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.

January 8, 2009

Job 4

Blue card stock and bold Garamond,
elementary words for elementary rules,
in the high whisper of puberty
italicized secrets of incredulity.

Stretched out on hidden cove carpet tiles,
with Mead's wide ruled stuck into texts;
his brother juggled torches the night before
they shipped him off to Iraq.

Anesthesia dried her sister's lips, they turned
as milk and water in nausea, like her
second degree burn, when her father tore
off the coffee soaked cotton sweats

but the melted skin was shred off as well.
Each one must tell, their unfortunate gospels,
the time in black Sharpie on back of the hand,
and the sweat smeared name on the palm.

Surely, my sarcasm, now underwritten, with
overblown activity. How can we keep from speaking?

Day 5: Mid-Day

1 Thessalonians 4

"Make it your ambition to lead a quiet life, to mind your own business and to work with your hands..."

Quiet minds, discomposed and misled
in pursuit of distraction, a passive-aggressive
search to turn from Presence.
It calls for change, and they cocoon themselves
well within irrevelant laughter
and purely irreverent disquiet.

These abstractions, illusions of life
anger me. i have always desired reality.
Brothers and sisters, ambitions for acknowledgement
are as devilish as aspiring to murder.
A knife drips reality onto the hands,
avoidance escapes and dies in the air.

My quiet mind is stirred by raucous hands,
not mine, certainly not Yours, but unsound,
inexperienced theologians in Liverpool jerseys.
It is my business to mind their business,
as the blow from silence i grasp, bend, and extend
in attempt to graft the chaos to the Close.

When i close my eyes, Father, remind
me that i have waded into waters unfamiliar
and boggy. i am digging into the marsh while the
stagnantly seeping rises over my palms. i offer
a letter, a poem, an idea with salvation in the distasteful...
At least can i be certain in my quiet mind?

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.