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..

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.