The Silent Jukebox

The Silent Jukebox

(“That man never thought of being kind; he persecuted and killed the poor, the needy, and the helpless.” Psalm 109:16)

The jukebox no longer played tunes
for a dime, for a quarter, for a dollar.
It was crying at the violence and the music
was left out in the rain.
We stopped listening to the words a
long time ago.

There were too many who
refused
to be soothed and
the moments passed without a single
rose breaking the mood the weeds had strewn
across the table.

No one knew why the music no longer played,
cigar smoke broke the air gray and blue. The
booth for
two
no longer was occupied. There were rips in
the cushions,
there was a disturbance in time. One came
early, one arrived late, they used to dine
together, now they were separate ghosts.
Coffee winced down their throats at opposing
sides of the day.

There was no way to explain how the diner became
so thick with the heartbreak that cracked the days
with silence. Some would blame, some would
write computer code,
some would pray,
some would divide it all into rows and columns.
But the soul

Needed something more than pop songs to
right the wrongs. On the other side of town
no one knew that coffee was poured here without
a sound.

A Sky Waiting to be Filled

A Sky Waiting to be Filled

(“Are any among you suffering? Let them pray. Are any cheerful? Let them sing psalms.” James 5:13)

A sky waiting to be filled with
tears of pain
or
songs of joy. It surrounds everything.

A friend’s gaze sitting on the swing
waiting
to reflect back anything
in your heart today.

The breath moving and silent
carries the human cries from
within the infinite soul to
the eternal ground of being.

Angels may hover, they may not exist,
while some insist on squeezing confessions
out of the unbelieving.

And I hope to simply be satisfied with

Being seen.

Stop Now. Sounds.

 

Stop Now. Sounds.

(“Or do you have so little regard for his rich kindness, his restraint, and his patience, that you ignore the fact that the purpose of God’s kindness is to lead you to repentance?” Romans 2:4)

Stop now.
Sound out the top of the silent suns
wrapping the grand, warming the sand
while the tides ebb unconsciously.

I can hear myself growing older,
years like wind, like sails, like friends
who streak across the night sky. Shooting
star
how I wonder who you are.

I would rather borrow your eyes than
rewrite our conversations. I would rather
drive by the coast as the cliffs twist by.
I would rather squint in the light than to
strain to see you appear in the dark night hallways.
I would rather let the questions go unanswered.

Stop now.
Sound surround us. I’m up for a night of repentance.
Nothing is wasted in this universe,
everything is borrowed. It was all here first.
But your story, your spiral, your skying face and
your carousel feet carry my mind to better places.

We can light the candles, break the bread,
sweep the sidewalks, plan ahead,
fasten the nails so the pictures don’t fall
on the floor.
We can feed the poor. We can read some more
until
our shells are broken, until every unspoken story
is written across the sky.

Until we all

Stop now.
While the sounds of undancing whistle like morning,
like handfuls of birdsong with lyrics hidden within
the center of everything.

Silver Shimmer

Silver Shimmer

(“You cheat the poor and needy and rob widows and orphans.” Isaiah 10:2b)

Seduced by silver shimmer and
drawing the edges so close to home
you miss the earthen treasures and
annul the pleasures of the masses who,
with upturned faces only want their glasses filled
with new wine for this one day
of the year.

Your gold means nothing to them,
your stocks and bonds might as well be
broken shells dropped by seagulls on the pavement.
When will you come out of hiding,
when will your glimmering lights be turned down low
to let the lesser gleam of
oil lamps and candles

Pass through the streets, walk through the boulevards,
sing as the silent stars go by?

Your baubles and rings,
your gilded staircases,
your mansions compounded by
layers of fences will not change
the gravel roads just a half a mile
from your girders and concrete.

Exchange your breath for a moment with
the words of unrest from the homeless.
Barely living,
edging between darkness and darker,
they cannot eat your rubies and diamonds,
nor wish for decadent cakes at the tables they
cannot afford the rest of the year.

May the light that holds us all like silhouettes
scatter our presumptions, sweep away our privilege,
and help us see
through the eyes
of those whose hope is one sandwich or an extra
blanket for the bed.

The Top of the Staircase

The Top of the Staircase

(“The people were silent. They didn’t answer the commander at all, because King Hezekiah had ordered, ‘Don’t answer him.’” 2 Kings 18:36)

They were right behind you staring a hole
into your friendships and assumptions;
you could see them from
the top of the staircase shouting, “you’ll fall”.
You could hear them from the second story window yelling
spattered buckshot into the air. They inhabited the lawn
and the ground floor
like evictors without cause.

You checked your forehead for a fever,
your lungs for the next sultry breath. But the invisible
brooded above you, silent in the velvet sky. And their
momentary pause
waited for the universe to be created.
They were fierce as flames, as beautiful as sequoias
mastering the ocean breezes from their inland abode.

You inhaled, about to answer the accusers and present them
with your certificate of authenticity.
And then sighed in your uncertainty;
the silence had descended, a cloud, a flame,
and revealed the crowd was full of comic book
characters
with no dimension at all..

These Silent Days

 

These Silent Days

These silent days can be interrupted
by
a woodpecker rehearsing for the Spring.
And then, more often,
they are punctuated with sobs from the
hollow of distant grief and aches.
Life can turn cruel without our knowing,
a decade passes and chop block houses line
the field where mustard and poppies once grew.
Life can be sweetened for an hour,
a meal, a hug, a dog nuzzling at your elbow.
The air is heavier
the fewer people in the room.
Half a day later and the dishes are cleared,
loneliness creeps in uninvited
but is so familiar you put out a chair for him.
And though the buzz of life once flew like geese,
like bees,
the silence now hangs over the hours.
Before, now, and after, it is the way it always
has been.

Some Kind of Joy

Some Kind of Joy

(“The Lord is my strength and my shield, in whom my heart trusts. I am helped, so my heart rejoices; with my song I praise him.” Psalm 28:7)

When did I start thinking that my entire live would be lived
above
ground?

There are a lot of people who have cared,
but not enough.

Along the way while trying my best
someone plowed under my confidence.

Much of my imagination was buried below
the horizon while
I slept for decades.

And now dreams wake me growling
at invasions and protestations
that hide in the light of day.

The darkness can instruct me,
send me, arouse me to listen
to the lower chambers of my heart.

Faces I have not seen in 40 years
greet me in love while nearer acquaintances
stay silent.

A lot of people have cared, but is it
enough?

It is not death I fear,
(it is closer than later)
but more life underground.

My songs have change, the lyrics
like water,
fit the forms of my life completely.

I am moving out from approval
to some kind of joy that fits my
doubts and jagged melancholy.

In this I rest, beneath the topsoil and
atop the buttes,
I shall be I

And I shall rejoice the One-that-Is
has planted me, shone on me,
coaxed me and nurtured me

In the quiet rhythms of life underground.

My Silent Chair

My Silent Chair

(“Peace be with you, dear brothers and sisters, and may God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ give you love with faithfulness. “ Ephesians 6:23)

I wait for the next tick of the clock hoping ease
will find my silent chair.
I've always wanted to be more than I am,
better than I appear,
and I alone know the secret places I've stashed
the inky past.
I cannot rely upon my myriad attempts at regeneration;
the cushions have taken my form. I leave my chair but
my dense impressions remain.

How many times have I begged for peace when yesterday's creases
keep stalking me down?
How many loves have I preached only to envy another fleeting and
manufactured fragrance?
How slowly my faith has weathered, the silt below me all parts
of my beginning?

So they ask me how miserable I am. They ask in love, they ask in concern.
But there is no cure and no end to the pain. More than the decade of arrows
to my brain,
the spears to my soul have gouged me far past my prime.
And I have turned towards and away, inward and awry, passion and pedantic;
only to find the same heart beating, the same blood pulsing, and I wonder where
the new creation begins after far too many endings for my taste.

I will cheer for you. Yes, I know the hunger after the crisis,
the ennui after the knife is removed when all believe the healing has begun.

I've started more times than you realize. I've stopped even more. And I can
only depend on what I hope is the love-of-Christ and
the interests of a
few-dear-friends.

A Silent Decade

A Silent Decade

(“Then God told him, ‘I will certainly be with you, and this is the proof that I am the one who is sending you: When you have led the people out of Egypt, you shall worship God here upon this mountain!’” Exodus 3:12)

It has been a silent decade, a desert of hearing,
a midnight of seeing and the oceans are grey, the river
is iron,
and the oars do not cut to take me downstream.

You are not to blame, though You speak much softly than I prefer.
If I leave here, if I find a new abode with the same household but
wrapped with connections I’ve missed, how do I know

You will go?

And how do I know

I won’t be missed?

I’m too broken to start anew, too old to venture a capital campaign;
The locusts are in my ears and the wasps are in my head,
the brain waves, though never measured, are surely morse code jazz.

I want to walk the marble halls with my sons; the coffee and scones,
carroty beers and earthen pages of books we found just hours ago.

I want to unload my decades-old burden and walk the Pacific Trail.
ha! I do not move further than from lounger to icebox when blackmailed
by my pain.

I do not move alone. I am tied forever in love. And she has always tagged
along.
But it’s always been my song. And now, when I need a new place, somewhere
to be born again,
I cannot ask her to carry my tune again.

Promise me the rains will fill my longing. Pledge Your presence though my senses
tingle alone. Go or stay, I need a way to be unwrapped completely and unafraid of

The self I’ve always been.

The self I’ve always been.

Silence is Fuller

Silence is Fuller

(“Be silent, all mankind, before the Lord, for he has come to earth from heaven, from his holy home.” Zechariah 2:13)

Silence is fuller than cascades of verbs
that travel from outside our ears into tangled
shortcuts with words.

Silence is deeper than cenotes unfound
where history is buried beneath the muffled

rituals of sound.

Nouns are less concrete than the quiet that
sees
only the bluebird that conversation makes invisible.

I do not wait well in the stillness, nor walk when instruction is unclear.
The buzz in the background; the blues, a movie, a distant campfire circle,

all arc back to short-circuit the wheel of sentences that repeat
like a coffee grinder churning my mind in a closed-loop of fantasy.

Silence is denser than the Dickens
or other deep descriptions of time and rooms,
of seasons and revolutions. Silence is the black hole
that holds nothing and

in which everything exists.

Words have been my language since I heard my name
for the first time, since Mama or Dadda and No and Me.

To believe God speaks with nothing, and to find eternity

in that void,
is to learn, not another dialect or use for words I still need
to find.

It is a new Kingdom of being; of seeing without tongue or ear.
The more I beg Him to speak, the more precious His silence has become.

My Silent Repertoire

My Silent Repertoire

(“And the Lord’s servant mustn’t be a fighter, but must be gentle to all people, able to teach, able to bear evil without resentment.” 2 Timothy 2:24)

It’s been quite murky for a while. Some call it grace,
some just see the space I put between myself and the pain. My
guts would tell you that the fire is tired of burning, the lamps are
turning to evening and the embers to dirty gray.

I need to be tucked in between a lake and metropolis,
a forest with a couch and a café with first friends who don’t mind
that my eyes glaze when the gravity tightens around my face.

I sat on city councils, I advised state projects, I met CEOs and
had alcoholics in my home. Now my visits are silent, my years
are ringing like the foghorns on the river. All my energy has been
sold to the clouds as they pass by.

“Stir it up” they might say, “the gift, the fire, the holyghost desire”.
And that’s what I dream every evening before I wake with the
knife slicing my head again. And I can barely write again.

Doubt is my agent, tears are nearly absent. I’ve spent them on the
clouds that pass by.

Hold my hand again. Bring me a drink again. Touch my brow again
with a towel of mercy. Follow the wrinkles with your fingers, the furrows
caused by cringing that meet the smile lines of ages ago.

It is too slow now to organize. Too murky to plagiarize. The mask is
pulled far too tight across the fog my forehead feels. And so

I only ask forgiveness, and offer the same. My repertoire is limited,

But unashamed. 

From Overture to Refrain

From Overture to Refrain

(“He committed no sin, and no deceit was found in his mouth.” 1 Peter 2:2)

Build the fire slowly and let the blaze resound like
orchestral percussion from overture to refrain. Let the blaze
gather
in force until the night is swathed with light
and tiny eruptions pop from the center glow underneath
the crisscrossed logs.

Let every song find its tongue tonight, every hymn a new language
and joy;
let every mouth sing toward the starry score above and repeat the
chorus with fiery gusto; repeat the words in stripped human cries,
taking to the skies like symphonies plainly played.

Let the meaning never fade, the joy always reign at the remembrance
of such sweet words and such a Hopeful Name. Consume us, oh
Fire,
again and again, and leave us whole. Unscarred by the fiercest
Flame,
let us steal away into the day with a new hallelujah and an
unending amen. Let the fire speak for us, let the flame combine
with the Love which has branded us His own for now, for then,
for when, for beyond the visions we thought had been cast far enough
to reach the end of time.

Yet, like the fire that is never consumed; steadfast and erect, though storm
would threaten its heavenly flare, it remains the Name etched within
every heart
claimed by the Fire Itself; which burns and is not fed, consumes, yet
uses no fuel.

Burn in us, so our words, exit to entrance, are sparked with love that
needs words only to explain the Name that
began the conflagration.