Only Broken Rules

 

Only Broken Rules

(“Peace I leave with you. My peace I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give to you. Do not let your heart be troubled, and do not let it be afraid.” John 14:27)

It is time for us to go now,
we can talk along the way. The
walls are ready to implode now,
and firelight has nothing left to say.

I cannot wait to see you again,
sometime before my next life crisis.
The troubles might try to drag you down;
the demons fancy a tour of my garden
planted yesterday so yellow and carefully.

There are enough people to blame,
enough weekends to discover the schemes
of failures on the outside of the rooms we constructed
to protect our thin-shelled eggs of ideas.
What seems an onslaught was
just a summer rain last year.

It is time for us to go now,
we can walk up and down the streets. The
walls have tumbled, muddy sheetrock,
and the moonless night swirls like sludge from
a prairie oil derrick. Can we stand still while it,
glacial and black, fills every hole and crack?

I may never see you again,
it might be because of my last life crisis.
The troubles dragged us down as we estimated
the cost of a friendship like ours.
The demons took their seats to see whether
wildflowers and tulips could thrive in the same
garden plot.

I know who you blame, and I know who I suspect,
though none more guilty than myself. What if peace
is what we expect, clean air that thins the grimy night
and lets us dance again, walk the hills again, smoke cigars
and get uneven tans again?

It is time now; the walls are shambles. If you hear me
call your name,
meet me in the rubble. You remember the table and
golden chairs where we once ate sandwiches together?
The demons have all gone home, the troubles have expired,
only our memories keep us apart,
only broken rules can mend us again.

Top Heavy

 

Top Heavy

(“So be careful. When you think you are standing firm, you might fall.” 1 Corinthians 10:12)

Be careful, you have become top heavy.
Be wise, you have become talk heavy.
Be humble, you have not moved in years.
Be kind, you have not slowed the tears
of anyone with god-talk that knows it all
and gets so much of it wrong.

(Don’t ask me, I remember what I used to know
and what I have forgotten now.)

For instance, the rain began at just the time
my apps told me I could take a walk without
getting wet. For example, I told someone I had talked
too many times and when they agreed, I sang a monophonic
tune that took up the entire side of the record.

Check it out, then, when inert gasses convince you
that nothing changes. The wind knows the way to
curl between hills and make the heavy trees sway.

Watch the smoke curl from the factory across the river.
Watch it stripe the horizon like silk candy from a pipe and
watch it next day and the day after. Some days it hugs the
ground with the atmosphere weighing it down. Some days
it flies as the breeze arises from the river and corkscrews
the skies.

All this is to say, please stop sitting in the same booth at
the same restaurant and ordering the same meal. Rebel.
And open the menu to dishes with funny names. Un-tame.

So Talk to Me

So Talk to Me

(“Are not five sparrows sold for two small coins? Yet not one of them has escaped the notice of God. Even the hairs of your head have all been counted. Do not be afraid. You are worth more than many sparrows.” Luke 12:6-7)

And so I suppose, against all odds,
despite swamps and tears,
I must be in my Father’s care.

Fastened to this turning ball by
the weakest force,
the fridge is stocked,
my clothes are washed,
my hair is combed,
but the weak force is too strong
to escape to the place where
my heart would be full.

I’d call someone, but tears would flow,
or I’d compose myself and report “I’m fair”
though I’m caught in the doldrums with
the slow carousel of days turning ‘round me
while I wait for a sign of His affection.

Here I am, this hour of this day,
and, though I’ve sat among friends
with my feet in the ocean,
I confess, tears would flow whether
warming on crowded beaches
or stuck in the suburbs watching
strangers walk by.

My heart has always ached; I wish there was a remedy.
My hand has always shaken; I wish no one could see.
So talk to me, speak the words that will take me home.
Write me poetry, sing to me, hold my hand until it sleeps
silently.

I read of love and wait for the Father to meet me at the mailbox,
to call my on my smartphone,
to knock on my door and
just one time more,
fill my heart as full as

Everyone else’s seems to be.

How Unlike Anything

How Unlike Anything

(“When you talk with God, say, ‘Our Father in heaven, may your name be kept holy. May your kingdom come.’” Luke 11:2)

Parent of all,
spending all, the stream of love that nurtures
the hidden fears. Sudden thunders of angel wings,
yet not extreme enough to solo your Eye and Hand;
the See,
the Touch,
the cosmic panorama of untamable passion for
the objects of Your birth and art. We, your children say,
“how unlike anything You are.”

Names, oh the dutch and the spanish of it,
the sound and the echo of them,
the tongue-tied way we pronounce a name
that uses vowels we’ve never uttered before.
A Name, inscrutable and suitable,
before all, in all, over all, under and, after all,
the name without any vowels at all.

We speak it without speaking, and still find ourselves reaching
for a tangible place to put our tongue to say,
“how unlike anything You are.”

Parent of all (not mine, ours, others or assigned to merely heaven’s
mortgaged lots)
how should this bald family clinging to a floating marble
speak to You at all?

We are only specks in Your plan, a kingdom that slays with love.
We have heard Your name, (unknowable), and bestow creatures
and caricatures, in anger as palpable as cheetahs pouncing on their prey,
with the unpronounceable name, hoping they will do our will:

We would pray Your will, but we have listened to the echoes and crevices,
the chiseled remains of our own devices and brains, and barely discern
“how unlike anything You are.”

For now, (and then, in the beginning, without end), restructure our madness,
stop us in the darkness, the sadness that sways our moments away from
simple joy; children and chalk-drawings, artists and broken prison keys,
death and resurrection; the new direction of Heaven’s will

After all.

Come Closer

Come Closer

(Many of the people told him sharply to keep quiet, but he shouted all the more, “Son of David, have pity on me!” Mark 10:48)

Blindness only happens when the light can’t get in,
and walls are erected to keep the holy from the ailing.
Dust explodes under the feet of the hopeless who hear better
than the seeing
and know better the feeling that the bottom is closer than
the surface walkers know.

Keep the rabble away from the quiet meditations,
keep the introverted crying while pentecostals shout,
liturgy can divide as surely as it unites,
and lifted hands with ingrown words lock hearts
tighter than we think.

“Keep quiet!” “Sing louder!” Stand up, sit down,
hymnal, dance around the pews at least one more time
and we’re sure to see the magician on the stage turn
our ailments to wine. We heard it happened in another
place, saw it posted, and overheard the miracles that
only occur to the initiated who are quiet enough.
Or loud enough. Or love liturgy. Or sing off key.
Or talk in tongues. Or never talk at all.

Fit my expectations and live!

But a daring few. Sorry; desperate. A desperate few disregard
the traditions and smudge the carpet with mud.
A blind loner finds the back bench and does not leave until
someone heard him shouting above the enforced sanctuary
with no talking aloud, where children are proudly herded upstairs,
and spares and strikes are reserved for Sunday evening conversation.

But an aching few whose pain keeps them from shouting; still,
silent and loudly, move past the requirements of the moment.
They sit in the middle, never making it to the altar (for the uninitiated,
that is the place at the front of the church, where people get saved for
certain.) They sit in the middle while masses swarm the altar
and yell in so many languages even the angels need interpretation.

This poor soul, so quiet and blind, is berated by one returning to his seat.
“How could you ruin the blessing, destroy the anointing, by sitting here
sullenly in this place?”

But shout or whisper, the desperate listener cries for mercy and hears the quiet
rebuke that says, “Come closer.” And, liturgy or adlib, the desperate wipe away
the habits of the faithful and

Usually find healing purer for both their ignorance and candor.