10 Minutes of Clarity

 10 Minutes of Clarity

(“Our Lord Jesus Christ himself and God our Father, loved us and by his grace gave us eternal comfort and a wonderful hope.” 2 Thessalonians 2:16)

During the first half of the movie I had
10 minutes of clarity.
It was a French movie set in the 70s
and the subtitles kept me engaged.
For half the time of a good nap
the ocean swept over me without drowning me,
the loves and pains, the stains and steeps were
all the same. They did not disappear, but were
clearly there in my psyche; fish and plankton,
all a part of the biome of over 60 years
of mortality.

I breathed easy. Surgical incisions were insistent
but not consuming. Friends I hoped would call,
didn’t. But I remained undisturbed. I could see that
minutes or days beyond my control were simply the passing
of weather systems out of reach and unrelated
to my ability to swim.

I had not chosen this place, this fleeting vision. It
surprised me like a warm shower out of a clear sky
on a Thursday afternoon. I could not capture the clouds
any more than I could stop the waves that gently rocked
my soul.

It was 10 minutes. Then my anxiety; every shivering thought,
every regret over reckless words, every impossible repentance,
every lead-covered silence, every solitary song I never meant
to sing alone.
Every one of them, short-circuited within, powered my skin,
my heart, my lungs, my head and threatened to trip the fuse
I thought
was out of danger during my

10 minutes of clarity.

You Wear Stripes and I’ll Wear Checks

 You Wear Stripes and I’ll Wear Checks

(“Rejoice greatly, Daughter Zion. Sing aloud, Daughter Jerusalem. Look, your king will come to you. He is righteous and victorious. He is humble and riding on an ass, on a colt, the offspring of a donkey.” Zechariah 9:9)

You wear stripes and I’ll wear checks,
we’ll dance until the world thinks we are the whirling milkshakes
from the midway at the state fair.
We’ll walk past the sunset, we’ll take our hands out of our pockets,
we’ll walk without a word to say, we’ll take the same midday meals we
took yesterday.

We’ll lay down the memories, etch them into the sidewalk,
we’ll lay down the memories so plain, we will never forget
the dancing that brought rain, the songs no one explained,
and the hours we spent unafraid of the next day or the day after
That.

Tomorrow we might step up to the sky,
tomorrow we might climb the stair, see if we can fly.
Let us look like fools in a world that, adoring war,
celebrates medals and ribbons, bombs and acquisitions;
let us loop behind the firepower with wild poppies from the fields.
Let us lead the parade on
the day after tomorrow
where gardens and festivals meet on sunny Sundays
midafternoon.

Have you seen us lately? Have you felt the breeze?
Have you heard us lately? Have you felt the thawing
of ice bricks; have you felt the mighty withdrawing
from their thrones?

Sing, though the words are indecipherable. Dance, though
the patterns and colors do not mix. Feast, though your pockets
are empty. Drink, though you have forgotten why.

You wear stripes and I’ll wear checks,
we’ll walk down the midway from entrance to exit,
wearing palm branches for sandals and the flowers we
planted where muskets once were manufactured.

Below the Brainless Clouds

 Below the Brainless Clouds

(“Be thankful in all circumstances, for this is God’s will for you who belong to Christ Jesus.” 1 Thessalonians 5:18)

I could live under the warmth of your smile,
I could live unmanaged and overgrown
while
light keeps pouring from your eyes.

I could drink the bitter root,
I could taste the prisoner’s diet,
I could sweat under incinerated isolation
while
your laugh occupies the rooms I had vacated,
the accolades I felt I never deserved,
the place I could call home.

But I would find it,
the nuclear fusion that beatifies every
dream and every
waking sorrow, the loam that pulls my roots
deeper when I am only sticks and thorns.

I could live below the brainless clouds,
I could live disconnected and stilted
while
the songs you taught me stay
on repeat,
lulling me to sleep to
see your smile again.

Like Desert Provocations

 Like Desert Provocations

(“‘You will not succeed by your own strength or by your own power, but by my Spirit,’ says the Lord All-Powerful.” Zechariah 4:6b)

The opinions stood out on the desert floor like
provocations, pine nuts in pasta. And still, we will not
admit
that we cannot see more than three feet
in front of us. All our blind theology
fuels warplanes and necessary conflict.
All our certainty sets up the fighter’s cage
where the sun scraped every inch of humanity from
the combatants.

Men read book after book to justify
their dominance, their fists that excuse every
pummeled wall as they try to take back a country
that never belonged to them.
Their women
submit
because
the bible tells them so.
Then men insist
because
Jesus called them to be
warriors. There is nothing sorrier
than queues of soldiers
being told they are doing it for god.

We have looked for divine vengeance in
explosive independence. We have mummified
Jesus,
tying his rugged hands to national flags,
tying his dust covered feet, contorting them
into unreliable combat boots that stir the smoke
that blinds us still.
The eyes of god never looked so frightening
than when
we defined them as our policy of civil defense.

We need the desert again, oh fathers. We need the
silence to offer our daughters. We need the solos again,
oh mothers. We need the
lullabies to solace our sons.

And once the discord is discarded,
once we admit our shallow discontent,
we may see, we may hear, we may listen like
lost dogs who have found their way home.
We may discover the Spirit never obeys
our transgressions. We may discover the Spirit
always
lifts us alive from
the carnalities of war.

To Shape the World

 To Shape the World

(“Look! The Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!” John 1:19b)

How could we miss it,
the way you displayed our violence
when you never said a mumbling word?
Why do we dream of armies,
why do we fight hand to hand,
face to face,
race to race,
grabbing land and
staking our claims?

My walls, my acreage,
my car, my failing courage,
the broken bridges are my solitary
confinement. My isolation has gone
on far too long.

Why a lamb? Oh, little one, so very young;
why a lamb?
Shepherd us again, gather us, all of us,
into the fold again.

I had dinner with some of your own a few
weeks ago. We were a jolly boy, a mother of
still waters running, an elder left on his own,
a daughter in love with the world, her husband
in love too, a wife who wishes we would celebrate
more often. And one who, I daresay, is among the
beloved.

Though we made no mention of it as we drank
and laughed and nearly emptied the place,
I suspect the lamb was present too. And, I daresay,
called us all beloved and sent us, full and joy

To shape the world in the image of lamb-like resistance,
defenseless reformation, campfire pentecost, shalom and
shabbat; to

Meet the next member of the flock with
wildflowers that take away the
sins of the world.

Bury Your Idols

 Bury Your Idols

(“The Lord God is my strength. He will set my feet like the deer. He will let me walk upon the heights.” Habakkuk 3:19)

Tonight more blood stains the streets
while the entitled
use our children for target practice.
Tonight more mothers cry to the sky
helpless as
ducks in a shooting gallery.
Tonight more people
used their rights
to suspend righteousness and
pave the footprints of cowardice;
oh people of pretense, get on your
feet and walk where too many have fallen.

Look in the caskets.
A long, painful, life-shattering look at
what the masters of violence have wrought.
Can you still identify them by their faces,
can you?
Can you tell who died first or last,
or who never saw it coming?
Can you, just this once, learn the sculpture,
the art,
the hard, fucking casualties of your
complacency?

Don’t tell me how high you have walked.
I want to know, has enough blood soaked your
sneakers? Has enough flesh been torn from
bony limbs, enough bodies ripped to shreds?

Don’t tell me you’ll pray. Don’t say it.
Don’t tell me God is your strength
if you’re too weak
to turn your hellish idol into garden
tools.
Don’t tell me how much it haunts you;
get off your pious ass and learn the ways of
the Spirit, the Mother, the Daughter,
the One attacked from womb to Golgotha
with the weapons of institutional anger.

I can’t stand to see another fundraiser,
I will not let your group wash my car.
I can’t stand to see another shirt that proclaims
devilish schemes in the name of
the one who rains on the just, the unjust,
the crust and the bread. Cry

Out.

Raise your voice. Speak up. Loudly.
The voices from sod and pavement
will not wait for you to call another vigil.
Find the words from the
God

Who refused violence, who died for friends,
foes, dust and the earth.

Bury your idols and
let the children live.

How Old is the Sky?

 How Old is the Sky?

(“He is always striving in his prayers on your behalf, so that you may stand mature and fully assured in everything that God wills.” Philippians 4:12b)

How old is the sky in your world?
Have you measured the path from the slight frost
on early spring grass?
How old is the sky in your world?
Did it start its infancy before you were born,
or come into being the first time its light hit
your eyes?
Our lives are slender. We are taken in by
every sleight-of-hand
that tells us
the universe has always been young or round,
with pyramid tops like geodesic domes. How
old is the sky?

In case you didn’t know
there are more creatures unseen alive
than watched by you or me. There are more colors
that tie us together like birthday gifts. There are
more books to read than there is time. There
are
fewer aromas more suited for contemplation
than mildewed pages and brewing coffee.

We are merely pennies in a universal economy,
we are the bent pitches of native flutes,
we are rain where we hope for sun,
we are bored before we’ve ever begun
to examine a single leaf and the tree of
diversity
from which it springs.

Everything is a straight line,
everything is concentric,
everything has acute angles,
everything has circumference.

The waves crash like cymbals,
the waves wriggle like earthworms,
the waves bend like rainbows,
the waves flash like popcorn.

And all that matters is,
how you, my neighbor,
are doing on this variegated day.