A Whisper Shattering Everything

A Whisper Shattering Everything

(“But from now on the Son of Man shall be seated at the right hand of the power of God.” Luke 22:69)

That’s the point, and still is.
That’s the point of view that has changed all that is.
The next sound is a whisper shattering everything.
The next question raises eyebrows.
The prisoner was cross-examined and
never backed down. They dragged their
chains across his forehead, their lightning was pale.

Preachers predicted a coming Armageddon,
the apocalypse was just around the bend.
But the universe kept arcing, the word kept
asking
why the world should be destroyed.
Blood up to the bridles and swords flashing
sky to sky while
the Human One
stood in the silence, filled up the vacuum
left panting like rain.
Vacant accusations suspect that God would not
mind
at all
burning up the earth to house all the
flagrant doubters locked into their cells.

Yet the grass still remains soft as baby’s skin
beneath bare feet that only want
to walk home in peace.

That’s the point, and always will be.
That’s the point of view that opened eyes can see.
The next sound is a parched cry from wooden beams
that wipes the slate clean.
The next question announces mortality,
why, o why, have you forsaken me?

And the human one, with the cry of finality
says it is done, finished, complete and needs no
annotation. Sit on the edges of

The world;
it is time gaze again, without/within,
and redefine our fiery rhetoric with
the new world started and being,
finished and headlong,
a creation where the
human one
whispers to power in ways that
shatter everything.

Can We Hear the Whisper?

Can We Hear the Whisper?

(“Call to Me and I will answer you, and I will tell you great and mighty things, which you do not know.” Jeremiah 33:3)

Don’t faint at the irate rantings
of crinkled skin that want to fry the world up
like bacon on the rack. They think they can see,
and all they see,
is darkness, doom, and tragedy. While they wait
for a warrior or a lion to finish off their prey,
there is a better day ushered in by a lamb,
a slaughtered one,
to reflect the possibilities like
fertilized eggs birthing hope.

It is easier,
so much easier,
to elevate the madness of the masses
than to sit in silence with the
sadness of the few.
Penned in like a locked cell,
a walled city shuttered against foreign
interference,
many have missed the inheritance of
a new pentecost that makes us stop
and listen to tongues we have never
heard before,
to see
shades we have never seen before,
to sit in the shadow of trees planted
ages ago
and reimagine every
fighter jet a homeless shelter,
every automatic rifle a garden rake,
and every steel-toed tongue a
poet with healing in their words.

Can time turn in on itself,
can babies lead the parade,
can tigers and fawns share the same lair,
can donkeys convey the king?

Can we offer liberty to everyone and
stop pretending
we don’t know what we are doing?
Can we hear the whisper that, sung often enough
will entice us all to the riverside
to finally lay our
swords and shields down?

Whispers Home

Whispers Home

(pour une amie)

Never trust a mirror distorted by blood words;
by one-vowel epithets like sword-thrusts to the brain.
Your image is befogged by the hot breath
of boiling sentences cracking upon the lava dome
sealed over and over, (a blind eye’s slap on the hand,
a fuming heat, molten sand) so that scar and wound
explode too closely. The eyes

Once soft with love, the man you found to
take you (a piece here, a piece there), a man
you hoped would astound you; he saw the
finished work while you were still shattered;
shards on concrete and lawn.

But he churned instead; his eyes
crimson red and not staring. His gaze looked ahead,
behind, through and over, but never
at the beauty he could behold if only
he had not boiled over, scalding the love
that could have made his own debris a
creation of love, degree after degree.

You are love, and listen; you are loved.
You are beauty, and behold; you are pretty,
appealing; worth gold fired twice,
worth translucent jewels; a renewal that hears
the better Word, the truer Names that
princesses carry; that have taken everything the
hateful sounds could muster, and waited,

And prayed

And waited, and wore her beauty
like Spring’s first clear morning; the fog
dispersed overnight, the roses bedewed
at first light, and her eyes shining the way new
mothers do, at the first sight and sound of
the tiny life she will love with embraces and
protective glances;

The richest and deepest brown, her eyes were
beauty too, for each happy acquaintance who,
with lost bearings finds her the welcome that
whispers “home” over the ocean’s explosions.

She is beauty; and she will still be from day,
to year, to decade and again. Call her daughter,
sister, mate or friend; she is beauty, then and now
and to the end.