Love is Enough

 Love is Enough

(“A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another.” John 13:34)

Love is enough,
was always enough,
will ever be enough,
and yet we stuff the heads of congregants
full of lead-weight conspiracies
so all they will see
is a world so dark something needs to be destroyed.

Love is ageless,
was always ageless,
will ever be ageless,
and yet a certain few, who will remain nameless,
are convinced we’ve turned the corner into everlasting
dark
ness.
Flash-fire weapons are the only solution.
Forgetting that the ammunition and collateral damage have
caused the pollution
that keeps us from sitting in the sun.

Love is divine,
was always divine,
will ever be divine,
and still we insist on justifying more hatred toward
completed souls whose love we do not understand.
We still insist on strangling the message from women
whose prophetic words open the world wide to seditious
hope, (the million dollar men broadcasting their rants against sin
only see the prophets as pernicious heretics who, no longer burned,
are shunned with fire and fury.)

Love is costly,
was always costly,
will every be costly,
and yet we kick the homeless out of our towns,
make them find shelter in locked sheds when the snow flies.
And we put our money into new chairs and chandeliers,
a fancy sign and then resign when the pay does not match
our preferred lifestyle.

Love is enough,
was always enough,
will ever be enough.
Let’s smooth the rough edges that
make the meek cower and the brave
go elsewhere to find
the kind of love
that suffers on crosses,
never draws lines,
but always draws the circle wider for
all humanity to enter.
Love is always front and center.

Woke/Provocation

 Woke/Provocation

(“And let us consider how to provoke one another to love and good deeds.” Hebrews 10:24)

Buzzing between sleep and the dawn,
someone took it upon themselves to
unshake me from my late dreams.
Chilled with ice, the water hit my face
and every nerve was alert.
I had not forgotten to set my alarm for the day
and had no pressing issues ahead of me.
Provoked and awake, my made-up world
unwound like the mist above a lake.
It did not occur to me that I could not
be late on this particular day.

So,
I awoke.

Woke,
what a word for the mornings, what a seeing of things
as they are and not as I wish or remember.

Woke,
what a spiritual state of things
that turns ingrained mediocrity to love
that is like the sky,
embracing everything.

Woke,
what a personal way to see my neighbor
who is ignored for some abhorrent doctrine of
hell
and
sin
and
inside knowledge.

Woke,
what a lovely word that the enemy
has obfuscated with deadly
flumes of smoke.

I saw my twelve-year-old friend Amy on
my walk today and her big black dog
raced to greet me.
I reached out my hand and
petted his solid ribcage. “Hey,
Samson!”

I do not think Amy heard,
but she shouted,
“Hercules,
come here.”
And my memory, provoked,
awoke
to the name that defines him.

Unreserved

 Unreserved

(“So I will not stay quiet. I will speak out in the suffering of my spirit. I will complain because I am so unhappy.” Job 7:11)

It’s all in your head.
They said.
Just turn off your brain.
Refrain.
And they disconnect the only living link
to a breath of fresh air that might keep me sane.

I am not playing.
Restrained.
My mind and body ache.
Piece of cake.
And I’ll shout into the sky if I have to;
dive off the pier and jump in the lake
to get a hearing from another living creature.

I’m not deserted.
Rehearsed.
Just misunderstood.
Unheard.
And they replace a caring touch with a cacophony
of sermons, prefab hymns, sanitized theology
that keeps doubts at bay and closes the way
to the soul’s deepest hunger.

Unreserved.

The Polytheistic Blues

 The Polytheistic Blues

(“Jesus found a young donkey and sat on it.” John 12:14a)

I’ve got too many gods to choose from
and it used to give me the polytheistic blues.
From now on I will make up my own:
a conqueror, a colonizer, a warrior, an executioner,
a man. Amen.

And if he (or they, I do not mind pluralities) met my
strict requirements and stuck to my
national boundaries, and only spoke my native tongue,
I might be persuaded to offer obeisance.

Perhaps you can help me fashion a few new
objets d’art we can put next to our american flags
to remind us we have manufactured them ourselves.
Look at all we’ve done: catapults, gatling guns,
atom bombs and remote-controlled drones. Look
at our power to unearth the planet we stand upon.

We can gild our icons with gold if only everyone tithes
what they cannot afford.
Feed the poor?
Sure, we have a potluck once a month. We can
bottle our time, sell car washes and cookies
to support the new chandelier that highlights our deities.

Don’t give me a god in a hippie van,
mine has an army of tanks.

An Oblique Ghost

 An Oblique Ghost

(“Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return there; the Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.” Job 1:21)

I have sat bent in half
on the stairs into the garage
with its concrete floor and mildew smell.
I have waited to confess what everyone already knew,
and had not passed the test,
but had not lied. Had hoped grace was in the air
though I feared I would lose everything.

I was naked while they stared.
I was white, pasty, such an oblique ghost
that my skins showed the stains from every tear;
they were rivulets down my temples, my arms,
my chest and my thighs. I should have learned how
not to cry.

I don’t go out much these days. Don’t look for new friends,
old friends sometimes scare me. My wife, my children, my
beloved grandchild and my dog, my social circle is safe
but small.

I have sat with my darkness longer than most. (Although,
that is not fair, I have no measure to compare your darkness
to mine.)
Pain heals nothing.

I am not cynical, and maybe bitter. But there was a moment
lifetimes ago when I heard laughter rise from hallways and alleys,
alpine lakes and friends always too silly to dwell on the
consequences for long.

Today I might call you, take you away from the crashing crowd
yelling at the asphalt concert,
to a quiet café for an hour or two,
and ask you,
or even beg you

To let me cry as long as I need
and to allow me to say anything, anything at all
once again.

Loneliness Begins

 Loneliness Begins

(“We have this hope as an anchor for the soul, sure and steadfast, which reaches inside behind the curtain.” Hebrews 6:19)

Loneliness begins like bees in your head
while you long for one friendly word
to mute their buzzing. The longer the day,
the more the noise, and the sickness grows to
an ache that weighs

Like lead in your chest. You would fall over with
the sickness, faint front first, if not for the last time
you broke your nose that way. A phone call would
be the alchemy that turned the weight around. And then,
into the night the illness fills
your legs’ hollowed

Bones. And now standing has locked the door behind itself.
The couch does not speak, but it knows your form. You beg
for sleep, and when you waken, you beg for sleep again,

Except your dreams leave you feeling you’ll never please those
half a dozen friends that haunt you nights. And then you
beg in postcards, texts, emails and anonymous social posts,
for one who used to hear your words
and sing them back to you

To return and heal this sickness before the bees’ stings
remind you that you caught your loneliness

From failing far too often.

Today I wait for one, maybe two, who know me
in, out, through, trash, and unholy scan
and simply want to keep me company, dry
my tears,
and remind me they have anchored me (sickened
by the sea) and that
I sometimes was less than lonesome,
and often more than dead.

Could There Be a Portal?

 Could There Be a Portal?

(“He is able to deal gently with those who are ignorant and going astray, since he himself is also weak in many ways.” Hebrews 5:2)

Could there be a portal,
a black hole framed with teak or ivory
that would take my thoughts directly to you?
I know I am weak in so many ways,
I know my words get scrambled worse that hurricane waves.
I know, because I talk so much, that the words can combine
to mean most anything.

Could there be a machine,
a blue-tooth thing,
that would transport my heart to yours?
Could it help you feel what I feel,
even if you think I shouldn’t feel that way in
a hundred years?
I want to hear your heart, and I want to feel your fears,
I want to know what is behind the words that
suddenly steered the voyage in a new direction,
or at least a different speed limit.

Oh, if you knew my words, understood them, definition and
implication, and still closed the door just a bit tighter,
I would stay outside until I knew if you would change your mind.

But, if my words, misunderstood, undefined and simplified,
entered your beloved psyche, I would wait forever in hope.
I would not knock on the door, or ring your bell,
but I would tell you where you could find me when the
words finally rang true, rang in tunes we both could hear.

You’ve asked me about my past, and I would tell you.
But I do not want to belittle anyone else who may have been
a part of my story. Can we leave it at this: I am ashamed of
wrong turns I took on several roads. I am weak in many ways.

I know your heart, without a portal or black hole,
that you are sometimes frightened, but always loving.
I hope, if we need a portal, you will find me weak (yes, so weak)
but good.

It is my turn to open the door wide, even if yours is closed a bit,
and invite you to sit before the hearth that is always lit with
warm fireglow, the grace of love learned in sand and grit.
I will not hide the cracks along the walls, although I do sometimes
still feel shame. But they are part of me, the places that earthquakes
took almost everything.
I would serve you tea, or iced coffee, I would read your favorite book
or listen to your silence. But my door would never close, the locks
were thrown away long ago.

If I could show you the future, this is what it would be.
Two friends who cannot wait to share the mornings together,
the direction of the wind, the slant of the sun,
two friends who have beaten the odds and are closer
than anyone deserves to be.
Two friends, unafraid, weak, sometimes shaken,
but ever carrying two hearts as one when one heart is
too heavy to bear.