Advent: Day Sixteen

Random

Rising piano keys, hand bells,
and wind chimes. Worn beige storm windows
have been painted white for the season,
going up to keep our heat in.

Candles, presence, and acoustic
guitars. We put up these worn words
to capture You. Despite my mother-in-law's
fight, the warm light escapes

beneath the crack in the half-painted
door. Or as our one year-old patters
to the back and grasps the handle to
go and see the new falling snow.

His eyes wide, he knows You snuck out
from under our songs and signs.
You've become grander and beautiful
now falling around everyone,

coating driveways, salted walks,
tree limbs and enveloping all landscape.
You will not sit where we set You,
but move. As we live, You fall where we are.

Advent: Day Eleven

Psalm 31

"Be strong and take heart, all you who hope in the Lord..."

A snowflake pushed by the lake's winds
winks at me as it continues down,
"Do you think you can count on me?"
I am, I think, I am.,
Pavement may be pleasant there beneath
my surest steps, and yet
you will never find your rest.
Dissolving, here only to arrive again,
blow back in each winter's wind.

Advent: Day Eight

Isaiah 5

"Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter..."

i fear no handshake,
no skittle plucked off the gym's wooden boards,
nor the stained and grainy contours
of any unwashed morning grail.
so neither do i hesitate to taste
what masses claim as sweet; evenings
with feet up and eyes on,
entertainment swept off of factory floors
and bored deep into every synapse.
If i collapse, do not blame the germ
of immorality, for i disregard warnings
of vice and always choose to bite.
Blame the switch,
the lack of purpose, for they have put
the darkness for the light.

Advent: Day Eight

Psalm 26

"...I have led a blameless life...I have trusted in the LORD without wavering...I walk continually in Your truth..."

Coughing and shifting,
hymnals and heads buried
in the hunched up folds of
my downy blanket of blank devotion.

Hoodies and pencil scratchings,
but they are so unburdened by surety.

Life is supposed to lie
there, senselessly next to them,
then suddenly roll over and crush them.
It is expected and i tell them so.

It in certainty can crush me, so
i long to stay away from giving reasons...

But my chair rolls and my computer
has keys, and my arrogance can't make
bold statements because of itself.
Nothing is continual, it's shifting and wavering.

Advent: Day Six

Psalm 115

Forging silver, hammering out
the hollow hands of gods.
Melting down our precious gold,
removed from the dainty boxes

that sing to us simple songs
of praise, power, and possession
when the wooden tops are lifted off.
Hold the hands of our idols above

the hot, half-melted, viscous gold
and then dip them to declare them
holy. But these idols, they are dead,
they have mouths but they never speak truth,

these idols have eyes that never see.
Ears but pridefully they won't hear,
Noses pierced but useless to the
building aroma of their own burning stench.

Laziness concretes their listless feet,
as they have ability but never walk.
And as the vanity hardens on their hands,
it is sealed that they will never feel.

These gods we cast in metals bright,
the next metaphor for our stiff necks.
But this is direct, we no longer build idols
from the clay, the sticks, or the dust,

no, the modern idols are us.

Advent: Day Five

Prophets, you who bare words
to their loveliest curves and lines,
bring honeyed apples in bent cursive
to quivering lips. For hearts burn out

for want of flame. Sometimes you should
stand in the flat blacktopped corner
of the local church parking lot, become a
garden of Eden in violets and golds,

a silent stream of created beauty,
rushing courageous over all boxed ears,
and you should just be. Pencil lead
on tablets leaves the arguments of ultimate

pointedness inside the practical glass.
But if you wrap up your hands, and you
forever stay a sight, if you are not a place
for the tired bees to alight and more than not

find renewal of life, then the moving world
will toss you aside. All tulip tipped and unfortunate,
gorgeous and useless, one purpose without point,
misunderstood now kindle unintended god's lights.

Advent: Day Two

Psalm 119

"Oh, that my ways were steadfast in obeying your decrees!"

Smoke is the taste of my fingertips
as i lie under the duvet, and bite
the brittle nails. Scared as northern
fruit flies that circle my coffee,
dying in the sweetness that calls them,
i am certainly crying beneath
the sweet warmth of blessings disregarded
for the promise of temptation.

Confession then, i will drink my coffee
without sugar for several weeks.
At least until You come and answer me,
i will face my mornings cloaked in
black and bitterness. i have sinned,
i have hidden, and i have been cleaned.
What more shall be asked of me than
grimacing sorrow and humility?

Advent: Day One (2)

1 Thessalonians 1

"We continually remember before our God and Father your work produced by faith, your labor prompted by love, and your endurance inspired by hope in our Lord Jesus Christ..."

My continuance depends on yours.

Sweatered arms with rolled sleeves
press the edge of a laminate desk,
risking exposure of a tired mind
they extend, reaching for caffeine,

for quarters to support, for something
to hold, to hold them.
To hold up a sweaty head and speak
of dialogues and curriculums, to speak

God in circles around the sweaty heads
held on eighth grade shoulders. Buzzed
and lacking sleep, bare arms with icy
dryness press yawningly on the plastic edge

and hold up dreary words and patently
disinterested sarcasm. How can hope survive
in the drowsy chasms of these eyes?
Endurance inspired by our labors together in Christ.

My continuance depends on yours.

Advent: Day One

Isaiah 1

"When you spread out your hands in prayer, I will hide my eyes from you; even if you offer many prayers, I will not listen. Your hands are full of blood; wash and make yourselves clean."

i scratch through december grass,
gathers in small patches,
gathers to stretch toward sky
with green hands groaning for snowfall.

Unraked ground cannot receive
the purest of precipitation,
the crystals will cling to the edge of the leaf
and leave muck in wicked mounds.

To cry to the God of heaven
and clear what remains beneath,
that is the waiting,
the joining of remorseful removal
and bowing for the expectant approval,

i churn out the wet and decaying
while praying for purest renewal.

A Note

As I read, I found the Pauline letters to be much less inspiring than my previous cycle. This probably has to do with the books of Psalms and Isaiah being poetic already, and the book of Matthew is about the most inspiring figure in all of history, God himself in the flesh. I also found that this time as I tried to write, I felt distant from my Father. This cycle of poems is not complete, I must come back to Paul's letters. But for now, I move on to Advent...