Ribbons Without Rhyme

Ribbons Without Rhyme

(“Wake up, sleeper! Rise from death, and Christ will shine on you.” Ephesians 5:14b)

I’m not the same. Are you?
We look for a face that will match
the spirit we’ve always known.
But I’m not the same. Anyway,
I’ve lost the instructions that I followed
to play the games so perfectly. I knew the rules,
and so did you. And we masked everything that
didn’t line up or
kept leaking out from the margins of our mistakes.
If only someone had woken us earlier.
If only we took the sun to bed during the longest
night of our soul.

Here I am. There are you.
The air has lifted the notes that drifted
from our pens into the desert expanse.
Faintly we promise we’ll find them before
the day is over. Granted we won’t remember them;
sainted we’ll still search for them two years hence.
I spent some time looking for the words in ink
that once flowed like a midnight moon above the
hard-bed floor. I didn’t guess it. Did you?
And did we quote those before us,
or pretend we are the originals? Strings of
poetry, ribbons without rhyme, we wrapped up the
day, the shortest
day in the cold.

We could invite others to write,
we could open our circle. Couldn’t we?
Laughter has become so expensive, can we
afford to investigate all the reasons why?
Or shall we simply find another band of brothers
to walk along the riverbed, look into the sky,
smoke a cigarette or two and admit we never knew
why
anyone would understand the game we created
or the
words we weaved so seriously when

We walked further than we planned and discovered
more than the mixture of day-to-night. We would
tell the story decades from now.

The Assignment

The Assignment

(“I have seen a limit to all perfection, but your commandment is exceedingly broad.” Psalm 119:96)

While waiting for the ribbons and awards,
the long speeches and large completions of appointed
projects assigned to portray (I hesitate to say) the
meaning of life;
I grew antsy, shifting my weight on the slap-down
metal chairs with half a back and unbalanced legs,
and my spine contracted as thank-yous dragged on
from noon till the heat of the day settled about us
like a sloppy hug from a field worker at the end of
a summer’s day.

The judges had spent their volunteer hours comparing
length and width, perspective and wit, color and the
best use of objects found. Poets scratched with pebbles,
novelists broke their fingers, photographers, it is true,
pinholed with cantaloupes and trashed food wrappers.
Oh, and the artists, the paint and brush, dabbed at
tree trunks with chewing gum.

That’s all a lie…I made it up as I wrote, poetic
license which I paid for and has never yet been revoked.

But I have waited longer with background noise my
only inspiration,
to find what is the next line You will offer,
the next explanation
for a world so perfect, a world so crackly,
with tenants who speak as followers of Your Son,
but will walk out after five minute’s suggestion He
meant what He said,
when He said that part about
loving enemies and blessing the worst with
the best we can offer.

So, I stay listening and will arise, I mean it in hope,
to kiss the next enemy, cloaked or Wall Street clothed,

With the Kiss of my Older Brother whose ways
are found perfect, and perfectly impossible. Yet
what are we if we refuse to attempt the steepest path
and peace.