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 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.

Day 60: Morning

Psalm 119

"Turn my eyes away from worthless things..."

Dualistic options of who to be
faced with ancient written word:
believe, be warned, find sustainability,
or believe after suffering similar failure.
Nobody listens, we all pursue
Solomon's same path, running the ruthless
ruts of gain, aspiring to the repetitive new,
unsettled to find everything still worthless.

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 4: Evening

Matthew 4

Tonight it was rice cereal
spilled following a tired ride.
Ominously my eyes follow
yours closed anyway, but I know:
the devils will come tomorrow.

They came for Jesus, promising
that which He would have by way of
pain and patience. Devils always
flaunt temptation as fulfillment.
When they stand me on the mountain

they are offering everything:
first the sex that we did not have,
then the affirmation i feel
i lack, and finally they push
me to senseless intimacy.

Devils half-deliver and we
usually live half-satisfied.
But not Christ, He denied the ease,
chose a way of costly waiting,
and then wept bitterly with joy;

for much travail transcends much ease.
And only the path through real life
leads to ascension. My reality,
though full of your sighs, will climax
in true touch and in pure delight.