Uncouth Observation

I think most normal men
balance private inner lives
of desperate immorality
with gracious public lives
of shamefaced cowardice.

Maybe it's why we all admire
evil men, who have achieved
what most of us are too weak
to truly contemplate.

(And to the dear feminist:
Thank God we are not strong
like women. Lord, save us all
from girls.)

Doxology

I think what I learned, friend
is that I must forfeit, sitting
with my feet flat on the floor:
kind and clever, gently puzzled
but never angry--that I must
while being used, never once lose
my cheer, must have patience
with enemies, demons, & mockers;
in sacred gullibility and holy naivety,
allowing quick and angry evil men
to overcome, must
at the very moment of their triumph,
with no malice, disappear
having won nothing, taken nothing,
with invincible forgiveness and grace:
must simply slip their shackles and rise
indifferent as a child, to find
something that matters. All
our youthful lusts and pride ached
for this one forbidden frontier,
this carefree undoing--
and are banished to its dusky fog
once found. So by surrender and defeat,
I walk beside the furies and the waves
silent, broken, enslaved, and whole.




aug 2017

Things New

Have we written 

any new thing?  

This year, or last, 

or maybe the past 

five years or ten?  

How long has it been?  

What was it?

Who has written

the last new thing?

aug 2017

Hesitate

My silence absolute

-ly deafens me. Your storms

imperially rage, whipping you

around in madness; I know,

dimly. But my leafy stillness

stirs only with a quiet love

and aches for peace. Afterwards, 

a child might see my rings

and count stiff summer winds long past, 

fossils of forgotten passion. Or

my roots might rise from Earth

in profane proof of weakness.

Who knows? Our times are broken

all apart. By then you'll be

only a pleasant memory, to

sweeten Autumn for an ailing tree.

august 2017

Dreams

In the first dream, I beat a woman I did not know, for reasons I never learned.  My arms were weak and I could not land more than glancing blows.  And then--I spent the rest of the dream trying to apologize, trying to repair, begging forgiveness she could never grant.

The other violent dream--the one I had the next night, after we crossed the border--we fought our enemies with hunting rifles across a thin valley.  I knew my enemies' names, and they knew mine.  My brothers in arms seemed rebels against impossible odds, besieging a small building in the valley.  It was my own ruthlessness and ferocity that brought our adversaries to their knees. 

At the end of the dream, the leader of our enemies--a great and powerful man, with vast regiments now laid low--held up my youngest son and appealed to me to surrender, to put down my rifle and join his men, or my children and my family would die.

Then I looked on, distant and numb, as I shot this mighty enemy to his death--through the body of my own child.  And awoke in a silent scream of guilt and pain.

The third night, I only slept when I was certain I would not dream, and begged for the peace of Christ before I closed my eyes.

My friend has talked of dreams filled with undead temptations and plagued with horrors always just behind him, and I am conflicted.  The warrior, the brute, would rush to his defense, but at what cost?  Would my violence only become one more horror?

When I was a child, I was afraid of the dark.  I comforted myself by realizing the evil in my own heart was more sinister than anything that moved in shadow.  But this brutal comfort carries no help for my friend, and ties my own hands.

And yet--.  There is a reason we do not daily live in the waking horrors of our darkest dreams: we are loved, deeply loved.  The brute, the terrified child, the battered woman and murdered enemy: so created, so loved, and so forgiven, by a strength and grace unmentionable in human terms.




july 2017