Category: Poetry

Enlightened

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.

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.

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.