Sometimes
Tired of me, the days shove by
All elbows and heels
I want to yell, “Watch it!”
But slink off in silence
To eat sour grapes and herrings red
Waiting for something,
Anything else:
The wind against a window,
A bird call, a clock chiming.

I’m learning, slowly,
To shake off the dust
When goodbyes get lost
In the white-noise of apathy
To let them fall mute
And walk on happily
Because family is family
Across all distance
And distractions
And social conventions

Sometimes
Family costs something:
Some wild-eyed trust
And purity of intent
Concern for each other beyond
Ambitions and aspirations
But nothing is lost in the wake
Of honest refusals-

Time is gleaned:
Some time to travel
In other directions
Return to your peoples
Or build a new village
Find some savages
Whose hearts are clear
Of guile and show
And twisted desire-
In bare feet, dance around the fire

Of freedom and simplicity.

How does one, into madness,
Descend, but that sanity
Is certain and solid? Sadness
Rips not the fabric of vanity,
Should all be vain.
Even the squalid should sparkle
Through tinted panes
Or against a dirtier, darker
Standard- how should we stand
Without ground and legs and gravity
And the heavens to stretch forth our hands-
Heaven’s purity reflecting our depravity
What measure may stretch
Across the division?
A man is a priest is a wretch
Who has been forgiven
And needs no new sacrifice:
His One High Priest saves-
Can a man die outside the Life?
Can he come alive in waves?

Can we evade the weight of tragedy-
The misuse, the gnashing, the vain,
Our farthest fall is the apogee
Of our highest reach- The sane

We measure by blindness and momentum.

How I shiver, tremor, ache
As crumpled paper, here I lie
Balled and crushed by some mistake:
The folded plane that could not fly

Ill again am I.

These bouts predate
My conscious choices
From wee, broken state
Come I, but the voices

Of wrung-out being accuse:

These frailties exist as punishments alike-
Penalties for all I cannot be-
But how unlike Him to strike
The confused and weak, with infirmity

They cannot understand

When He forgives the ones
who err in ignorance.

I love our mornings,
Children’s silly, babbling laughter
Like bubbles colliding
Filling the rafters

With offerings of peace

Joy beyond our wildest hopes
As the leaven in our bread
Or cream in our coffee,
No one concerned with getting ahead

Or falling behind,
Because we’re right where we should be.

Nine and thirty years
Stirring the primordial matter
Of being, function, and identity
Shielded from the shatter
By the fluidity of expression

Constrained by determination
Kissed by destiny,
Dizzied by the collisions
Within artificial boundaries
Of usurped hierarchies

Safe again within the tower
Of tender strength
Laboring for the least,
Toiling at length
To maintain the integrity

Of the led and the leader together:

The value of every sheep
Is the mark of the shepherd.

Blow you wild winds
Against the foundations
Unmoor the pride, the eyes, the sins
Of ancestral resignations
And the hubris of myopic
Overcompensations.

Tear down with all passion
The scaffolding of human reason
The artificial edifice fashioned
Of our goals, our desires, our treasons
Blow, rage, strip away
Obedience as contorted feasance

So the fundamental stones
Through time eternal may stand
Men of thought, men of action shown
Side by side and hand in hand
Skill is only knowledge applied
But even knowledge alone can
Spare the stranded, huddled inside
From the wrath of forming ignorance

After all, it is knowledge that cultivates obedience.

Five years
I gnashed my teeth,
Anger’s fist in my stomach,
The world, the future, my history
All rewritten in blood

Five years
I berated myself to obey.
Self-flagellations, recriminations,
Hard within a hard day,
Seeping the infection.

Five years
And I got sick
Death-rot in my gut
Burning sulfurous double-wicks
Trying to chastise myself to release.

One afternoon,
Memories sweet like sun tea
Cool on porch swings
Memories of your fidelity
When the worst is done

And You remain.

One afternoon,
Chubby baby legs in the sink
Repentance, dissolution
Washing her clean
Alongside my own soul

Tears flooding my rotted gut
Where reprimands could not reach,
The tender tide of love impossible
To dissuade or to impeach

Releases forgiveness, the caged dove, and
Restores the softness inside me.

You spoke
And matter collided into being
In perfect order
Animals stretching forth to sing
Praises in a new tongue
To the Creator King

And I will be whatever You say I will be.

I sin
Striving hard between
My broken flesh,
Emotional deformities,
And spiritual stubbornness
But I have seen

The glimpse of Your beauty beyond comprehension.

You redeem
From the darkest sins
I stand only on Your work
And when I stumble again
I fall into You
Spare me from the recoil of men

And allow me to sing,
Whether in exuberance or agony,
To You, my eternal Savior King.

I never belonged to the barking hawkers.
They heralded my path to perdition.
Sufficient without their momentum-
Forgive me for seeking their permission

Even their affection.

What may be their mission,
Is an expression of my conformity
Overturning my design for
An infirmity of form

A painting over a painting.

I am not incorporated.
A single person from humble beginnings
Flailing in the freedom
Of expression, and service, trimming
The wicks of history

I am painted in
The broadest expression
Of human experience
And it is a transgression
To seek heightened, narrow pursuits

A tower, a city, a mantra.

I have walked the earth
In the barest of feet,
And in my poverty
I have dined with kings.

This is who I am
And it is dishonesty
To amble with troupes
When I am made to be me-

Small,
but distinct from the sea.

Rain pelting my swollen face, but
I wandered barefoot into the storm
In searching rays the unbroken sun rises:
Your face shines; by grace I’m warmed
And the laments, the wails,
The twirling vapors of fate
A million broken stories
Step back in shadow to wait
The bridegroom draws close,
His musical entourage swells
My knees find the dirt
The black dog felled
Footsteps, and a harsh word
Would shatter what remains
These few, fragile shards
Wearing my name.

No voice has earned the right
Like Yours
Yet You share Your worth;
Your worth is sure.
And of all the swirling majesty
Calling electric praise
From grounded souls,
Endless shouts to the Ancient of Days
From finite vox
The clean from the unclean,
It is Your infinite tenderness
That reigns supreme

In the frangible, sensate-awareness
Of my mortal and immortal being.