listening to "yer blues"

listening to “yer blues”

(“Say to the prophets who prophesy from their imagination: ‘Listen to the Lord’s message!’” Ezekiel 13:2)

Listening to “yer blues”
I’m reminded I’m not of the earth or sky,
I am of the universe, and that is what I’ll use
to decide the barrage of words that pass as
god-talk from people who just have no time to wait out
patient love.

(I’m so musical even my yawns sound like a song.)

You just cannot bring god down,
and you cannot just call him up from below.
You cannot make the fire fall,
and you cannot make a spring of water flow
from a rock.

(I’m so logical even my snores are antiwar.)

Why are you uncomfortable with silence,
Why do your god-words sound so much like your-words,
Your announcements are no better than palmistry
reading the wind.

(I’m so comical even my scars can spin a yarn.)

There is preaching in the zero syllable breeze,
there is gospel in the clapping branches of the trees,
the message is as certain in a stranger’s hug
as if Jesus himself stood among us unplugged
like a gardener.

(I’m so spiritual even my pores are open for more.)

Don’t preach when lunch will do just fine,
Don’t predict, conjure, invoke everything that enters your mind,
But walk in sackcloth, put on ashes, sit with the silent
whose words were stolen when the expectations of violence
became the sermon of the day.

(I’m so hopeful even my feet tread heels-over-head.)

A Few Ways

A Few Ways

(“And they were astonished beyond measure, saying, ‘He has done all things well; he even makes the deaf hear and the dumb speak.’” Mark 7:37)

And here are a few other ways that He is different from
gurus and pundits, spiritualists and sages.
He turns the entire world inside out, the foundations we dug
now float away to the hidden warehouses of the snow.
And He builds with cast-off lumber, chinked bricks,
scads of shards indistinguishable from pebbles strewn
on the hardpan soil of desert expanse.

And here are a few other ways He challenges the
assumption of His some-time prophets who see the
End OF THE World at every shaking off San Francisco,
Peru or Japan. Or the scan the skies for the latest
blue moon array and exclaim the telltale signs that Jesus
is ready to get real mad now that He has spent 2,000 years
holding in all his anger, being nice, and all, full of grace and all,
for over two millennia, and that is more than enough time to wait.
The world was created in a week, and within the next week His
lightning and thunder will bloodily turn the undertow foamy.
Mark the date, people,
Empty your plates, people,
Walk straight, people because the Eastern Sky will explode
in gall and wrath just days after I’ve finished cashing all my checks
sent in by so many who
took the bait, people.

And here are a few other ways to welcome His coming
with visits to the unwashed cells of unwanted humans,
with encounters in stuffy rooms that smell of excrement where
the unknown aged wait their last breath alone,
with cookies for children with sores upon their faces,
with hugs for antagonists,
honey for adversaries,
and healing for every man (high, low, above, below)
who has a past you’ve never met, but who has a past
that keeps him awake at night.

And here are a few other ways He is different
than
any
other.