I Am No Longer Parallel

I Am No Longer Parallel

(“This is why he can completely save those who are approaching God through him, because he always lives to speak with God for them.” Hebrews 7:25)

I’ll outwait the heat wave,
I’ll watch for the message that comes straight from your hand.
I’ll hear little that makes me understand these days,
the way the world teeters and totters these days.
I’ll send you my words on the page so there can
be no mistake about what I am trying to say.
I’ll circle the wagons,
I’ll circle the tags and pricelists until we come
to an agreement. All answers will be in the
range of the standard deviation.

I use my poetry to hide my intent.
I write these verses to disguise the signals I sent.
I read your messages and have to fill in the blanks.
My words are the words between your sentences, even
though
we both lose a little meaning this way.
I’ve uncovered my heart, please let me see yours.
I’m missing a few crucial ingredients to finish the
recipe I hoped would satisfy me completely. I’m not entirely sure
what it is I am hungry for.

I used to know how to pray, or at least the words to say
kneeling under a pew that would include tears I held in
before mere mortals. I used to know the escape routes,
the roads that took me insanely close to the edges of my mind.

Now I want to say it all without metaphor. I want to say
I think I never knew anything I once believed. Will that
still save me? Will that make the dying delayed? I do not
mean to frighten you with my words. That is why I use
simile and parable. But here it is: I am no longer parallel,
I’m at odds with myself and I have no idea the destination
at the end of the day. Perhaps I’ll keep on writing until I
run out of words to say.

The Shortest Sentences

The Shortest Sentences

(”He took the seven loaves of bread and the fish and gave thanks to God. Then he divided the food and gave it to his followers, and they gave it to the people.” Matthew 15:36)

And the plains rolled slowly from the feet of the hills,
westward and looking, gazing and turning the questions upon themselves
over and over again. The crowd filled the grass,
every blade bent or broken. There is hunger here. There is thirst
and desire. There is aging hope, and fame sinking down the drains
of earlier expectations. The antique prophets spoke,
the burnished teachers with sparkling swag turned the thunder
to cuss and spit and anger. The wrath of God, in their hands,
was just the politics of borders.

But new and older, without a place to lay his head,
another spoke with patina. Our hunger deepened, our thirst
a dry and violent hole cracked well past autumn. Yet, the

shortest sentence fills us like banquets.

The slightest promise

Coaxes rain from the empty skies,
and empties our eyes of a life-full of precipitation.

We crossed the borders and He knew us,
we marched with refugees on the sands of worn leather,
arriving later than we had planned,
the party must have ended,
the budget overspent,
with only the roadies left behind packing up the
double-bass and banjos.  We doubled our pace

And discovered

There is not late, no ever, there is not there, nor never,
only fullness and every hungry for more.