Can you see through the space age empirical blockade we swallow like koolaide and die? Reaching the moon we let go of the sun for nothing but comfortable living room sets. Mechanical facade Wizard of Oz behind a steel curtain shatters like glass and we cut ourselves bleeding out on an IV leech, bleaching our hearts into pure benign sterility. Spongy butts and petrified brains―Man! What a science fair we make. But we're going places behind our great walls and slowly dying behind them. So we set our places and smile our faces preparing our five course fine dining oasis. All we need is candle light to enjoy the progressing grey.
Category: Poetry
Time to Be Holy
Every day, same plan, same game every day: Eat a little better, work a little harder, get a little smarter, make love a little longer. The internet algorithms got us figured out, a clip, an email, a picture or a twitter la petite mort a thousand little deaths has our veins thumping for another. But don’t bother that your life is stringing you out. You say I don’t have time any more But it’s time to be holy It takes time to be holy. Don’t just hide in the garden with Jesus. He’s out here walking the streets. We’ve got to go with him through the scum and the mud use our skin as collateral. Let him cut through the media hum buzzing and fuzzing up your brain. We’ve got to feed on His Word instead of feasting on our feeds. Keep up his pace, steady feet, steady heart, steady faith. The more we look at him, the more we’ll look like him. It’s time to be holy. Take the time time to be holy. We keep calm and carry on as we sail on through this storm Even though Jesus is strutting on the water. Keep your eyes on him as you sink beneath the waves he’ll pull you down through the bottom into fountains of love.
My Manger
My God, my hope My nothing less Than all. Come quick, come fast And land again amidst the roiling swell Burning dove of Zion, Reigning kind and friend to men. Hunker in my hurting heart; Make refuge, Hiding, humble in the crowded cave. Boom out to all with ears to hear Your joy for all the worlds: You’ve stayed your hand, You’ve stayed with man. My God, my God Come dwell again in me.
Wormwood
If a am a tree I am dead Dried-up wormwood, Eaten through With homegrown lies— A dirty dearth of earthly material. Burn through me; Cut me down. Grow your fresh green shoot Up through my roots Reengineer ancestry And plant me by the stream That feeds the boughs which Blossom in the eons.
Accomplishments Past
Winter-browned autumn droplets crunch Underneath. Another year's skin has shed-- Gone-- Food for the future.
Hail, Homeland Security
With an austere glance and an upright heart We, the people, watch our troubled world. Conflicts abounding and they all take part As we sit and watch and rest in peace. Why should we worry And leave our tranquil home? Their troubles are their duty. We'll stand on this ground we died for, Where the rocks don't move, the flags wave on and, the flowers always grow. “Protect and defend our rights!” Cry the people, “We worked for our shade and green grass.” There's a dark, real world out there, you’ll see, visceral and rife with humanity. “We're safer in here,” We the people say, “Live and let live! We're better off alone.” And so alone we are In our corner of the world Marked by our rocks and flowers and patterned stripes and stars Spattered across our safe, clean, cemetery plot. And we are safe, We, the people, O, so safe! The dead need not fear.
The Desolate
Desolation comes in many different forms:
A salesman in a crowded shopping mall
Ignored by all who pass.
A child playing in the hall
Unwanted and forlorn.
What creates the loner?
Deserted buildings?
Buzzing freeways?
Setting changes nothing.
Unwanted,
Shameful,
But curable on contact.
Desolation is the human soul
Untouched.
Crusading
Teach me death Is not death But a door to glory. Make my life a museum Of holy acts. Spur us on Not in rash or rage but Through your consuming blaze. Pain is not pain but Feeling your scars Tracing the path of those furious nails That fury soon swallowed And turned to fuel By which we fight Not further and higher But tumbling, a righteous cascade that bows ever lower, bleeding through the bowels of earth’s hell, not slowed by position or rank ambition, rather, dispelling that novel and ancient myth of progress by constant condescension— lower and lower through the bottom of hell expelled yet promoted into beatific vision.
JENGA
Everyone scrambles to the top
of the JENGA blocks
and tries not to blow away
(which is hard for a husk of a human hollowed out one grasping handful at a time).
But the howling wind atop the towers cannot topple them. They
Are held down by a lightless power,
A gum-like goo stuck to their shoes that creeps up their legs to their
Heart, inflates them like a balloon.
But before their heads explode with the stuff
They scream, “We will never be finished.
All is never enough.”
Meanwhile below,
Level 0 of the JENGA block tower,
The Have-Nots are having their way—hammering away at the foundations—
giving chaos its way.
A little while now and the big shot bobble-head
Will burst
Raining his sick ambition down
The Have-Nots will have their fill and –that not being enough—will
Devour each other on their way to the top
Still.
And as a new wave scampers up the tower,
Feeling their chests inflated and a certain
New grip in their toes,
The blocks will shift and the structure buckle
And the tower will slowly go.
Except for the Littles.
So small and unimpressive, bracing each other, back to back,
They hold the tower barely standing
About to crush the masses.
The Littles are hollow too,
Gutting themselves long ago, but a song
Echoes from inside them,
Stretching out from their cavities, refracting endless empathy
Singing
Calling.
Wheat
Throwing our young, apostolic bodies
Into the gears of the field
To slow the churn of angry dark.
It will consume us.
But may it grind our bones into
Fine, fine seed
That springs to harvest
Multiplication through mutilation
Forsaking only that which our hero did—which
Was everything.
