Animals

Again you find me here,
more animal than man,
trapped in my silver cage
of illusions and sins.
I'm proud and ashamed, but
not willing to concede:
Grace may be sufficient,
but I'm not on my knees.
I recoil from the heat
of my own snarling heart--
but how can I hide this?
You forged me in the dark.
Mumbling apologies,
I slip through years like days,
wondering if my sin
condemns more than you save.
Silently, I confess
I also question if
you care, or if at death
I'll find an empty chair.

Then steadily within myself,
I hear a different voice ascend.
It asks me how I know my sins--
are sins?, and how I find I am
not as the animals, but Man?
I grieve my faults, it knows, but why?
And then demands--"Whose Voice Am I?!"
Then from my empty chair You rise
into view: old eternal flame
unchanged, but every morning new.
Dark cloud of terror, beautiful
and fierce; a deadly holiness,
all power in a moment pierced.
And yet, you breathe of grace and love;
redemption in your blood and pain!
So then: "Whose voice am I? And why
do you hear me so close within?"

A glimpse--then find myself
an animal again.

March 2019

This started out as the first stanza, then sat in my notes folder for a few months.  I came back to it this weekend and started up a tortured development process, resulting in this tepid and awkward execution.  I'm posting it so I can stop working on it for a bit.  I want it to be a lot better than it is, but it's not--and, like me, it's resistant to change.

does it help?

"does it help them?", she asks:
to silently acquiesce
without response?

i don't know,
so i don't reply;
ironic repetition of my sin.

this is how it's always been!
whether arrogant or kind,
i just throw myself in,
quietly over the edge beside
some screaming fool i love:
assuming i will learn to fly,
or figure something out--
imagining a scene where i
hug my falling friend, pulling up
with my flapping cape behind me
in a race against the ground.

looking around, seeing with a shrug
that i could obviously do less,
i never think to accuse myself of
not doing enough, i guess.

perhaps it's cowardice.
maybe i only listen because
i lack the courage to interfere.
maybe all my kind intentions
end in cruelties & subtle harm.
hoping not, i still don't know.

years ago, standing at the kitchen sink
fuming with a wounded pride
i suddenly understood, as in a vision:
i'd rather love, and be taken for a fool
than lose the ones i'd otherwise rule.
seeing clearly, then, i choose
strong gullibility: intentional defeat
for the sake of love & peace.

maybe i am warped and sad,
duped in ways i do not understand
while defending my oppressors
to myself. maybe that matters.

"i don't know," i say again,
this time spoken, but still
a declination to reply--
ironic repetition of my sin.
but silently, i assume (as ever)
i'll figure something out.

march 2019

Vigil

Every time I light a cigarette
It is a vigil for Billy—
His face, dim lit by the flicker
Of a match, or lighter,
A solitary image in the dark of my porch
Suspended over his whisky
and a new cigarette
Mid-sentence, as we discuss
The ruin of culture, and theology:
Sin and God.

Then I look up
To watch planes crawl across my horizon
Like stars through the trees.

One time, desperate to hear
My Savior’s voice, I stared
Into the gloomy night, only to see a single star.
It occurred to me how precious it was
To receive these photons, which
Had traveled longer than the Earth
Navigating past distant cosmos,
Through space and even time itself
Missing every star and planet,
Through voids and vast galaxies,
Plunging into our atmosphere, past
Clouds and mountains,
Threading the narrow spaces between
The branches of my trees—
To end their eon’s path
With me.
And in that moment, I heard
His still small voice.

He calls to us,
To me and Billy,
Softly speaking peace and love
Before the human race was born;
And reconciles all our hearts’ distress
With pinpricks of light
Heavier than we ever know.

Dec '18

Desire Desired

It is, but isn't, desire: a longing
to be Longed For, in our core:
not just our uses or convenience,
but our Selves. It is a human
need: to be wanted, as us.

With flaws & shortcomings,
in brutal specificity, we desire
a Desire for Me, inscribed
upon another heart: the
imago dei of a jealous God.

Well, it's not to be. We are
pale idols, lazy worshippers.
Anyway, this isn't Love:
only a broken reflection of
the jealous One’s desire.

All the same, insatiably
we lust to be Lust's object:
cycle endlessly through empty
tangibles; but find this thirst
unanswered on the Earth.

Why would we want this?
Unless, perhaps, our hearts recall
something we can't remember:
a moment of Creation, the
ultimate Desire expressed--

a point of time;
an unknown memory;
an aching echo;
which all Life with its ears alert
stares back into the dark to see!




October 2018

The things uncaused

Sometimes we look back to find
we’d fallen silent, back a ways,
without realizing. Although my mind,
unbidden, will catalog potential whys;
I know it to be a precious thing without cause.
Do you know them? They are woes
and worries to us, an uncomfortable pause
in life's conversation with Self—
treasure! A chance to climb down
from the stage, to watch life from the shelf.
Who am I, when I’m not speaking?
After all, that’s most of life.
It’s here that we most clearly see
our bitterest disappointments, and why
we live with them; our failures, nobility,
cowardice, kindnesses, all laid out
dispassionately as a farmer’s wares.




oct 2018