Spinning a Narrative

Spinning a Narrative

(“I know what you have done, and that you are neither cold nor hot.” Revelation 3:15)

I would listen and, knowing what others
had said they had heard,
would scar my soul over the silence that
did not flow
but was the weight of summer obscurity.

I thought my sight was blurred,
my ears unhearing the very thing
I wished to find.

Lock me in my room, and do not let me out
until I’ve spent the night in the sweetest reverie
I’ve read about from men of old,
women like angels told,
and stories unfolded by names I heard quoted
at meetings of the devoted.

I paced, I read, I played three chords;
instead of songs or lengthy prayer
my eyelids like lead scratched my waiting watch.

I was certain no one had longed as deeply as I,
yet there was only the shallow dribble of my own mind’s
constant turbine spinning a narrative that has followed from
then until now. What I believed, hope and sought was
never as glowing as
the fireside stories; of parables in street shoes
and the buried treasure always discovered for the effort.

I have chased You, only Father, not well. I am tired,
I am weary, I have gone this far on this tiny soul’s
capacity alone.

Let me rest now, my breath is shallow. The rain has beat
upon the windows through the night
and the puddles are deep in the sunken footprints

Of a man who carried a mislaid burden much too far
up the mountain.

And yet the tears remind me there is so much love
I could never be satisfied, never filled, never stalling;
for the laying down of my burden is the only action
that leaves no footprints for the torrents to fill.

Mutters and Utterances

Mutters and Utterances

(“Some magicians think they can wake Leviathan. So let them say their curses and curse the day I was born.” Job 3:8)

I was wondering when your divination would show its hand.
When the mutters and utterances under your breath
would cast their obelisk shadows across the land.

I cannot say what I wish I could. The lake is full of fury,
the river a crease across the countryside. And every moment
that looks darker than the last
is prophesied to be the final event on the calendar
that you think you began.

How many births must there be until
people give each other room to breathe.

The hospitals are riddled with shrapnel and blood,
and yet we lock our doors to the innocents for fear
there is a magician hidden among them. And Jesus never

Enters the doors of churches who do not open theirs.

It feels like a million years of crying, each birth preceded
by twice as much dying. Can I ask you for a hand before you
dismiss me from your sphere? Where did we learn to put
predetermined circumferences around our circle of friends?

I wait too long now. The songs lie dormant in an age so far gone
that the tears follow my wrinkles from the corner of each eye
along the creases in my cheeks. The weeks pass and summer slips
by; a brief breeze of someone I once knew by name.

When grief finally erupts from its deep springs, the mourning
over losses (years of love, missed endearments) obscures the sky
and I hear my papa cry, “you make a better door than a window.”

These days (no lie) I would rather sneak out of the way
than take the lumps for discovering what I had always wished

To be true.

That is Where I Hear

That is Where I Hear

(“God showed his faithful love to me in front of the king…The Lord my God was with me, and that gave me courage.” Ezra 7:28)

Even though the brain waves crash upon my skull
like an endless buzz saw,
and the air is heavier than an anvil upon my head,
I have no other hope, no better word than
the softest whisper speaking from beneath the pain,
“I am with you, and I will be with you again.”

Even though the songs no longer come from my hands,
and the words, my love, my still life, explain less and less
between the lonesome stretches of writing.
I have no poetry than the simple rhymes of
childlike times. My mind is full of mystified
tangles, sentences dangling from the corners of my mouth.

Yet, I still read the unchanging motion, the words spoken
that are rooted at the base of every grunt or elocution.
“I have said, and will said it again; never will I leave you,
and never forsake you.”

And yet, nearing the end of my mission, when, from the first
the seeds grew rapidly, the message ignited wildfires of love;
at this final appointment, the last post of my journey

I fail. Though the soil is rich and watered well, the seed
does not germinate, the crop is dwindling and
I watch from a brittle chair awarded me once for
Outstanding Support, while the tears dry before they
hit the floor. My trajectory, though cruelly gravity-bound,
always rose between days of relative ease.

My books are old and tattered. Perhaps my words are as well.
Expectations shattered, percentages shrinking, while I keep thinking
the old seed should produce the same crop of my earlier mission.

And that is where I hear

Such a sad, sad silence. 

Silence!

Silence!

(“Be silent, all flesh, before the Lord, for he has roused himself from his holy dwelling.” Zechariah 2:13)

Who are we to instruct the Wind-maker when
we cannot see the breeze at all?

 When did we ascend the throne on antediluvian peaks
and survey the globe. Our panorama’s are sadly flattened?

How can we instruct the creation to match our templates,
the stars move from view while we position our deviated rules
written on cardboard before the nearsighted followers?

            No, I taught no one; only the man, only the woman,
            only the image-bearers on our best interpretation.

And where is our learning? What have we assumed? While we
exhume the bodies of our best knowledge, the failure rate only
rises as we stick to our guns.

How do we count the countless? How do we dare?
How do we enact a directive when the conversation was confidential?
How do you still box the air, never sparing your opponent
nor scoring the apparent.

            No, I announced it well; did you not hear my trumpet call?
            I raged at the uppity boys who silently wait the anthem’s end.
            I put them on the spot, closed the door and did my duty to
            God and to my Country.

Silence!

The quiet of the Almighty will break ever unholy assumption.
Do not lift an eyebrow, do not look around. Do not gaze in the stadium seats,
keep your eyes on the ground. Yahweh arises and you will soon see,
everything you though you understood, everything you knew to a “t”
has been trampled by His coming upon the winds of the dawn.
Everything you thought was right, you better prepare to get it wrong.

Do not put a finger to the piano, unplug the guitars,
drop the mic, (humbly this time) and stay right where you are.
He comes to judge your judgments. He comes to inspect the scars,
the wounds and the harm your pronouncements made when you made them
in His name.

It is no different, we are all the same. We walk the straight line if
the straight line means a detour around riches we’ve gained by
ignoring the least of any of these and promoting our feasts: VIP
only.

The Almighty is roused; He sees the waves sent to drown
the bad taste in our mouths.
The Almighty is pained; He feels the sores on the arms
and feet of the chosen.
The Almighty is slow; He knows the time we mistake
for divine approval.
The Almighty is ready; He comes to make His grace
the thunder before rain.
The Almighty heals; And cuts, and lances, and finds the
root of our growling glances from faces He designed to
shine like the sun.

Silence now! And listen unspoken. He will heal, he will refresh,
he will transform, he will fix;
Listen, for He will heal, but only that which is broken. 

No One is Looking

No One is Looking

(“Our earthly fathers correct us, and we still respect them. Isn’t it even better to be given true life by letting our spiritual Father correct us?” Hebrews 12:9)

If I wish for just a few more moments,
a day, a weekend, eight days or seven,
I could prove to you I function better
with the pain annulled and my mind clearer.

And yet they ask me, in geometric proportions,
how I’m learning the lesson, with disguised assertions
about meaning and karma, all things and bad things
and the reasons they happen.

My answers are weaker as the pain has become
a red ribbon stretching past memory’s happy sky.
I have stop analyzing, asking why, and cry far more often
now that all my reasons have run dry.

Pain leaves me lonely, it is my only conversation.
8-5 is torture, my body an enemy-nation occupying the
joys once, the stories twice, and the months pass
faster while I wait for an explanation;

Or a new creation to take the leaden weight,
once free to think, beyond river’s rapport with the ocean.

I’ve cried at each limping interval;
the silence is unkempt and literal.
My sentences have no periods,
my commas are not large enough.
There are no interludes; only agony
without the ecstasy.

So, with faith a microbe and hope a single Pennsylvania firefly,
I wonder what You will do with me. Why you have done this to me.
For, in all honesty, I see no purpose now for this hotly searing
fire in my head
that sheds cold tears

When no one is looking.

Of All Days

Of All Days

(“So all Israel brought up the ark of the covenant of the Lord with shouts, with the sounding of rams’ horns and trumpets, and of cymbals, and the playing of lyres and harps.” 1 Chronicles 15:28)

So I said to them, once the lightness had returned to my step:

“I was warned about the storms you bring,
with your refusals to sing, and everything you see that has
turned the great green world black. I will not turn back.”

And they just looked at me, mouths hanging open, not a breath taken,
and spears for eyes that pierced the thought bubble above my head:

They said:

“When will you learn it is our call to burn the beastly fields
that are filled with weeds and wheat beneath your feet. When will
you see, take note, and agree with our proposal, read it squarely,
about our disposal of human garbage at the curb.”

And I just looked at them, mouth hanging open, my breath still shaken,
and years of lies that made me feel different. Until this little bit of time.

Come on, people. Dance, people. Look upward, darlings. Look outward, pals.
Listen slowly, sisters. Listen surely, brothers. For the demons are canceled
for the day.

Invite every opponent, swing open the mighty iron gates,
Lay out the long red carpet, Ring the bells, it’s not too late
for every point on the globe to hear the chimes singing,
“Disrobe your objections and dance the directions of the
three-beats-in-one.”

So I said to them, once the smoke rose above the clouds
the hugged the sun like chariot wheels across the sky:

“Here is why I wrote this tune (I knew the lyrics would drive
you crazy, and still, there they are.) Do you see how far we are
from the

Joy of Mercy

The

Glee of Grace

The

Hymn of Peace

And the

Cancelled Notes we owed and could never pay? So I ask honestly,
Why, on this, of all days, would you try to keep anyone away?”

I Just Have to Tell You

I Just Have to Tell You

(“Strengthen the weak hands, and make firm the feeble knees. Say to those who have an anxious heart, ‘Be strong; fear not! Behold, your God will come…and save you.’” Isaiah 35:3-4

I hate to admit but my eyes are blood-red this morning,
blood-red since yesterday, closed and shut throughout the night.
I though we both received the same orders; the ones I received decades
ago, the same you’ve heard from the mouth of the Lord:

“Go into the world..”

But, here is where my eyes break down, where my stomach lodges
clear up into my throat,
where my fingers shake from mistaken interpretations as
more and more act like dragons
and spit fire at the world they think has begun its
persecution.

“Go into all the world…”

But we gossip about the “family on welfare” where,
parked just in front of the sagging garage,
was a fancy car, a new car, a car sans scratches, and
one that matches your best desire for one too.
And you step into church, with the first sentence ringing:
“I drove by Linda’s place. Ha…she gets food stamps while there
is a fancy car in her driveway!” And our dragon saliva lights the
next best gossips to say the same. Worship did not happen that day,
I think Jesus ran away to comfort the object of these good peoples’ scorn.

“Go into all the world and preach…”

Hey, we pay a pastor to do that. And, boy can he tell a story. I mean,
he has our ear every week. (And they go home never taking their
booster thoughts of truth.) We pay a pastor well, until, he meddles
in politics, or sex, or money. And we would report him the moment
he mentioned the Democrats’ solutions. We don’t walk out, we just
leave our post and send letters of excuses, because I want to leave worship
like a massage, and without bruises.

“Go into all the world and preach the Good News…”

That’s the Ten Commandments, isn’t it? Oh it is so sad that they won’t
let us
post the 10 on every state house lawn, or every
telephone pole alone I-5. We used to be such a godly nation. (Decimating
Native Americans, Enslaving African tribes, Denying Votes to fellow females,
and rounding up every Japanese inside chicken-wire ghettos. Not to mention
lynchings and mobs and bombs targeted with hateful precision.)
We used to be such a Christian Nation.

“Go into all the world and preach the Good News to every creature…”

But you better take a gun with you, or mace, or pepper spray, and don’t
stay too long in the neighborhoods marked by poverty and starvation.
“Here’s a per diem, you can buy all the food you want at McDonald's or
Arby’s. Spend your money wisely, and you will come out ahead.”
They watch us, well, they see us well. And, at least we went on
this mission trip
when the others stayed home without precedent.

By the way, did you notice that one house. Oh it was decrepit. Shutters
hanging askew. Wood siding cracked, splintered and eaten a foot above the
foundation wall. Broken windows and forgotten screens, roof shingles
looked like a melting cake frosting. And then, (don’t mention this to
anyone else)

But, did you notice, that a Cadillac pulled up, maybe two years old,
and shiny, oh it was shiny. It gleamed golden in the sun. Those seats
were leather, I know they were. I just have to tell you. It makes me
mad, people like this, using my taxes to get themselves ahead.

…and preach the Good News…

I’m sorry, God, we didn’t get to it today.