Ragged or Smooth

Jagged or Smooth

(“Why didn’t I die from the womb? Why didn’t I give up the spirit when my mother bore me?” Job 3:11)

I know the silence that is deafening,
I’ve heard it when noon feels like an encircling winter.
I’ve read the words supposed to revive me
but only fill my gut with sand.
I hear you, though you are not talking,
I’m waiting for the same things. I’m waiting
for the sanity to return.

If we could ration our days,
equal doses of pleasure and pain;
if we could only measure the darkness
to equal the bands of solar flares.
Why can’t we find the answers we
beg for? Why can’t the sunrise turn itself
around to bid us walk lightly again?

I know the pounding of unanswered mail,
I’ve heard the shrieks above stolen slumber.
I’ve read the language I inherited, I’ve translated
every word until I filled the afternoon with
thoughts captive behind the leaden bars of my brain.

I’ll write to you; I’ll talk with you. I’ll listen for
a thousand days. I’ve pounded on the granite walls
decades at a time. I know the hope that seems hollow,
the afternoons that drag on like mausoleums hidden behind
startled and painful sighs.

I haven’t forgotten the days when I would sacrifice everything
I coveted for a
tearful friend to carry my
baggage for a while. I will always sit next to the one who,
seeing my damage, does not stop to ask
at whose hand I hurt. (Though most times, I confess,
the hand was my own.)

I’ll never forget you, jagged or smooth. I’ll never regret
friendship that lasts from moon to constellations,
from mood to mood. I’ll never remove your name from
the portraits hanging from the hallways of my heart.

Meet Me at the Bridge

Meet Me at the Bridge

(“As they came from their mother’s womb, so they shall go again, naked as they came.” Ecclesiastes 5:14a)

There must be a refuge where I can say the things
that drill holes in my waiting, the same things
that trouble the kites chained down by twine. There
must be
a door I can knock on,
a pair of eyes behind it,
a shaking narrative just like mine
that won’t hold my words any longer than
it takes for me to say them.
Then they won’t be surprised when
I say them again on the front porch leaning
into the wind.

Meet me on the bridge,
the one where the ducks wait for bread.
Listen to my naked soul. I’m tired of clothing
every song behind familiar melodies,
molding every word so there can be no
misinterpretation. Or being obtuse enough that
I hide
the meaning behind images of blue mountains,
black seas, fireplace visions, or hyper-spirituality.

I want to want less, like everyone I seem to know.
But the ache expresses more, and I wonder if we all
are holding back because
we fear the eyes that would dice us roughly into
pellets scattered across the floor.

Meet me at the bar, the one that closes early.
Meet me there after last call; I know the owner.
Wear what you would have worn when you were
alone and performed for no one.
I’ll wear a hat because my hair has retreated long ago.

I’m not sure I know who I am
apart from another heart who reflects my darkest moments
and shares the same with me. Days go by without words,
weeks without the one exhale to
wrap it under a breezy sky. 

The Audacity!

 The Audacity!

(“God…set me apart from my mother’s womb and called me by his grace.” Galatians 1:15b)

The audacity!
The angels, the pagans, the sand dunes, the sea
all laughed like a house full of comedy. He came
into town,
his Harley roaring,
his passion soaring,
his vision storing every idea he had planned
from the midlands to the coast. He hit the ground
running
and collected food, mostly cans.
And fed 100 or more on Christmas two years
in a row.
He did all he could, for all he could,
and never locked the windows or the doors.
He had fought in the most unpopular of wars
and knew he would never leave anyone outside in the cold
again.
Agent orange had just begun to tax his holy obsession.
He would ration his health for all the saints he had yet to meet.

Houses crumble over time. But they crash in a moment.
Pain works its way slowly, but pours over the threshold meant
to keep it from escaping. He was never idle, but
he knew how to rest. But how to rehitch his body and mind
to the original epiphany; he found he was losing his breath.

With dreams bigger than self-esteem, he embraced the pastoral
scenes
along a wide lazy river. I cannot say that another poison
entered his system,
but agent orange was volatile and could have mixed with
local politics
to burn through the hope that surrounded his heart.

Eventually the two by fours rot after the years, eventually the roof leaks
from dew as much as rain. Eventually the abandoned self,
once up for any noisy gathering,
cannot abide more than a friend at a time.

Sometimes life crashes so hard on someone, even one called
from birth,
that the mental,
the physical,
the emotional pain
cannot be contained.

We would do well to audaciously
dress the undeserved wounds.

To Go Home

To Go Home

(“This is he of whom I said, after me comes a man who went before me, because he was before me.” John 1:30)

So you saw him eye-to-eye
and jumped in the womb when his
mother came calling.

You saw the spirit land
like a dove on his shoulder
and heard a voice announce his call.

You baptized him,
and wondered,
wishing it was his hand upon your head
that lay beneath the waters.

So you touched him skin-to-skin
and did resist his righteous request.
You leveled the earth before the lamb,
the world’s sin-eraser,
and got yourself in trouble with
politicians and kings.

Me, I feel stranded here,
moored upon earth in a square-foot perimeter.
Me, I’ve landed here without seeing,
without touching,
without knowing a heartbeat within my own,
an uncancelled thought, a ghost of a holy touch
on my wrinkled brow.

I write from emptiness, a well dry as crust,
a heart of tears so salty they are dust upon my cheeks.

I cry out, I appease to empty space above and within.

You saw him eye-to-eye,

Me, I’m just waiting to go home.