Untied Shoestrings

Untied Shoestrings

(“Watch out, worthless shepherd who abandons the flock!” Zechariah 11:17a)

Faintly I put myself in your hands,
silently I waited for another sideward glance saying
I’m not easy to hold.
I could have been bolder,
said my piece,
made you feel the way you did to me.
Your religion inflicted more pain than
my missteps deserved. You could explain
everything that your devilish assumptions ordained.

I never wanted to be exonerated, never wanted to
skate away free.
I just wanted to be another human
who tripped over his own untied shoestrings,
taking all the blame.

But you whispered to others and
raised your eyebrows at me. You listened
to the scowls around me that sculpted my cheating
like a statue at the end of the game. I was left on an island
guarded by gunboats blasting the reefs around my knees.

I shared my shadows and should have lied.
I confessed my persistent cough that plagued me
while you blew your nose behind my back. I just
wanted someone to see
me in the dark like the moon after your eyes get used
to midnight mass. I wanted to sit in the balcony again
while a best friend sang
O Holy Night.

Now the knots have been tied for so long
I cannot loosen them. I hope, after enough time,
after I’ve forgotten every trap set for me,
that the rhymes will come easier,
the light will shine like a meteor before the
northern lights shower the deepening night.
The sun fell into the horizon too fast for me to follow.

Faintly I offered my pain,
silently I sat like a broken vase,
sadly I thought I deserved so much worse,
finally I know better, but my emotions are tied fast
to the shepherd’s rod that bruised my back.

I’ll be who I am since the pain will be the
same
no matter how close I am to the end of the trail.
Faintly I hope my words will vent, my syllables
the agents of my partial health as stars shine the
same for me as the chains are chiseled off of me.
If I could forget

I’d gladly cast off their restraints.

Piggy Banks and Walkie Talkies

 Piggy Banks and Walkie Talkies

(“Watch yourselves! Keep from wanting all kinds of things you should not have. A man’s life is not made up of things, even if he has many riches.” Luke 12:15)

He had the piggy bank since before he could remember.
Perhaps a grandparent or uncle had given it to him,
or maybe it was a premium for opening a youth bank account
at the downtown savings and loan.
All he knew, he put all his extra coins through the slot
in the pig’s ceramic back and loved the idea that one day
the piggy would be full.

It was true that kids in his neighborhood played
cops and robbers
with sticks and six-shooters made of wood.
One boy had a bb gun, but he kept it at home.

Most of them had pet dogs, mongrels, and mutts their
parents
made them keep rounded up in the back yard. If
they had allowed
the friends might have used them to herd the cattle they
pretended to rustle. His was named
Frisky.

They made a fort beneath the lowering limbs
of a neighbor’s pine tree. As dusk settled
they became dark as the shadows and could wait out
the search party sent by the day’s prepubescent sheriff.
They sent out scouts out across the street and around the block
to inform them when the den might be attacked.

Some days later he happened upon an ad in the back
of a Superman comic book. In 1966 everyone read
Batman, The Green Hornet, The Archies, and Mad Magazine.

Two army green walkie talkies: $12.99!

The perfect advantage when scouts and robbers needed
secret communication.

He went to the piggy bank, perhaps three quarters full,
and turned it over to pull out the rubber stopper in
the piggy’s stomach. But there was none.

How had he never noticed? Had he never thought of spending
his treasure on candy, or firecrackers, or cinnamon toothpicks before?

He showed the bank to his mom who laughed at his predicament.
“You have to break the bank”, she said, “like a pinata.”

Embarrassed at his lack of knowledge
he tiptoed back to his room. On the way he
grabbed a hammer from the junk drawer
and set the piggy bank on his dresser. With
a few taps dampened by a towel from the laundry
the pig split open like easter morning.

Counting his bounty (he had enough plus a dime
or two for candy), he put it all in a plastic bag
and walked downtown to shop for his walkie talkies.
And there they were, perfect, green like a jeep,
with volume dials and batteries included.
He poured the money onto the counter while
the shop owner smiled.

The next night the usual rustlers showed up
running in and out of the yards and bushes.
The thieves hurried to their hideout while the
cops started the hunt. With walkie talkie
in hand
he was ready to take the coppers down.

Their scout followed the posse across to houses
and past the apartment complex at the corner.
He pushed the button, “Cops on the move. Over.”

No one heard the call in the hideout, just the buzz
like am radio makes at night. So

The boy with the broken piggy bank
snuck out from the hideout and was duly arrested
before he could turn around.

He read the instructions the next day, the ones he
used when he tested them with his brother. And,
though the walkie talkies worked just fine in the house,
in the yard, and next door

He read, “Range, up to 200 feet.”

At 11 he was unsure how far that was. But it was too far.
He had to admit defeat. And
find another piggy bank of plastic
with a door to remove coins on
the installment plan.

And Will Watch Your Eyes

 
And Will Watch Your Eyes

(“Anxiety in a person’s heart weighs it down, but a good word makes it glad.” Proverbs 12:25)

There are eyes full of beauty but smudged with coal,
hearts so delightful and yet feel only halfway whole.
There are days filled with firelight and butterflies
but the mind shivers inside its frightening stories.
And there are those who would fix it all by
quoting a verse, a pithy proverb, an anecdote from their
own life aflight, who have never known the way the brain
can wake with fistfights beginning the most resurrection of
days.

I will sit with you when you feel there is no one to see,
I will find the silence, the presence, the coffee and the chair
reserved for the dearest friends who have practiced and perfected
never saying anything at all.

There are voices that move the soul like music,
but in their own head it is discordant, too sick
from the crush of air pressure and peer reviews
that they never sing unless caught by surprise.

I will listen with you, write your verses with you, hum with you,
I will find the middle notes that makes you shine, the tempo that
you find, the chord you created that, once played, coaxes the tears.
You did not need an audience,
you needed an accompanist.

Come, let us compose your story again.
Tell me the brightness, the jewel, the time you knew
the warm grass was meant for your toes alone.
Come, I will repeat it back to you line by line.
Tell you the peace I find in your unrhymed yarns
with more colors than I’ve ever seen.

And when you forget it, as I forget mine,
I will whisper just the first few words and watch
your eyes full of beauty again.

I Wasn't Bluffing

 

I Wasn’t Bluffing

(“But when he saw many Pharisees and Sadducees coming to watch him baptize, he denounced them…’Prove by the way you live that you have repented of your sins and turned to God.’” Matthew 3:7a,8)

I wasn’t bluffing, I meant what I said;
so you’ve seen my soul, you’ve seen the hole in it.
If my scars were human (I suspect they are)
then blades of time and space intersected in the
place my elbow connected with the foam pillow afire
from sitting on the floor furnace vent. Did you see me shake
the flames out and the way the plastic flew like wildfire
and landed on the inside of my arm to char and boil a
silver dollar size burn on my arm. I was 13 and the scar
turned purple every time I went swimming for five years after.

So, I overheard the backstage talk that reasoned away the
unachievable mandates (we won’t wear a mask, but we’ll make you
change your gender), and wrestled with the water that never
washed me clean of
the demeaning stain of
deserving the pain of
the everlasting flames of
hell or god’s gory torture.

I would repent if only you will.
I will fall on my knees if you will once
beg pretty please the way that I did.
I will follow you into the river if you will
trade in your rolling eyes
take back your pious lies
and simply ask in words more sackcloth than satin,
“How did we offend?” Because you were the ones that had us
gathered around tables,
bemoaning the porn addiction among the faithful.
But I knew you had not spoken truth,
and had set traps to get confessions that, many times,
had already freely been given.

I wasn’t bluffing, I meant what I said;
you never saw my soul, and you invented its abyss.
My scars were human and I was left to find deserts
in the ocean.
I still am adrift in lonely, so alone I am
weightless.

 

I would repent, but will never give my confession again. 

I Do Not Want You to Know I Limp

I Do Not Want You to Know I Limp

(“Grass dies and flowers fall, but the word of our God lasts forever.” Isaiah 40:8)

I do not want you to know I limp, at least not
when you watch me walk.
I had a bone spur removed a decade ago
and now the joint of my big toe
grinds bone against bone.

I should have it looked at, I should have surgery,
but I walk my mile-and-a-half now, stride matching stride,
so you cannot see my pain.

I will talk to you about my toe, and complain,
but I do not want you to know I limp.

I do not want you to know my heart is darkness, at
least not when I’m alone in the night.
I had an old self removed nearly five decades ago
and the new one, still a seedling,
sprouts slow against slow.

I should have watered it, I should sit in the sun,
but I walk my life-and-a-half now, dusk versus dawn,
so you cannot call my bluff.

I will talk to you about my faith, earthy stuff,
but I do not want you to know my
heart is darkness.

It is late February and the daffodils have not bloomed,
the tulips should soon peek through their winter tombs.
The bulbs, all dirt and mud, have yawned across the winter
until long sun and vast days pull them toward the stars again.

All the world is waiting for the uncrumbling of nature
to reveal the limps we hid from fear,
and the hearts we coddled for ego’s sake,
when all that ever lasts forever is
the unseen Word, the Poetry, the Song,
the dance that limps with the hurt and
the heart that started the seedling,
the Alpha and Omega of everything.