The Return

I Don't Mind    6/10/13

I wish you were here. All of me wishes:

all my heart and thoughts and arms and lips and...

I pretend you see these same stars I see.

You don't. The sun burns them blue in your sky.

These continents never see the same sky.

Why are we so broken? Why aren't we near?

Why aren't you with little me. Broken.

You are, aren't you? Like me, broken? us. both.

My sky is black with broken bits of light.

Are there clouds? Are there little bits of light-

ning with you, in your sky? Tell me darling,

you, like me, are darkened or I can't see

you. Not in the sun, or I can't touch you.

Isn't everyone who has seen this sky...

Everyone is broken like us, aren't they?

Even egg-blue skies are burned by the sun.

Even the ancients who saw this sky (moved

a little bit they say) they too were broken

everyone is

                   broken

                                 But you and I,

broken as we are, I believe we'll find,

between the two of us, we can not mind.

Walking on Faith

The idea for this poem was inspired by my friend Ellen who had this insight on the story of Peter walking on the water: "Peter stood on the word 'come', not on the water." I really like this idea because it fits perfectly with an idea in a book I read earlier this year called Notes from the Tilt-a-Whirl by N. D. Wilson. The idea is that while our words describe reality, God's words are reality. The Word speaks "Tree", and a tree is. His words are the great story in which we are a cast of characters. These two ideas sounded like a poem waiting to happen.

Peter Walks on Water 12/6/2012

In

the beginning was the Word, the words, the world

the Word uttered Water and water was

the Spirit respirated and wind whirled

the words are broad, bitter, blue, as the Word does.

Then

the Word walks his smaller words, his earth,

these few men he serves breathe his further words

that form his stories since he spoke his birth,

the wild, narrow path they bound down and surge.

But

pause at the cold, dark words shaken about

over the deep where wind scatters the breath,

where God is ghost, firm is deep, faith is doubt.

one man needs one word to save him from death:

"Come."

the sound of the Word's word drowns out the old

till turbulent is stayed and wet bears weight

that word, once Water, bears a stepping Stone

but stable, solid, and spoken like Faith.

Taste and See

The form of this poem is simple; I just increased the number of syllables in a line by one per line. Kind of a lazy form. The sense of swelling and building looks better in my moleskine.

Who Cares About Apathy Anyway? 9/7/12

that

my heart

would feel this

world so that

a blood-red siren

would grip, grind, rip my heart

bird song stitch it whole again

that the tides and summer storms would

wash my marrow with electric salt

so I can taste, smell, breathe all else in me

stand in wonder more (and more) at an engine

or an iPhone or an ant's exoskeleton

whisper to the night for fear of breaking it (or me)

and scream my footprint pattern into every stretch of soil

and so grow callouses beneath instead of upon my tongue

to grip the bitterness and savor the sweet agony of joy

and to found my bound into the thick wind's exhalation all around

And It Was Good

And It Was Good   6/25/2012
When my mother walks beside the deep,
she seeks a little round-rolled globe
in the stones; sometimes she finds a Real,
a world spun thin, with bumps and holes.
Perhaps she will seek
every beach for that stone,
perhaps forever--

I imagine all round all around
whenever I walk water-by
and run, squealing skin to groaning bones,
stones roll below toes till they cry my lie:
I find that I
cannot run for long,
not forever.

Every now and then she keeps a Real,
calls it good--
enough to keep.

Manitoba Fishing

Manitoba Fishing   6/8/2012

the lake at morning: wispy crispness

with bits of fog and boats floating

by docks filling with fishers sans fishes

into the universe the boating

scatters lakeward like july fire

popping like engines gleaming and croaking

soon the tap and plink of line and wire

on water, whoops and hoots echo boat to boat

over water ruffled over mud and mire

five feet above the bed we nod and float

beneath us silent phantoms whir and bend

that whispers of their winding in the ripples wrote

amid the mists we see ghosts like real men

winding wisps as if reeling real, lines refurled

their sound shattered by the silence and

we: a point still whirling in a stilled world

and all else seems thinning and leavening

and our driven purpose seems round us curled

But the cosmos seeps in, envisioning

the rod rocking rhythm as a breath unfurling

and the stillness, the stillness is deafening.

The Cave

Another poem on a theme similar to my first March posting.

Generally I would have edited this more for form before posting, but Finals are coming up and realistically that's not going to happen. So here it is.


The Cave 4/29/2012
It was autumn when they put me in a shallow grave
Two trowel twists and I was dead
The bitter sod made a sodden bitter bed
And the rest was unbearable cold save


The rest I found as I became acquainted
With the dim round pressure all
Around pressing around dim walls
And everything pressing around untainted


But breaking--spring's solar shafts brought
Shooting agony and shredded me too soon
My leafy neck broken by a bloom
Drinking warm and bright that I had long forgot.




John 12:24 "...unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds."

I lost my voice

Being Sick 4/13/2012
I lost my voice to a back alley trench coat,
All smooth shoes and polished words,
Lots of grins and glinting glances backwards.
My dash he dashed with a knife at my throat.

I lost my voice and then he left;
He left me merely whispered croaks
And wisps of spoken throaty chokes.
With lemon tea I remedy the theft.