To Tell the Truth

“An honest person has respect for the Lord. But a person whose paths are crooked hates him.” Proverbs 14:2

Whenever my mom suspected I had lied but had no confession forthcoming from her oldest son, she would almost always say, “You can keep it from me, but God knows if you are telling the truth or not. And, your ears always turn red when you lie.” I had to agree with her about the God bit; it was reasoning that I could not escape. The red ears I still wonder about, though. Whether or not they turned color when I lied as a child, I am exquisitely aware when I feel their blush now, all from her attempts at motherly interrogation.

HeadLong

HeadLong

(“Therefore, you are to store up these words of mine in your heart and in all your being; tie them on your hand as a sign; put them at the front of a headband around your forehead.” Deuteronomy 11:18)

I wasn’t sure it was true until I ran
headlong
into the
headlights
coming at me down the wrong side of the road.

I tried to swallow every truth they fed me;
forced down the sour, calling it sweet;
swallowing poison, singing their visions
and swore upon my future grave everything
I thought buzzed up or down my mind
was what they taught me: God was all
tangled up with me.

I wasn’t convinced I could believe until I
turned on
the song
turned down
by half the town that hated simple ballads.

I tried to perform every ditty they taught me,
reworked lyrics to frame the obvious,
toned down the volume to fit the audience,
eventually lost my words and threw the
lead sheets to the wind. I never understood them
anyway.

I memorized, not proof-text and address,
but words like dancing, rules like common sensing
(permission before fencing along my neighbor-line)
I packed my wits for the journey with pictures
I had taken along the way. It seems the portraits I
captured of my Companion smiled more often than
the pictures others had given me with their letters of
introduction.

Head-on He struck me, call me brainDead now, or
merely foolishly aging, but I’ve renewed my license to
write with His picture hanging on the wall. Like a movie
where the hero has amnesia, now I’ve forgotten every bit
of advice that kept me from singing like it came from
anyplace, any space other than
straight from my heart.

Needed to Hear

Needed to Hear

(I was constantly “rejoicing in his whole world and delighting in mankind.” Proverbs 8:31)

“luckily” I said and
suddenly wished I was dead
for the measurers of words and
literates of faith deemed my usage absurd
(having conferred earlier in the day and deemed
potlucks unlucky, changing the term to PotBlessings
and FaithMeals, which made rhyming even a more
miserable lot for a poet who prefers free verse
without messing
with metre and rhyme much.)
Still they cringed as if lucky was unheard of
in the vocabulary of faith.

I had overstirred my welcome.

She sat just outside the door while the plates were clattering
in the tiny back kitchen, children chattering, but no one noticing
she had left. The PotBlessing was nearly over and nothing else mattered,
except the girl outside who didn’t need to be flattered, she just needed to hear.

He hurried home to take his turn at the remote, (it was
always his turn at the remote), while children, 3 of them and
2 years apart nearly exactly, family planning went well;
while three children grabbed his arms, legs and neck before
he even removed his coat. His eyebrows narrowed, his skin was cold,
he needed a beer before now, before the day exploded upon the 3
and the 1 he knew since elementary. They all just needed to hear.

He was plain, she was shy, they couldn’t sing, they never applied,
she was hungry, he was thirsty, they loved too early, they had no reply
to the looks that always went through them,
the words that never included them,
and they moved in down the street in the adobe apartments,
no one adopted their premature family. The collected food stamps
for a hobby, and raised another round of invisible children
who sit outside church potlucks

Wondering why people kept cringing over words like “lucky”

They just needed to hear, early and never-too-late,
just once in their life
poor and dry, or rich and raining,
we all need to hear, know it or not:

“Baby, you’re amazing.”

Hunger and Hard Times

“He put you through hard times. He made you go hungry. Then he fed you with manna, something neither you nor your parents knew anything about, so you would learn that men and women don't live by bread only; we live by every word that comes from God's mouth.” Deuteronomy 8:3 (The Message)

There it is, spoken to Moses. It was God who put us through hard times. It was even He who made us hungry. It is just so easy to blame the devil. Why not? God surely doesn’t want me to suffer, to hunger, to go without or to appear needy.

Embarrassed

“So love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, and strength.” Deuteronomy 6:5

This verse does nothing less than embarrasses me. Simply meditated, there is no reason to hold back true, whole hearted love from the One who has given me life itself, let alone all the other blessings alongside living. The first three verses of Deuteronomy Six set it up for us exactly that way.

But Your Words

But Your Words

(“Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will certainly not pass away.” Mark 13:31)

My magnificence, my manuscript,
my masterpiece, my sheets of handwritten lyrics
and longings double spaced on the old Underwood
were boxed away once I left home for the first time
and from the time until reminded what words meant to me
once I inked them out of mind; it was 20 years.

Sometimes I bragged about them, sometimes bereaved over their loss,
sometimes remembering them, my tour de force, other times
(considering the source) I knew they were derivative,
clunky as bricks and cheap imitations of the poetry gurus
who always caught my breath.

But Your words, paper or heard, can still bring tears
where other words quickly incite new fences around
my acreage.

But Your words, always and now, know the corners of me,
better than the mourners of me who have conditions for my improvement,
who have eyes fixed on my every movement,
who never dissent, but with a turn of phrase, a well-placed accent
distort the courage I crave.

But Your words, spoken unfeigned, wash over craggy blocks
of desert cliffs, the heart held siege by drought, until
shadow and sun, until green leaves appear. The tears
are merely the heart’s irrigation.

I have lost more words than I have written, but never
have forgotten the face that inspired them,
the planet motions that conspired slim volumes of day.

But Your words, laughter or sad, are truer than faces I’ve forgotten,
tracing hope like a halo, a love so fearful I sometimes shudder
and wonder why I think even one word I’ve uttered
is worth remembering

When Your words, thunder and still, find the wound
and without lecture, pierce the callous and soften
until I hear better what I have heard so often.

Checking In

Checking In

(“Let me pass through your land, I will travel only on the highway; I will not turn aside to the right or to the left.” Deuteronomy 2:27)

You tried to catch my chin again,
turn my sideways to burn red
instead of loving the trees and the blooms that waved
overhead just above the disagreeable
critics who heard the blues
and said
there was no life where they used to play like gardens.

But you insisted, with my chin in your hand,
that my little backyard roses and lavender
did not match your meandering horticulture
of vines and wild blackberry invaders.

Until a visitor knocked and inquired about my name:
Their smile hand happy old-time twang
brought me back to center again,
“We’ve heard of your garden, sir, and
I have to say,
we would love to stay and afternoon there,
someday.”

I turned my chin and started down the path again,
but first I touched the hands that had turned me aside,
and asked,

“If you would like, sir, I will check in on your garden,
next time I pass that way.”