Memorize the Faces

Memorize the Faces

(“’For I know the plans I have for you,’ says the Lord, ‘plans for well-being and not for trouble, to give you a future and a hope.’” Jeremiah 29:11)

Start. Why do you scale the walls of anger when
peace is within reach? Aim.
Cancel every subscription to insanity and seek
the places where
sunlight reaches every crevice, every imagined slight.
Why do you accept invitations to trouble
when
there are bridges the connect us all?
Place.
Did you make reservations for the patch of land
you so patriotically protect? Who was there
before you,
and after, who will own it then?
Send.
Write it down. Memorize the faces that cry
out,
(what a crime)
for mothers moments before dying.

Every bottle in the cupboard has been mislabeled,
the horizon is blocked by the mountains you’ve built.
Show.

Look around at Babylon, (do you disdain its idols?)
and send a letter home about the friends you’ve found.

Last, learn to love and
First.

Do I Pull Back the Curtain?

Do I Pull Back the Curtain?

 

I sat down to write today convinced there is nothing new left
within me to say. I am torn. Do I pull back the curtain?
Do I expose the storm that sits within my soul and never
feels the west wind and sun to blow it away?
Do I cry behind my eyes (no surprise I usually cry alone),
do I, undisguised, open the inner windows where
gloom pushes out in all directions against the
barometric pressure. How can it be that I am
so full of darkness,

I feel so hollow?

Or bloated. There was a time I believed these
were only the beginning of birth pangs,
some new creation evolving within me.
I believed it since I was seventeen,
and 60 years later I fear I must disagree.
You won’t believe the myriad of demons cast out
of me.
Or the midnight prayers, no solace, only agony.
Or the weeping in front of a trusted few,
and, once my guard was down, though the tiny crew
of friends tried to prevent it,
I was branded. I had no emotional control,
and so the caissons came rolling along.

I admitted, even from my elocutionists’ spot,
that I struggled with depression, and they believed it
upon first hearing.

But I lied. I rarely struggled. The fight made the dark
more demonic. I stood like a wrestler and went flat
to the mat at the referee’s whistle, then went to
visit the sick, keep office hours, and pass the time
playing mindless games to keep the night at bay.

Yes, I lied. They heard me say it, but never saw the
face, the terror, the desire to walk right out of town and
keep on walking until I could walk no more. I kept the
beasts inside. And if they did escape, I stalked them closely
to keep them at bay.

But I see rainbows around your head my friend.
And I’ve heard the trembling which you feel is a permanent affliction.
Do we finally give birth? Or, just as our delightful children,
does it take two souls to draw out the nativity we hoped for
all along?

Most things escape me these days. Even my words are less artful,
prosaic, plain, common and, in a word:

Sad.

But I know I would do anything to hold a mirror to your soul
until you saw the spectrum of beauty that surrounds you. And,
you,
I know now,
would hold the mirror for me.

Why I Write at All

Why I Write at All

(“Therefore, your gates shall be open continually; they shall not be shut day nor night.” Isaiah 60:11a)

This is a day I ask myself why I write at all.
Why I pushed my body out of bed when the
weight of pain
nailed me to the mattress.
I turn my face to the wall,
feel myself shrinking,
feel the rusty gates closing on
my weary soul.

If you were sitting beside me
you would see the sun shining
and wonder how, on a day like this,
I could feel so small, so full of gravity,
so locked into nothing at all.

And if you asked, I could not explain why
my feet are raw from gravel,
my hands bent from electricity,
my thoughts packed with melancholy,
my eyes scratched from tears below freezing.

Surely God would rescue
me from the doldrums
(now that storms rarely crash over my bow)
and fill my sails once more.

Yesterday as I turned out the lights and
went to lock the door before sleeping,
I found it locked already.

I had not left the house all day.

Something Private

 

Something Private

(“Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, ‘Out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.’” John 7:38)

I want to write something so private that no one will know
it is me;
then I could write effortlessly and
my hope might rise
that you have discovered honey and
bread in me.

I have been untethered, distant from home,
unconnected to earth or sky,
rain or sea,
and the clouds pass far too quickly
for me.

I have no more meetings to attend,
no schedules to keep,
only the blue light from river to my eye,
and trees gone silent because the heat
choked their upraised feathers now
drooping like midafternoon on a workday.

Still there is something satin within
like an azure banner in the wind.
I wish to be transported to sit at
the kitchen table
with departed friends or standing
at the bar
missing half the conversation because
the dj loves funk and plays it loud.

You would not hear me complain.
His hands spin the discs while
his head bounces like David Byrne.
We all are surrounded, we are sympathetic
strings
on a human music machine. We are
streams
where glances are more private
than whispers. We are teeming with life,
top to bottom. There is always water
in the middle of the ocean.

I Want to Write about Beachballs

 

I Want to Write about Beachballs

“In peace and justice he walked with Me...” Malachi 2:6b)

I want to write about beachballs in church today,
I want to write about babies crying.
I want to write about bad breath in church today,
I want to write about old men waiting.

I want to write about a kingdom of love,
a gathering of bepatched people under a tent.
I want to write about a kingdom of peace,
a tribe without a name, having spent every bias.

I want to talk about questions in church today,
I want to talk about wondering doubt.
I want to talk about kitchens in church today,
I want to talk about new bread broken.

I want to talk about a nation of peace,
a brewing storm with nothing but nourishing rain.
I want to talk about a kingdom of love,
a table without end, open, and amen.

I want to write about birds and bears in church today,
I want to write about the society of friends.
I want to write about children who run,
who think fun gathers around their feet,
I want to write about the greeting that always means
stay as long as you want
and longer
because none of us are going away.

I want to write about a new menu to enjoy,
I want to write about exploration today.
I want to write about a new sound to rejoice,
I want to write about picnic parksounds today.

I want to write about why
we measure anything at all
when the pegs of our tent have been stretched
so far
that nothing can be seen but the horizon.

Or Write a Harmony

 

Or Write a Harmony

(“And we have not received the spirit of the world, but the Spirit which comes of God, in order to know the things that are given to us by God.” 1 Corinthians 2:12)

And how did your day begin? The clouds hugging the
ground and cold sweat dew on your brow?
Did it start with winds spiraling through the hills,
whistling and roaring like voices from up the canyon?

And what if the clouds escape the earth’s weak hold
and the winds cease for a moment just to listen to
the silence between low pressure and high pressure?
And what if we heard the music that exists so quietly
you can only hear it between heartbeats?

There is nothing magical about the moods of the day,
and yet there is singing that comes from everywhere (dark
or birth, howl or arrival, answer or inflections that change
with the hour.)

There was fear in the skies yesterday,
yet now the potholes are holy baths where brown finches
are hop-flitting in the sun. Any flip second
can rearrange a day.

Or write a harmony that we only can hear.

Dreamed-Up

Dreamed-Up

(“Jesus replied, ‘Anyone who loves me will obey my teaching. My Father will love them. We will come to them and make our home with them.’” John 14:23)

She woke up and thought she would write some words
to the one person she had refused her words for
five years and more. And then the words were only
the sudden hope of manufactured miracles,
the quick passing of canned words strengthened by seeing
it

All in a dream.

While he had suffered for seven years, the pain building
like a slow ascent up a Mexican pyramid, or the steep hills
you hike
that appear as one short jaunt until sightlines break the ridge
to see
more and more hills ahead; and in your periphery. More hills that
eventually end upon a plateau of pain; a restless place where

Each day drowns you underneath its angry intent of
shoving every thought out of a once active brain,
and your habits are soggy and sweat from the energy consumed
attempting to beat back the welding pen that has engraved “pain”
upon every movement of your body.

But she (who could challenge her motives) merely sent a “word”
that dreamed up a prophetic announcement that all his pain would
be finished soon.

And he would like an ear, for she would not bear to hear that, in a month
or a year,
the season had remained, the pain still plunging him helplessly
beyond anyone’s comprehension

Except God’s alone.