Holy Spirit, Jesus, Rabbi, Master, Friend. Please, burn my lips and singe my tongue, before my mouth starts fires. Chasten me with enough humility to take a lashing from others, to look back and lament without forgetting inconvenient details. Take that withering shame and animal anger to forge within me that courage for the other: Sister, Brother, and even stranger Strangers. Help me to see others, not as threats or rivals, but family. I have always wanted to be left alone. But it seems I’ll just rot in there. It seems like instead I need a family reunion. You know I would rather just read books, talk and then hide away. But if you can save me, save us all from ourselves, by bringing us together, do it. I feel like I’m floundering, in over my head. My past is regretful, our present in limbo and our future unclear. Give me at least some arms to hold onto or others to teach me how to swim.
Tag: 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.
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.
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.
We Wait
There’s a trembling in my bones that shudders to the beat of a windstrung song and shouting throng and a hundred thousand feet. For my Father comes in power and he’s coming for the weak and waiting. Will you come, Lord God, in quiet thunder and echo throughout empty spaces places of decadence and desolation? Will you come and burn with fire fury the tears off of our faces? For those who hear you coming put our ears down to the ground to feel the earth shake and wait, we wait for you, our coming swift salvation. The king of a thousand armies calling in the thump and wink of a heartbeat. Eyes forced and held open in an act of trust while desert dust is flung in our faces and our eyes water freely bleary and fainting droplets hissing in scorn-filled heat. Here together with arms held and up high, forcing breath out weakened lungs to the angry sky, a "Hallelujah!" chorus is our unified cry– as we wait
Temple Complex
Why are the nations enraged? When you tear down the DOW flip the market upside down and say, “This was supposed to be about prayer!” How do the governments survive? When the parasites filling up slick suits and nice ties— pompous puppets—finally suck their people dry? Where are the pretend priests— the pastors and their staff protecting— their teeth sunk deep, their bleeding-out sheep? After all, a man’s gotta eat! Can the gods among men, even hear you when they kneel to crush? How can they hear you, if you can’t breathe? Hands in their pockets, do they even care if you praise them? Yet you, Good God and Shepherd, show to mend broken hearts with your own clothes to walk with the weary through the shadow straight through to tomorrow. Our sacred cows are slaughtered, Lady Liberty led off in chains. Left to choose between the narrow gait or Broadway, we sit to entertain ourselves, (unfettered . . . unbothered). Skyscrapers fuel the pyre. Not one Yankee-doodle cobblestone unturned . . . unburned. Hosanna, Hosanna! He comes with fire, germinating his own empire, fed by the tears of the crushed and perplexed that profit and priest never saw, fallen through the cracks of the temple complex.
Baker Storycraft 