The Colors Are My Tears

The Colors Are My Tears

(“Speak up for the people who have no voice, for the rights of all the misfits.” Proverbs 31:8 [The Message])

You thought it was artwork,
stained glass and holy when
all the while the colors
were my tears.

Life is messy and my voice is muted,
all I want is someone to shout to the void
for me,
bring a bowl of overflow
to me.

My soul is shriveled,
a black hole full of lead.
My thoughts are desperate even though
I had a respite for a week or two.

But this battle is well-known,
I carry the arrows that pierce me in plain sight.
I want an invitation to drink without judgment.
I want your tears to replace my own.
I want to be hugged for weeks, not sent
thoughts from afar.
I want you to speak! I want you to speak
up for me.

And now that I write this,
anyone who reads will tell me again
to
get over it.
I would get over it if only it was
over.

Here are my hands, palms up.
Here are my eyes, dried up.
What did you expect from the shivers that
come from suffering?

I don’t want to ask for help. Everyone already knows
this battle. They can see the smoke rising daily from
the fire that burns my brain.

It’s been fifteen years. And still no one
knocks on my door.
It’s been fifteen years. And still I feel
forgotten and ignored.

So, I’ll pour it out today. I’ll send it up tonight
like a fiery flare into the sky.
If you look at the moon tonight
and see orange lights where they should not appear;
call me tomorrow and find your way to my door.

I weep with my friends whose pain is different than mine.
Pour some tears on my wounds this time.

The day was bright, the sky was clear,
but the sunshine felt intrusive, the silence shouted
between my ears.

I apologize. I will wait another year before I ask again.
Everyone talks over me.

Perhaps We Still Can Fly

Perhaps We Still Can Fly

(“If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but I do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.” 1 Corinthians 13:1)

I can’t afford to walk with my head in the clouds anymore,
I can’t wait on angels to touch my brain and lips like I did before.
There is a straight-line path from my home to yours,
but I must take the road around to bypass private property and dogs
roaming outdoors from
one treat to the next; I might be next.
Although, I have befriended most of them. Perhaps I’ll show up
at your door with a pack of them. Your cats would appreciate
the confusion.

I walk the half-mile to your house. I hope you are not in pain.
I pick up your mail and walk it up your driveway. Today there
are three new prescriptions to add to the
dozens half organized and a quarter unrealized.
I’ll sit with you as we have dozens of times before.
We are old hands at this, we are experts on angels,
and yet the angels we’ve known are absent for now.
We are two angels with broken wings; with two wings
between us
perhaps we still can fly.

But I had enough trouble leaving my bed today that
angels were the last thing on my mind.
You were in so much pain today all you could think to do
was to fall asleep again in your chair after we
wondered how life leaves so many of us grasping for air
when we had dared to climb the heights for those who could not
find their way.

They never knew it, well very few anyway, that our legs were
fire whenever we found the summit at last. They understood it well,
though,
when we fell, when we stumbled, when we crawled like
the first amphibians leaving water for land.
We were not well suited for either. We wanted to be
of land and sea,
they wanted us to be Sunday’s constant surprise of
spirituality.

So, we wait on angels, don’t we? One calls you while I
visit today, your advocate from the V.A. She is kind, but too
slow from our way of thinking. We both know she is juggling
time, and life, and clients, and care the same way we juggled
questions about god. And they were impatient too, with our answers,
because we dealt in questions and not in certainty.

I should have shared the bread and wine with you today,
the blood and body of the One who is hidden behind our pain.
I will visit you again, old friend. And we will talk about
the picture on the wall; you clothed in vestments and
children with drops of joy on their heads.

Unreserved

 Unreserved

(“So I will not stay quiet. I will speak out in the suffering of my spirit. I will complain because I am so unhappy.” Job 7:11)

It’s all in your head.
They said.
Just turn off your brain.
Refrain.
And they disconnect the only living link
to a breath of fresh air that might keep me sane.

I am not playing.
Restrained.
My mind and body ache.
Piece of cake.
And I’ll shout into the sky if I have to;
dive off the pier and jump in the lake
to get a hearing from another living creature.

I’m not deserted.
Rehearsed.
Just misunderstood.
Unheard.
And they replace a caring touch with a cacophony
of sermons, prefab hymns, sanitized theology
that keeps doubts at bay and closes the way
to the soul’s deepest hunger.

Unreserved.

Speak it to Me Warmly

Speak it to Me Warmly

 (“I always thank my God for you because of his grace given you in Christ Jesus.” 1 Corinthians 1:4)

Speak it to me warmly so I can hear.
Allay my fears.
All I want is to know you better
so my bones don’t shatter every time
you want to talk to me. 

The clouds shrouded the hills across the river,
a film noir in February,
and the douglas firs on the ridge looked like
castles in the fog. 

I do see it in you, the things I miss in me,
it has always been this way.
From the onset of my first failure
to the day I sailed to your door
I have seen poorly and heard the thunder
on sunny days. 

The marina invited all the neighbors and their
dogs
to ease into a winter sun that reflected off the
green glass water where boats moored still as
stopped clocks. The ducks dove below the surface
nonchalantly grabbing lunch. 

I do hear it in words I have forgotten.
Remind me then.
All I want is to breathe easier
so my arms don’t shake every time
I sit down to write. 

Don’t call me crazy, but I hear bagpipes
that sing of Scottish highlands.
I hear fiddles and babies bawling for
their mothers.
I hear the sheep bleating, the sky receding,
and evening calling out to dance.

Ashes and Snow

Ashes and Snow

(“Speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves; defend the rights of all those who have nothing.” Proverbs 31:8)

While we debate who pays to
school our kids in the rules of God
adopted
by many or a few

There are still too many who cannot speak
because there are boots upon their necks.

Reimburse the vouchers,
but loosen the restraints on the mouths
of those we
stopped listening to long ago.

While we are at it, if we still have ears to hear,
why not turn in our receipts on the last judgment
and spend them on the
lion, the lamb, and the little child
who will lead them all?

The divine does not need our permission,
does not dote on our legislations,
but asks us to scatter hope, ocean to ocean,
nation to nation.

Oral arguments were heard in the marble chambers
while silent voices of ravaged concrete
did not waste a crumble of crusted bread. Stand tall

They said.

Which only made for larger targets with
fear etched on their heads.

While we debated whose Christ is the best
the few who knew we are all related
trudged through ashes and snow
to find the next forgotten memory
struggling for breath.

Would You Show Up?

 

Would You Show Up?

(“The Lord would speak to Moses face to face like one would speak to a friend.” Exodus 33:11a)

Would you show up when we least expect,
knock on the door from inside a dream?
Would you correct the recipes we have misunderstood,
direct us to banquets where we feast as friends?

My attention has been torn asunder (there,
I admit it). I’ve been pushed to the edge by
playground carousels,
buried beneath the bedrock by relentless
gravity. It is time I came up for air.

Would you dig deep enough to find us,
wait until our breath returned?
Would you suspect us of heresy, try us for treason,
or despite our errancy, meet us at our unevenness?

My pages are being rewritten (there,
I wrote it). The ink is drying faster than
my slow unfolding intended. But birds still fly,
preteen hawks perch on the fenceposts looking like doves
until a closer inspection.
It is time I read outside for a while.

Would you meet us before sunrise, though
our aches precede the day? Would you
send us your poetry, ask us to dance,
answer our questions with only your smile?

Would you befriend me, or have we been
from the foundation of the world?

You Speak to Me

You Speak to Me

(“Then he (Jesus) went up on a mountain where he could be alone and pray. Later that evening, he was still there.” Matthew 14:23)

I don’t think I could stay there all night,
in fact, I tried once, and ended up eating donuts before dawn.
There is so much power,
so much I could tell if only I could keep my feet
on the final swell from midnight till daylight.
I don’t know why I could not stay longer
with the one who,
I don’t know why,
loved me. But my mind is a prison

Of carousels and mosquitos that demand my attention.
I could excuse my thinnest moments on Your invisibility,
yet I can imagine the length and breadth of love or passion,
debates and conversations that never end. Arguments I’ll
never resolve
play merry-go-round, beginning, end, middle and then
starting someplace or other again. And the insects gnaw at
my best intentions; buzzing like radar, stinging like zeroes
and biting the truth in two.

Yet the moments when, at last, the mechanics of my mind
brake uphill and stop turning, when the gates have closed and
all conversation ceases, the quiet is dense as chocolate cream.
Frightening silence when half a newspaper, swirled by the breeze,
interrupts my reverie. The moments when the firing neurons
take their nap and leave my tiny spirit alone, the whisper of truth
which had hovered there all along, takes me hostage untethered
to a hiding place of lucidness, a cavern lit from within;

Those are when, a minute, an hour now hardly matter. For
I have heard the words I quivered to know,
thought myself unworthy to know,
and bow down, or leap up, or walk about or seek the star;
all are the delight of the solitary moments when
You speak to me. 

Speak

Speak

(“Speak out for those who cannot speak, for the rights of all the destitute.”  Proverbs 28:31)

The silent store their aches and stains while
the babble hoards gold and shallow paintings
of their pretense of justice; write books, sign books,
speak at banquets, repeat themselves and are talked about

In every self-respecting conversation in and out of tradition foyers
and emerging porches.

The silent hide their bruises, the mute (abused for each question)
mark the days with passive phrases they have forgotten to repeat;
but know by heart the threats like a three-chord hook on the radio.
Stab them and they barely sigh.

The few words they finally say; with fever rising from throat to
cheeks to eyes to brow, are not to sway, somehow, the powerful.
The short sentences, unpretentious, are the flumes of steam from
a pressure cooker’s only solution for survival.

The righteous machine, maintained and oiled, digs for reasons
in the stomach of the hurting who have died already inside.
In holy metronome the go through the motions, assign
daily prayer potions and leave, two by two, for downtown
and brunch

To talk about themselves and why the silent
never ask to join them for lunch.