February 20, 2009

Isaiah 41

i know i need a frosted cornfield,
wide and quiet, empty and undefined,
with thousands of collasped ears to help me listen.
i must remain still, but there is a
devastating silence in dead woods, cracked branches;
overwhelming and stagnant, needing action.

So i know i must clean and clear,
stride through snowy wheat to fallen trees;
renewed order entering the scattered reaction.
i must move, but some movement trips, slaps,
and distracts. The limbs and leaves are beautiful,
but i lose purpose in this wind and confusion.

Then i know i need a frosted cornfield.

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 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.

Day 65: Morning

Isaiah 65

"They will build houses and dwell in them;
they will plant vineyards and eat their fruit..."

My hand longs to lift
off these keys for weeks.
My eyes long to look
away from other men's sons.
i have long been brother,
finally let me be father.
i would gladly trade in
struggling to stop the talking
for struggling to understand small
babblings, tears, and waving hands.
Am i putting in the work?
Or am i plowing fields
that i do not own,
where i don't see harvest,
do not taste the fruit,
do not enjoy the rest
because i have my own home
where i must move stone
lay sand, pave it flat,
and watch the wheelbarrows haul
the dirt back and back.
There is still a lack
of blessing of my choosing.
Losing time and losing sleep
and losing chances to play
nursery games, say his name,
catch his head, put him
to bed, jump and smile,
all while building love in
the home where i dwell.

Day 65: Morning

Isaiah 64

"Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down..."

She speaks becomingly,
with youthful common sense orthodoxy,
in these diagonal halls of change
we must rearrange our books
and look to do the impossibly dull.

She listens unbendingly,
but like the rigid twigs leaning
by the thousands on the rails,
being uncompromising only breaks
and cracks her, each piece smaller
and more inferior. That's the
feeling that makes her speak.

She prays a universal paradox:
If You are here, where are You?
She cannot see You rallying,
drinking Monster, getting dared,
being close like a sleepover night
that has been shared. And if
she can't see You, You're not there.

She is the request,
a cry from the drained soul
of change, a prayer for presence.
They reach up but You must
unveil heaven to simple us.

Day 62: Mid-Day

Isaiah 62

They will be called the Holy People,
the Redeemed of the LORD;
and you will be called Sought After,
the City No Longer Deserted.

Clinging, desperate, empty.
Between my eyes, i can feel.
Your appeal is that you walk;

drags me to scramble after you.
Head up, eyes forward,
seeing streets of green promise.

Environmental renewal or
energy inefficient seaside resorts,
you have a vision

and i am always seeking one.
i consist of depths, walled in
muddied sand, colors bland

and blending together in continuing
labyrinthine cascades of
self-searching contemplation.

Am i so sure? For i need
knotty hands to join with me,
nodding heads for security,

even intellectuals who agree.
i can stand separate, but even trees
grow in groves, can we not

cleave ideologies? Can you not
believe? Can you not stop
and have some coffee,

and stay and talk with me?
Can you not see the empty
hope i have, the hollow joy?

How can i hold my head
above ground if it is not
held by steadfast hands?

You might. But what
would you call me?
What would you call me?

Clinging?
Desperate?
Empty?
Redeemed?

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 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 8: Mid-Day

Isaiah 8

"Do not call conspiracy
everything that these people call conspiracy;
do not fear what they fear,
and do not dread it.

The LORD Almighty is the one you are to regard as holy,
he is the one you are to fear,
he is the one you are to dread..."

i know why we believe heaven is above
(though You incessantly send it down).
You rise out of everything; we fumble
around and bang our knees on theology,
structure, and bland practicality.

In helicopter seeds i have seen
oneness, a holiness of combinations.
In its spiraling fall, permeations
of death, fear in the dry, brittle wings
that glide down toward landing.

In grounding, hope springs from
the rotting of the leaves, in the sprouting
of the seed. You rise out of everything.
Fear of decay is, underneath all things,
promise of newness, a singular oneness.

What the seed dreads is what it hopes in,
for it can only find purpose in what
it also finds powerful. What we hold
as almighty will be, what we fear as the only
will be, therefore i hope You will be.

Day 6: Mid-Day

Isaiah 6

"Holy, holy, holy is the LORD Almighty; the whole earth is full of his glory..."

The Romanian room was meager, and we were moderately worn
out from a day of holding. We met God at the cradle, and from our lips
He ordained praise in awe of infants. Now lightning was striking;

they were alone and we were alone, we perceived. But in a grave bass,
dread welled up within us. Holy! Holy! Holy
Fear! Intense and bottomless, ringing these beds, round our feet,

and climbing. We felt at one, in sparseness, with our quarters
and quickly looked to conceal ourselves amid garments, pillows, and
blankets. We lay as helpless as crying babies in cribs,

and confessed to our lack of knowledge. How presumptuous we had been!
Holy heaviness covers those who we leave with hearts in tears. i have failed
to trust that You are there as You are here.

And then where does that leave hands that can no longer hold? Folded,
i suppose. Intercession is a lesson taught in times of terror, grown
beneath overwhelming, awful love, that we can no longer think so little of.

Day 4: Mid-Day

Isaiah 4

Refreshed by water flung from
a branch, a twisted sprig of lavender.
Not false twigs that had been crafted
by hand, a forged instrument for

the blessing, but an offshoot snipped
from creation. Full of dew's scent,
fresh with violet lines, fresh with life;
a renewal of my promise to die to come alive,

a reminder that Creator is best conveyed
in the very earthly existance He has made;
His permanance like stone, His sustenace in fields,
refreshing in the lavender sprinkle that we feel.

Day 3: Mid-Day

Isaiah 3

"You have a cloak, you be our leader; take charge of this heap of ruins!"

i am in charge of these ruins. i walk
on crumbled
rocks and speak the face of
God into the cracks
in
the wall, pressing electronic papers
with encouragement into
the tiny
slits, hoping they will be read
and sink in.
My city staggers,
it is falling...
There is a stench of guilt, loss of hope,
and broken hearts that hangs low
over our heads, almost shaped as a
noose.
It is menacing, with each intentional
tread we take over
balding stones we may certainly slip
and catch our necks and lose
our breath.
Sackcloth patches the past,
ashes no longer in
use, but their appearance is seen
throughout the ground down slabs;
we are covered
in dust. And yet, and yet...
We are branded by a Name
that doesn't fail,
yet we look as if crushed in failure
daily.
Ah, how redemption will turn
this weak to the
Strong.

Day 2: Mid-Day

Isaiah 2

In the fulfillment of the anointing,
shamans and priests puzzlingly pause,
watch each other's winking eyes,
and waltz together into wide, everlasting hills.

In those final, fulgent hours,
asses and elephants agree and release
the right to vote, to disagree, like
a child setting a captive balloon free.

The capitalist will say, "Come, let us go,
let us fold fifty dollar bills for use
as origami spoons, so we can eat sweet
ice cream," smiling at the socialist.

In the day of the anointed,
our humbled hands and haughty ideology
will be ashamed of arrogance and antipathy,
while praising face down at the feet of Peace.

Day 1: Mid-Day

Isaiah 1

"Stop doing wrong,
learn to do right!
Seek justice,
encourage the oppressed.
Defend the cause of the fatherless,
plead the case of the widow..."

the fatherless, pumpkin, my fatherless...

My hands spread out but prayer-less,
pumpkin, for there is resistance.
Guilt in my insistence of constraints,

time, son, money, uneasy conversation
leads to an uneasy comfort.
Painting walls a poor excuse for presence,

but undoubtedly it pacifies my doubt.
Self-doubt, in any case, wasted
on my conscience instead of your hopelessness

the fatherless, pumpkin, my fatherless...

i'm becoming religious about Sabbath,
less contradictory in sacrifice,
with shorter stipulations on presents,

but injustice? Like an incredulous
one diseased, shown a dim prognosis,
i can no longer dispute my ignorance.

Turn to Christ by turning to you, pumpkin.
Will i let you fade like used tees, broken toys?
Oh, you boys, climb my shoulders with joy

the fatherless, pumpkin, my fatherless...