Late afternoon.

Here is calm, yet not peace.

We gape at heavy clouds dimming our bright world:
those solemn, silent gods have freed us from Sol.

Nature stirs the forest with unseen hands,
the wood and wind contesting for Her pleasure.
Feathers sing battle lore.

How each note echoes!--then dense, rushing quiet
hangs from solid air. Earth herself has paused; we
taste the silence like wine.




may '07 - june '09

what have I become? --my dearest friend

The answer to Johnny Cash and Nine Inch Nails' mournful question--echoed by so many other mediocre modern artists in the throes of self-pity, and myself upon occasion--is that the question itself is misplaced. Ask not what you have become, what have I become. Ask what you have not become, what have I neglected to become. This is necessary. Then ask not what you have already become, but what you can become: what can I become, my dearest friend?

The answer, of course, is that at every moment, the board has been set and you are the white pieces and it is your move. You have become a chess piece; you have not become a checkmate, but you can become, and will become, exactly that: for, or against.

Ask not what has already happened, but what has yet to occur. The only thing that's real might truly be pain, as they wrote, but only insofar as pain has yet to occur. Reality is forward-moving. Disillusionment is proper for the backward-sighted; reality, my dearest friend--lies ahead of you, in pain or pleasure.

Everything goes away in the end, but only if the end has already has come: and it has not, and so that statement, too, flatly fails. What End? The future of possibility, the End in that future, is yet still only forward-sighted; while the mourned departure is backward. One way only exists. Everyone goes away--but at the beginning, because it has already occurred.

The past is false. Only the future is real; the End is real; but it is not yet chosen. Do not mourn while the bridegroom is still with you! And since he--He--shall outlive, outlast you: Never mourn.

And yet--of course--and yet. It is everything, and it gets everywhere. Grief too gets everywhere. To this perhaps there is no answer; or this, the answer is a blank future, and does not well satisfy.
But yet, again. If we still have presence--existence, Breath--enough to mourn, the End has not yet come and mourning is yet beyond us. Mourn the night we must, but morning--splendid Dawn!--shall make fools of us all.




June '09

waste

shame is a velvet robe
gone rough, you know
with overuse and sweat from sleeping in
worn always with a blush.
no one knows my name here
nor cares, nor should.
ah, i am so very well forgotten:
the dim spare twenty crumpled so in old jeans.
but feel not self-pity; rather
disappointment, confusion, distaste--
i am a morbid curiosity.




june '09 - july '09

theology

i was seven
and scared
and i spoke to God--
"if i'm not good enough
then i'll just love You
from hell."
the wall beside my bed
comforted me.

i was twelve
and lonely
and i spoke to God--
"if You love me
please say something."
the fence around my yard
explained: silence
does not mean
He does not love;
only that
He is not manipulated.

i was twenty four
and tired
and i did not speak at all:
there were no words to say.
the roof below my feet
offered high wind
and a view;
then did God speak to me--
in beautiful words
i did not know.




may '09

impossibly hard

"come now, let us reason together,"
written honestly for liars
who don't care: gold unpolished isn't gold
they say, although in Jerusalem
it always sells the same
between friends.

"i love you: farewell,"
the books explained from boxes by the pond;
i think he meant to drown himself with literature.
tomorrow, i'll ask him why,
knowing no answer exists; he'll only say
he needed leaving left alone.

"awake, why sleepest thou, oh Lord?"
Petersborough's grave chronicler
silently mourns divine silence. we agree, but don't
admit to it: priests toss at night
praying prayers aren't empty thoughts.
our petty minds mumble such Celestial formalities.

"I wept,"
he admitted to the biographer, but why
he never could explain.
and never rude enough to ask,
Lazarus leapt to his second death wondering why
he'd been let fall slowly to the first.

"i am on your side,"
but: 2+2 must equal 5, we must condemn Julia
and O'Brien must have control, control, control:
even of the sand bead on your journal.
your side must be his, Winston, then will
his be yours.

"ask, seek, knock, and it shall be given to you,"
it was so honestly said so long ago,
but who ever undestood it?
men will always gorge themselves on greedy prayers:
that's not what he intended, is it?
but where, o where was all that holy fine print?




november '08
april '09