Day 57: Evening

Isaiah 57

"And it will be said: 'Build up, build up, prepare the road! Remove the obstacles out of the way of my people.'"

Before sunrise these hours
grow in silence; without speech
and slouched into lonely basement couches.
In the dark, below the feet
of my daily love and company,
i wrestle with all that i truly need to leave.
Bitter juices in tumblers
replace sweet bowls of wheat,
grain, berries, and honey i choose not to eat.
Legal pad and a plain
white pen, chewed in jagged crooks,
blankly sitting and staring at holy books.
Minutes unspeaking,
hours alone, days without eating,
expurgate all but my feeble heart beating.
Denial is building,
to remove to prepare,
and invite Your breath to the emptiness there.

Day 54: Morning

Psalm 108

"I will awaken the dawn"

My morning praise makes no sound,
many newfound apperceptions
are only written down with the syncopation
of keyboard clicks, pauses, yawns
and page turns. If you pry long enough,
pour over coffee and leather,
through eyes rubbed red you can find harmony.
That blessing, that lucidity, like the intimacy
of the first evening spent sleeping
head to heart, hand in hand.
It is a shout that catches in the throat
and never makes it out, never sounds aloud,
but the inner secret causes waves
that shake the silent ground.
Tremors through the dark wood trees,
my morning lantern leads
the rising of the eastern sun
and certains my refreshed peace.

Day 52: Morning

Psalm 106

In the desert they gave in to their craving;
in the wasteland they put God to the test.
So he gave them what they asked for,
but sent a wasting disease upon them.

They exchanged their Glory
for an image of a bull, which eats grass.

We eat chinese on the floor
right next to our prayers.
Amazonians walk miles,
all the while eyes stay
fixed ahead, asking.
We nail mezuzahs to the door
right next to the unpainted.
We stained the symbol,
chiseled the word,
expect blessing.
We ask the wind what its for
and whom it winnows away.
The Elkhart ends in
the Lake Michigan,
we jump in.
We rise again and praise our
buoyancy, our lucky stars,
all that is "ours" screams
that we are missing
all the Glory.

Day 50: Evening

i have faith
the world works as such:
the Word spoken into
swiftly shifting situations,
absolutes starkly lacking
any absolute condition.

A sleepless resolution:
treat the world as such.
Every ageless rock and stone,
set in rigid position;
yet altars must reshape
and restack, the renewal
of generations.

Day 45: Morning

i do a lot of speaking,
saying nothing,
asking much and praying little.
And even as i break sticks
to symbolize release,
i realize i rarely
ask that You would hear
my rambling speech.

i do a lot of speaking,
but little hoping,
and less trusting. if i must
be honest,
You teach lessons too often
for my liking. Instead,
answer my supplication
with vindication, or victory,

or success, or blessing,
not simple listening.
Your frightening lack of
predictability makes You
frighteningly difficult to fear.
Give me more than ear;
respond, react, move.
Make me recognize,

still my speaking,
spread my eyes over
the fullness of glory.
Reality is only spoken
into being by the Word,
by Your breath.
Nevertheless, i continue to speak;
this morning, hear me.

Day 43: Evening

Mark 15

This story has been mined,
this quarry chipped at from every angle.
The cry to crucify has been
recrystalized through the generations,
and under the pressure of important eyes
turned generic, not jagged.
Not cutting as it was, jarring,
it's very meaning was defeat.
How sentiments compress and
compositions change in structure,
so that crucify and victory are
now entwined and the suffering
has been purified from the process.
A rolled rock, portentous and imposing,
established as immovable warning,
now is simply the pretense of hope.
Lest we forget the truth of despair,
the chapter ends in stone.

Day 43: Morning

Isaiah 42

"A bruised reed he will not break, and a smoldering wick he will not snuff out."

There You are:
August oak leaf, fallen and crinkled,
dry and crushed.
The wind that spins it across concrete,
scratching by unmindful feet,
tossing it in the winding creek.
The drooping backyard dahlia,
staring meekly at cypress clippings,
where an assembly of prostrate petals
sing posthumously of beauty.
The dazzling and the daily,
the sun's ascent and coronation.
The clouds that sometimes confine
the brilliance to inner, sacred courts.
The sharp, brown and short,
grasses stressed until death,
lacking and longing and waiting.
The plants in the cracks
of the tilted sidewalk, i forgot
to spray them, so feebly they live.
The bruised reeds that i feel
an anarchic need to break,
float the pieces in fountains,
splintered but unsinkable.
Why do i see the deteriorating,
the dryness, the dying, the weak?
Why do i see You there?

Day 42: Morning

When i don't see heaven awhile,
i hasten to the shadows
and i scamper to hide.

If i am absent many hours,
and return to release our
pekinese mixed poodle

from the comfortable but oversized
canine chateau that he knows as bed,
but we know is cage;

well, in his release he runs.
i don't know if he perceives danger
or freedom, or simply choice,

but he doesn't stay near to me.
He has missed me, thus sprints madly
over bared floor boards

skidding into cupboards and doors,
in his craze racing onto fashionable
chairs and throw pillows, threatening holes.

The circling is pointless, fruitless, desecrating,
concludes with crawling into some lightless
corner, under the guest room bed

or instead into chosen captivity.
i shake my head;
come to me little one.

comfort, comfort, Holy One,
i have not sensed presence,
that's why i run.

Day 40: Morning

Psalms 79 & 80

"They have poured out blood like water all around Jerusalem, and there is no one to bury the dead."
"Restore us, O God; make your face shine upon us, that we may be saved."

The balance of my mind is disturbed:
You attempt to bury the undead.
Pinched nerves and broken hands,
slackening belief stirred with unabashed doubt,
despite that we think and act.

Songs rise with movement, slow to repose.
Who knows the pattern to the merging
flow of work and prayers, repair and hope
that will bring attainment of victory?
Oh how I wish it were that way...

Day 36: Random

My feet unclothed,
grassy path uncut
but warm under dusk,
and well walked and worn.
Fresh wooden steps
propped up against
the ever eroding shore.
Guide my wide-eyed son,
support facing the waves,
digging his wondering toes
in shallow pools of wet sand.
Mother-in-law reads pop fiction
with her pen in hand.
Inspired by trite, we
witness the grand
so lightly.
Thunderheads over Erie trimmed
in battling blues and grays,
they chase away clouds over silos
crowned in oranges and sun.
The storm leaves behind stars
over Madison, exploding across the dark,
brilliant as celebrated rockets
springing over Beijing.
i stretch out beneath
this full and unreachable sky,
and wonder why i wonder why.

Day 35: Random

Stripped and elegant,
i have not been.
i am not ashamed;
i just speak
from the sides of my mouth.
This humble excuse
is not honed or rehearsed
as an excuse;
frank words, where do i
find time?
Frivolous sleep, unwantingly
it keeps me
from my days and nights.
From You.
Success under seeming curse,
oh perverse desire,
it's sirens sing inane and vain
into my ears.
The steady beat and the prose,
the higher notes
rose into my heart, yes,
the pursuit
is pushing You out.
i must ask:
what will i sing back?
Will meditation
lack the beauty to capture me?
i opened
the austere doors of these
"days and nights"
knowing that they would be
less inviting
than the trivial, the easy.
Commitment
waned in reality,
in the lack
of Your wind in my face.
Thus, it must
like Nicodemus be
born again.
Forget the places that i have been,
empty mind
and holding onto dryness,
search
for the waters giving life
once again.

Day 31: Morning

Psalm 62 & Isaiah 30

"In repentance and rest is your salvation, in quietness and trust is your strength..."
"My soul finds rest in God alone..."

Holy desire heaves itself against
the cage of my soul. O my restless,
rigid soul, which burrows and busies
itself like bees that seek a hidden home,
beneath or between the concrete
bricks that wall our small tulip garden.
The shame is that their work is exposed,
it's shallow and the product of that effort
is easily plucked out, a small twig picks
the busy hive from where it fails to stick.
If not a human weld branch then
that nest naturally would have washed
away in the elements. The fragments
already dust the pavement's cracks, as
the wind that comes and goes beyond control
has whipped through, ungluing
the last hour's industry. Seemingly Your wind
blows unjustly, for i toiled for salvation and strength,
and the blessed eats the fruit
of his labor. The cursed mills the ground
and never looks around, never sees, never can
just be; stills churns and mills even now.
i, the cursed, hurry for the value of the
extrinsic, production of the hive. While
the blessed, they find quietness inside.