Hidden in Windowless Rooms

Hidden in Windowless Rooms

(“However, if it’s from God, you won’t be able to stop them. You may even discover that you’re fighting against God.” Acts 5:38)

Hidden in windowless rooms
awaiting our number to come up,
we feel the clouds close in on us,
we feel the breath of those who shoot
opinions
like dragons full of fire.

We were well-respected, weren’t we?
We’ve owned our stories and told the new one.
Have we threatened the few at the
peak of the pyramid
who send down their edicts like
gods on fire?

We carry no arms,
we do not stockpile caches of weapons.
We walk barefoot, our feet are calloused.
We walk barefoot, our hearts are tender.

Don’t misunderstand. Some of our stories got
the best of us. Some of our history divested us
of any hope to ascend the temple steps that
ripped our unshod feet. We knew how we looked
in the campfires of deceit.

But we are a band bound tight by our miscomprehensions,
we sing in our cells, we pray on the floor. We remember hymns
at midnight while
the rulers knock to find what we are praying for.

I offer my plate, complete with undercooked meat;
I offer my cup with dust napping on top.
The bread is still warm, the crust crisp from the
oven of stone.
The wine is simple. The dialogue drops tears,
one, two, or three,
onto the servings we share when we gather here.

We walk barefoot with our leftover loaves,
we invite more beggars like us to
share our discomfort with wrought-iron fences
and walk the fields where conversation is as
filling as the meals we remember.

The Unnaming of Things

The Unnaming of Things

(“Israel, put your hope in the Lord, both now and forever.” Psalm 131:3)

After all this time,
before the moment I thought to design
a new philosophy of mind,
in the center of the bridge between
chorus and verse
I was surprised that you were nothing like
what I expected.

Certain I had it all defined,
I became bi-lingual and spoke fluently
in words so concrete they were always
bilateral
or
at least
black and white.

The rains came after my skin had been
baked by unknown suns,
the questions hung like laundry on the line
and had to be taken in for protection.

How could I restrict you to breezes I
had named? How could I presume to understand
your geography? I have learned
(such a presumptive phrase)
to love the anonymous blades of grass
and the rivers that ran before they could
be pronounced.

After all this time,
(before I listened for a mouthpiece)
I can swim for days without hearing a word.
My breath isolates me, and I must come up for air
sooner that when I was younger.
Glide. Stroke. Kick. Breathe.
And the clothes I once wore, now soaked in
river whorls midstream

Baptize me again to know far less than I knew
before.

Lectures Never Worked

Lectures Never Worked

(“In your love, listen to me; in your justice, God, keep me alive.” Psalm 119:149 [The Message])

Until then I’ll walk like the
sun shines for you, and I’ll work on a
mystery while I think my time away.
Alone today.

It’s a long way home from here.
It’s a silent walk from here.
It’s a frozen planet of tears,
it’s a burning redrock canyon,
a lonely monologue while people play
war games and blame it all on the
bible.

I never planned to be lonely. And my
phone only rings
when someone wants my money.
I don’t know if that’s true. I haven’t checked my
messages since 2022. Anyway,
I’ve been too hard on myself. I repeat myself,
with lectures that never worked from then till now.

And then a deep pivot that tore up the turf,
the phone rang, and I imagined the circles of the sun
growing lawns and treetops where the
mourning doves cooed the way that only
lovers do.

Somewhere in the middle of me
the smile of a baby
reminded me that kingdoms can be as
small as they are tall.

One thing you should know about me now;
I can watch the wind lift the leaves, one
by
one,
in the autumn haze,
and not feel like I’ve wasted my day.

We Choose Up Sides

We Choose Up Sides

(“The earth, O Lord, is full of your steadfast love; teach me your statutes!” Psalm 119:64)

My request to understand the end of days was declined,
so I,
with feet unwillingly clenching the sand,
survey the pockmarked earth.

I thought they were potholes when the
desert concert ended early. But the sun
never explodes that loudly at the end of the day.

I heard that firebombs burned a hospital and
our children are hidden underground
by their captors.

And while missiles whine, while grandmothers weep,
while the smoke wafts high above the borders,
the selected leaders can find no way to restore
the broken earth
except to break her into quarters.

My face unconsciously flinches,
the heat burns like teenage blemishes.
I cannot debate. I cannot slow the hate that
floods like sludge. The water is not potable,
the water has been shut off at its source.

The grains of sand are shards cutting our toes,
we cannot sleep. We cannot cry. We cannot understand
why. We hate at a distance and invent our fictions
to justify the blood that flows down the streets.

Where
is
this mercy?

Where is the
playground where children play?

Where are the prayers that extend deeper
than ancestry? Where are rivers of life that
turn gall into wine?

We draw the lines so well. We choose up sides.
One life for a dozen. A dozen for a village.
A village for a nation. A nation…

Oh God,
why?

Are there not peacemakers within range of
the missiles and squadrons? Why do the church bells
toll
and send the crowd to war?
Peacemakers, children, hostages, generals,
saints, mystics, truants, tyrants,
presidents, ministers, visitors, and citizens

Cry,
why?

Everything I Wanted

Everything I Wanted

(“Aren’t two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them falls to the ground without your Father’s consent.” Matthew 10:29)

There was everything I wanted just inside
the pair of eyes
pre-empting professional conventions.
Who knows, if you can hear me,
whether words stay glued near me or
break through space and time like
electrons escaping the strong force at
elemental levels.

You told me your story between questions about
my health.
I think we could talk forever, but my insurance covers
only an hour, I think. I should have brought coffee as
a write-off. Between laughs and family angst,
we talked about my pain, my usual topic for our
appointments. And we talked about grief, the subject
that, it seems,
has made me a doula in this latter time.

I went late to lunch and the server asked about my
pain. She always does. And it comforts me. She stays
at my table moments longer than any other and wonders
how I do it. And I wonder too.

There were surprises, two tacos, a beer,
and a friend walking in with new music
for me to hear.
Our shirts matched, imagine that, two sky-blue
guayaberas. He and his friends sat as I exited
the restaurant that feels like home.

Everything I’ve wanted is in this village. The doves
lift their steel gray wings perching on branches as Autumn
paints an earth scene to surround them. I wish I knew their names,
and I would tell them my pain is eased for just a moment
as they sit exposed just outside my window.

Morning Reverie

Morning Reverie

(“Light rises even in darkness for the one who is right. He is kind and has loving-pity and does what is right.” Psalm 112:4)

It was a calico morning when the
sun,
banana yellow,
squeaked through the window treatments
in the old cabin on the hill.
A feral cat or two
hunted and pounced while
the coffee brewed in the aluminum urn
on the stove.
The gingham was replaced with forest
green
curtains,
the floorboards creaked like the elder’s
bones as he got out of bed.
There were memories in every crevice of
the oily paneling, there were creations that
refused to be put aside. Chili was cooked in
an iron pot
suspended over the eternal flame in the
corner fireplace. The poker rested on the
stonework mantle, the bellows exhausted from
last night’s work.

The doves were waiting for the graying clouds
to arrive and
huddled in a branch of the
pear tree
that snuck up under the eaves.

The children were gone for years now,
the generations were finding their way home.
But he poured a cup of the black elixir
and laughed

As the doves seemed to kiss midflight, then
rose with the breeze and landed,
wing-in-wing,
a breath-long distance from his morning reverie.

The Silent Jukebox

The Silent Jukebox

(“That man never thought of being kind; he persecuted and killed the poor, the needy, and the helpless.” Psalm 109:16)

The jukebox no longer played tunes
for a dime, for a quarter, for a dollar.
It was crying at the violence and the music
was left out in the rain.
We stopped listening to the words a
long time ago.

There were too many who
refused
to be soothed and
the moments passed without a single
rose breaking the mood the weeds had strewn
across the table.

No one knew why the music no longer played,
cigar smoke broke the air gray and blue. The
booth for
two
no longer was occupied. There were rips in
the cushions,
there was a disturbance in time. One came
early, one arrived late, they used to dine
together, now they were separate ghosts.
Coffee winced down their throats at opposing
sides of the day.

There was no way to explain how the diner became
so thick with the heartbreak that cracked the days
with silence. Some would blame, some would
write computer code,
some would pray,
some would divide it all into rows and columns.
But the soul

Needed something more than pop songs to
right the wrongs. On the other side of town
no one knew that coffee was poured here without
a sound.