Ode for Nex Benedict

Ode for Nex Benedict

(“He has done mighty deeds by his power. He has scattered the people who are proud and think great things about themselves.” Luke 1:51)

The teenager had a cat,
a pet with a name fit for Olympus. Cats
grow well in
Oklahoma.
Sometimes people do not.
They were a teenager walking through
ancestral ways, navigating high school hallways.
There was beauty in their handsome face,
there was grace in their chocolate eyes,
there was sadness in their beautiful soul.

How could anyone erase a life just beginning?
How could fists land on the body of one finding their way?
Why would anyone pound that weary head against a cold
bathroom floor?

How do you smile, you self-satisfied governor;
how do you sleep at all? A restroom was all they asked,
a place safe from the onslaught of peers,
a place their own to prep for art class or
US government.

One teacher, one ally, one friend who listened well.
One teacher speaking out for their uncertain path,
one teacher harassed for speaking on their behalf.
One teacher threatened and resigned. One teacher gone
who saw only a child of love.

While you argue over they/them, he/him, she/her,
compassion is lost in your arrogance.
They are a single syllable, uttered in one breath.
They can be the difference between life and death.

And so, they, Nex Benedict,
were battered in the bathroom where students
sometimes sneak a smoke before class.
And so, they, Nex Benedict,
were shattered with fists full of glass.
And so, we, somehow, must mourn in ways
that twist us bloody.
And so we must grieve until the last raging idiot
discovers the silence that lasts.

Today I am angry. Today do not call me.
Today it could have been my child. Today
my rage is uncontained.

Nex Benedict, a child worth loving,
we wish they had known you. We hate
the religion that berated you,
the bile that poisoned adults and translated your
humanity
into a mangled target of their certainty.

Holy Creator, may they, Nex Bendict, live long
in our memories to
help up become so much better than we

Have been.

Imported Air

Imported Air

(“God has set everything right for us. Come! Let’s tell the good news…” Jeremiah 51:10a)

He was just a victim of transportation and
found himself walking on imported air.
The rain had finally polished
the stones along the riverbank and so
he sat outside the first sunny day of the year.
A burger for him and some
fries for his pup, they watched for seals
who had gone home for the day.
The smelt, not fit to eat, mostly, had nearly
finished their run.
He was just a well-dressed wanderer and
found himself wishing for christening.

Sounding Like Tablas

Sounding Like Tablas

(“So then, no one should brag about human beings. Everything belongs to you.” 1 Corinthians 3:21)

And I heard a voice sounding like tablas against
a sweating sky. I never second-guess the sounds anymore.
And I saw angels flying,
though I saw nothing at all.
And I knew the world was filled with thoughts that had
wandered behind me
from the day something died within until
the moment I wrote this

WORD.

And I cannot describe, to even my own satisfaction,
why the sun should smile as it does.
I could not explain the way roosters crow,
doves cry,
and the earth dances, the earth whirls,
the earth prances, the earth twirls on its path
to who
knows
where.

My fists are unbent. My fingers are swollen from
years of piano notes,
from decades of fretting the chords to form
someone else’s songs.

I still hurry, hoping I’ll hear another pronouncement
that all is well, and all manner of things shall be well.
But the proclamations do not go before me;
they capture me,
they unwrap me before
I ever hear them coming.

I can see it on your face. No, I can imagine it.
The wrinkles around your eyes as you squint at my
imprecision.

I would explain. I would elucidate. I would hand out
an outline. I would project a PowerPoint. But

Some things

Are more felt that explained. And Spring beckons me
from this weary winter. Spring caught be by the heel with
the first sight of daffodils in my neighbor’s garden.

Our Choreography Renewed

Our Choreography Renewed

(“The curtain in the Temple was torn into two pieces, from the top to the bottom.” Mark 15:38)

Once the illusions are scattered,
once the veil is removed,
once the hardened arteries are cleared,
once the implanted devices that replace the
original design are removed,
we might see the sun the same again.

Why is everything so small,
why are the stars any different here?
Why do imprisoned thoughts
sit enthroned behind halls draped with
crosses?

Though a thousand flags wave,
though banners catch the wind like cannonballs,
though lavender is turned to dust,
though our sculptures rust in the rain,

We can learn to trust the love within
the center. We can drop the disguises we
thought defended the shores from foes we
never had.

Our beds are unmade,
our pillows are stone,
our vision is dilated,
our view is myopic.
We see what we have been taught,
we teach what is written,
we do not read it beforehand.
We underline words that
close the doors to
the expanse that existed before we had

A single second to think.

The illusions can lift like fog, the rifts can fill with
the cooing of doves. The fields can be spotted
with does standing in the snow.
Our breath can come slowly,
our choreography renewed.
The chances are good if we sit in

Someone’s kitchen, smell the bread baking
against the uncommon rain,
that we will see the length between us is
only the same as the space between angels,
as the rays of light between droplets of dew.
We will learn to dance unrehearsed and put
our distinctions away while we savor the sunlight
that drenched the vine, savor the moments like
early wine.
And learn, without trying, that veils only obscure
the truest nature of things.

The Sky Drips Like Honeycomb

The Sky Drips Like Honeycomb

(“But God now unveils these profound realities to us by the Spirit.” 1 Corinthians 2:10)

There are arms you cannot see,
ideas that seem like nonsense,
handy jargon always out of context.

I once imagined everything and then
was hemmed in by corners higher than
sight for me.
But the walls, now translucent,
become clearer when words are replaced by
unexpected dreams
of universal dances like a day in August,
like old friends limping while the music laughs
like angels.

The sky drips like honeycomb for those who will see it.
The leaves shade us from recently honed blades that
try to explain the dangers of passive resistance.

Just once (I am lying, just all the time) would you please
join us
on the picnic grounds where children play,
where peaceful dragons give rides to anyone who
will believe?
Fainter than day we can leave our insistence behind
and roll down the grassy hills, tumble down the
embarcaderos to watch the seals do the backstroke.

I still find it difficult to
to write lyrics about imminent events.
Once I knew I foresaw them, or at least a prophet had.
Now it is merely the stream that cools my feet this moment,
this day, this space between parentheses.

The steamroller has been garaged in the shed;
it is the day of gathering, the day of feasting instead.

Tides of Geese

Tides of Geese

(“But I, the Lord, will protect you, and you will not be handed over to the people you are afraid of.” Jeremiah 39:17)

I am afraid my tears have been misquoted,
my silence has been soaked in
new translations before the ink runs.
But no matter, I cannot interpret the
chaos that wanders in and out of me.

Because we do not comprehend the
quarter tones that descend from Tibetan hills
they pass like granite beyond our ears and into the
western fields where
flocks of geese land to lunch. We walk by
and do not notice the way they occupy the open space
as if they own it.

They were like the seafoam-on-sand that displaced
my toes,
then fills the depressions left behind.
I step toward them, they turn and move as one,
safely several feet from me, then, as I pass,
turn and take their positions again.
They are the tide, and I am the anti-moon.

Their feet and mine are glued to the same earth.
The heavy air coats us all, dew-like just outside of
the winter’s grasp.

When I said I was afraid, I did not mean I shiver.
But to explain my tears is like spinning tales of
Greek tragedy so dense you would yawn and look for
an exit from my meander. You would tip your hat,
take your leave, and wander to see if the geese have
yet mounted the winds.
And I am left with untold stories. I would strip them
bare,
though,
unwinding the embellishments and leaving nothing but
a storyline so familiar that the denouement is discerned from the
first staccato vowel.

Christ is all around me.
He is around you too.
I am not the middle.
And neither are you.

Christ is all around us,
In the tears, songs and dust.
We are not the ending.
The beginning is trust.

The View of the River

The View of the River From Here

(“For I will restore their fortunes and will have mercy upon them.” Jeremiah 33:26b)

I’ve heard the excuses that sentence a man to
eternal consequences for a single mortal life.
I’ve seen your silly dramas you
tag
as Heaven’s Gates
and
Hell’s Flames.
I am weary.

Believe me,
I have sinned with the best.
I have hidden it even better.
I have wished my follow was better than my
swallowing every temptation that insisted that
sundown was the best time for finding the one thing
that would slow down my mind.

I packed my suitcase for heaven
but
could never tell whether the vacancy sign
was designed to invite me to a dinner by the pool.
I will not be consigned to hell
no matter
how loud your fist-pounding pronouncements.
I have seen the other side of the sunset
and the day follows plain as the love that
explains it all in oil paintings on the wall.

Fashion another runway, leave your granite slates
outside the gates and
greet the canvas that was painted on a day when
everything had melted, a day when
we were all shocked about
the grace of it all.

The same day you scared the children half-mad
with your fiery hell,
the people on the periphery were starving for
breakfast. But the children gathered at the
front of the stage
nonetheless,
frightened about the heaven they might miss.

As soon as the morning peeks through the window
I will show you
the view of the river from the top of the hill.