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.

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 1: Mid-Day

1 Thessalonians 1

"We always thank God for all of you, mentioning you in our prayers..."

Your passion pushed you in,
into a circle of comforting coffee cups
filled with the laziness of frustration.
But you sip tamarind and horchata,
cold and clear, with a grimace of suffering,
coruscations of concern, sensing
tiredness and bitterness among brothers.
In weakness, these induce the worst
of splits, spills and messes.
But you, through fragments sharp as
cracked ceramics, you've been provoked
by love. Your taste
is not for ease, but pushing boundaries.
You have not sought you in between
cramped particle board rolled white,
or pounding nails and picking weeds despite
other paying obligations. Your inspiration
was us, back when we believed.
Now we are the ones who must receive.