The State of My Brain

The State of My Brain

(“The Lord makes our human spirit like his lamp inside us. It shows us what we are really like.” Proverbs 20:27)

I’ve got enough time to read a chapter or two,
to turn on the overhead lamp and see what the words say.
I’ve been reading from the day I knew that one word and
another
could take me to world without moving a muscle.
A man down the street asked me what kind of books
I liked the best. I was eight or nine and I said “adventure”
though I wasn’t entirely clear what the word meant. He gave
me two books, one about the thirteen original colonies and
I don’t remember the other one. Maybe a Hardy Boys mystery.
I made weekly trips to the library; its front steps were marble.
Sometimes I walked since it was only six blocks from home.
I would take a volume of an encyclopedia and start reading articles
in alphabetical order. I wondered who wrote all this candid information
and how they knew so much stuff.

Reading captured me as a teen. I read all of Shakespeare in one summer and most
of John Steinbeck. The next summer it was Ray Bradbury along with the
poetry of Lawrence Ferlinghetti. Rod McKuen got an occasional look.

I read early twenty century playwrights and imagined their words in
my mouth.

Ten years later I was a newly formed follower and read books on
prayer and spiritual gifts and how to manage your emotions by concentrating
on Christ. Truth? I found myself falling woefully behind.
There was a method to pray an hour a day. I managed 15 minutes.
There was a way to speak in tongues, and I mumbled them well. I
never got my mind swept clean from thoughts that invaded constantly.

Today I read memoirs and liberal theology. Today I quiet my mind
with music before I read. Today I talk slower and less certain.
Today I am not sure of my purpose, but I do not shame myself
for the state of my brain.

I Replaced Myself

I Replaced Myself

(“He knew what all people are like. He did not need anyone to tell him about any person, because he knew what was in a person's heart.” John 1:25”)

Tell me who I am, now, recite my name and my place;
The days are no longer kind, the nights bring no relief,
I stumble over my feet and my words,
I repeat the twice, and they still sound foreign; mere bookmarks
for things I once treasured in my mind.

The world is far too large now, I’ll never be now, the
places I’ve never been.
I replaced myself with another more times than
anyone should. And now, towards the end,
when I want to befriend myself, I am short
on the few who knew I was harmless.
I am less than I ever was, when I hoped to be
a mentor of a few.

I am old and still apologizing
for not fitting in. I’m a jigsaw piece without
a puzzle,
a horizon blocked by the downtown mall.

In this corner pain repeats its chorus and verse,
tied to a silent hill, tangled without a player
to hear the songs I wish I wrote; miles from lonely,
and desolate between here and there.

Tell me who I am, replace me where my joy resides,
take me to success again; when the spoke well of me again.
I am the loneliest man I know, and the only one in this
foamy corner. My heart is a frozen knot, my tears the
thaw of the thoughts I once considered true. My mind
is lost now; cast off now.

I’ve practiced forgetting, I’ve erased the names and places;
but they invade with a vengeance the peace I hoped to make.
I’ve displayed forgiveness, I’ve buried people and words;
but they are live each morning and I die by degree.

Change me, make me madly in love my final days.
Move me, place me closer to the souls I know like mine.
Take me, (and I mean home), I am tired and there are no more

Successes left for me.