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?

January 1, 2009

Positioned for complete sacrifice,
prepared for a gritty recrudescing
in my natural dust, but first;
i do need to know if i know You.
It is essential, like my friends,
beer snobs, who drink
Eliot Ness and Edmund Fitzgerald,
they knowingly distance their names
from anything less.
My concern is less with alcohol,
(despite them i barely drink at all),
but with creation, with art, with imagination.
Be not daft and simple for me,
but give me knowledge; to what will You
ascribe Your name? How will You announce
Your presence, make Your nature known?
i see You speak the world alive in poem.
Bringing rhythm and meter to spaces unbound,
cherishing language, You bring forth
ground and water, punctuate darkness and light,
and with nothing less, with holy words.
As I hear the black breaking, i know,
we have a lot more knowing to do.

Day 8: Evening

Matthew 8

"For I myself am a man under authority, with soldiers under me. I tell this one, 'Go,' and he goes; and that one, 'Come,' and he comes..."

"Just say the word."

i wasn't even in attendance, but
that sermon sang as memorably as
Mary. And though her Magnificant isn't
wordy, it's still not quite as distilled as
the word. Jesus used the same word
when He spoke to the demons that
He sent into the pigs. It seems good faith
and good poetry have something
in common, power in one word. One
word gives sturdy simplicity. Go.

i can see why the centurion wanted just
one word. It was more powerful that way.
We remember smallest speeches much
more than a multiplying of words. Pagans
believe that there is more force in perpetual
babbling, that they might be more heard with
use of more words. Jesus says no, We know
what you need. Use less, be simple. He could of
compacted the Lord's Prayer into one: Come.

i think i'll erase this poem. It could be said with less.

Day 5: Morning

Psalms 9 & 10

i could say i love You,
but that is hardly specific.
O expectant One of immensity,
You are the completeness of love...

You are the intimacy of tracing
unintelligible love letters on my wife's back.
You are words that hold my head when
tears threaten to drag it down to my hands.

You are the joy in the giving, the fulfillment
of silence, the euphoria in the erasure of need.
Erasure so complete,
even the memory of need has left me.

So love is the word i use when i'm out of words,
when i look upon Your fairness

and am found distracted,
what did i ask for last week?

Ah, was it peace? For in the presence
of this present prayer, i could say i feel at peace.