And let it become the refrain of new anthem celebrating
War no more; And sing it standing, kneeling, lying down. Memorize
War no more; And learn every line like a school child sing
War no more; Memorized like a new pledge of a new allegiance to
War no more;
War no more;
War no more.

I Don’t Wander Far

I Don’t Wander Far

(“Let us strive to know the Lord. His appearance is as sure as the dawn. He will come to us like the rain, like the spring showers that water the land.” Hosea 6:3)

I don’t wander very far from home these days;
I follow the path my feet have made looping the same
walkway today and tomorrow, Mondays and Yesterdays
and hold conversations in the late afternoon.
Sometimes I wonder if you hide from me,
or if it is me who masks my existence.
There are hints of perfume past the cherry trees
that have not yet blossomed. It is early March
and they are shaded by apple trees on the sunward side.

I have all day to rehearse the accompaniment
for a dozen voices this week. But I don’t like
the arrangement and my talents are rusty from
like of use.

I’d tell you more about what hovers within
but it would be the same story as a year ago,
the same yearnings, and mostly unmet,
that have grappled with my mind from the beginning
of my certainty that you would speak to me in ways
that would change my disappearing face into something
more beatific. I’ve searched for ecstatic visions just within
my latched doors. I should play my music more.

The trail I take every day is taller on one end than the other,
I arrive home, though, at the same altitude I began.
I should spend more time with my fingers
strumming my guitar.
Or hear words I could pour out in rhymes and
rhythms you could understand.

I pray the day will close with at least a line
of divine poetry as I wait like the trees for
Spring.

Give Me the Biggest

 

Give Me the Biggest

(“The Lord replied, 'If you have faith the size of mustard seed, you could say to this mulberry tree, “Be uprooted and planted in the sea,” and it would obey you!’” Luke 17:6)

Give me more, give me more,
give me more faith so I
can rip the trees to shreds,
bulldoze the mountains, then send them both
to the sea, to the sea, to the sea
for eternity.

Isn’t that what you meant? It is clear enough, I think.
The syntax is explicit, the images concrete,
the only think I need is more faith to defeat
the stubborn bushes and burning mountains.
Although, come to think of it,
I have heard no reports of flying hills along the
beaches with a dying trajectory.
Nor have I seen mulberries like roman candles
fleeing the gravity that holds them in place.
I have not noticed a single neighbor
backhoeing the hole where the flowering trees escaped.

We always want more,
we always want the meter to read above redline,
we always want the single cure for everything.
Give me the biggest, let the fire spray from my fingers;
give me the fullest, let the blaze be felt from my eyes.

And so, you undo me when you decrease me, and
invite me to
want much less, so much less.
And I am distressed after having uprooted
peaks and shrubs so many times
in my dreams.

Give me, then, the grain that cannot be seen from
across the highway,
upon the pulpit,
and is nearly invisible for those with higher vision
from people-length away.

Forgiveness is more an obstacle than
Everest or the Great Sequoias.

More Than a Minute Ago

More Than a Minute Ago

(“Cast your burden on the Lord, and He will sustain you; He will never allow the righteous to be moved.” Psalm 55:22)

I hope you will let me be honest about the things that happened
to me
more than a minute ago.
“Everything happens for a reason,” I’ve been told,
and then watched as the horned owl rolled on down the road.
“God will never give you more than you can handle,” they have said,
and listened as their voices faded into locked conference rooms
to discuss my fate.

If you stayed more than a second
you might have seen
the callouses on my shoulder from carrying every piece of granite
know-it-alls threw on my back before
I entered the queue for the next scheduled ride on
the roller-coaster.

If it happens for a reason, you would be so wrong to intervene,
I might never learn the lesson that loneliness and suffering bring.
If I can handle it (whether you can or not) you would be dead wrong
to lift an ounce from my back. But you’ll pray for me or sing me a song
next Sunday while I dry-heave like a fetus behind the hanging suits and shirts
on the floor in the closet that smells like must.

There is nothing reasonable in leaving me in the rain,
there is nothing preordained in laying hands on me again
before you go to brunch with those who can afford it.

I’m not saying you hoarded your blessings. You just thought
Jesus was enough
and forgot
that Jesus
uses hands and feet like yours.

>So I keep rolling, I keep casting, I keep throwing, I keep lasting 
for more days than even I expected.
I keep piling, occasionally smiling, I keep hiking, I keep asking
for a God who knows how

To make me weightless, to help me regress to less than I know.
And helps me take the boulders piled on me; a God who leans in to me, 
and, Lamb and Lion carries them for me.