What is the substance of a soul
That it may groan and crack
Like the hull of a ship
Squeezed by heavy stacks,
Exposure wreaking corrosion
Throughout what once stood intact.
What comprises a soul’s DNA?
That it remain pliable under grief,
Capable of being wrung repeatedly
Shaken in its basic self-beliefs,
Bruised like the hopeful face
Full-moon smiling with no relief
Under the blow by blow.
What is the substance of soul,
And what good would it be to know?
My fear for 303:
No achievable speed of repair
Can outrun the dilapidation
We’re alone there
But for God’s ministration.
My fear for me:
About the same.
I sometimes wonder
At human affection:
A gap in proximity,
A few steps in the other direction,
And we all fall silent.
People orbit,
Even compound,
Where there is some mutual benefit,
Some stake in the ground,
But who lifts up the useless?
This isn’t a poem.
It’s barely a prayer,
My soul is wrenched
By desperate despair
Railing against my huddled joy
Smiling between blows,
Because between black and blue,
She knows, she always knows,
Morning breaks new.
Be my sustainer,
Through exhausted nights
When my anarchic flesh
Wakes me with bites
Of breakdowns and threats
Sustain my flight
From birth to endless praise.
Take my family in Your hands
Like You have all our days
In Your stalwart tenderness
Protect us and renew our ways
To serve You as we enjoy
Lifting ever purer praise-
As You move, we are able.
Forgive the stubborn sins
You died to forgive
Before we relented, before
We cried out to live:
After You reached into my chest
Squeezing the stone impassive,
Transforming it into a beating thing.
And the attacks land
On this buffeted body
But I rejoice I can still crawl
Our family suffers the volley,
Pummeled quietly,
But we remain Godly,
Because You are God of all,
And we are Yours.
Wrap us in the tenderest provision.
It isn’t in some hidden crevice,
Some dark corner outside Your realm,
That I process out the gathered sludge
Of moments overwhelmed
To see Your heart instead.
You are capable beyond comprehension:
As I refer to human abilities
To connect the pieces in cohesion,
Our intricately imbalanced fragilities;
We don’t know true comprehension.
We know You are capable beyond
To weave redemption, reconciliation,
Shocking our concrete sensibilities,
Our most fanciful imaginations,
Into humble adoration.
I don’t know
If through this heated furnace
You’ll deliver mightily,
Or if the day displays in earnest
Another shade of Your glory.
But I do know
He who Is, is able to command,
And every moment that follows
Flows from the same Hands
That formed man,
And was pierced for the same;
The Hands that will come again to reign.
Foundations measured oft and laid
With painstaking care in precise order
Even lines and distributed weight-
A cement marriage, balanced daughters,
But the brick rubble of the prior structure
Heaps into my mountain view
The sense of constant deconstruction
Urging me to build anew
Yet these bricks will just as likely crumble
I cannot build to former glories,
And each brick inside my simple hovel
Has seen a more magnificent story.
And I look for those who wear their gloves
Who understand what bricks may mean,
The perishing beauty in single pieces of
Antique constructions now unseen.
Some days I go out alone
To sit among bricks of disordered decay
Listening to palacial whispers
From fallen yesterdays.
Underneath all my lashings,
Linguistic writhings in the steep,
Underneath my set jaw
I weep.
You envision a world of beauty,
And for my part I grieve
I could never give you
Your desired reprieve.
You’re wounded and confused,
Ready to come home where there’s none
Shattered windows and trampled doors:
To the ashes you run.
These aren’t accusations.
I’m not angry at ghosts.
I’m sound, and fury, and sweet nothings,
Always tender to the utmost.
I think your fantasies were lovely,
But they’ve cost us the sum.
In these tremors, I ache, I feel
A million impulses inside the numb
Past the surface flash of burning ire
Lies the fresh earth of hollow graves
The dry flower beds of unopened blooms,
And the passing train cars that can’t be saved.
I see the tragedy ever unfolding
In over-cranked, slow motion spinning
And I know there must be time remaining-
Desperately I fumble to rewrite the ending
You yearn to return with packed bags
And reinhabit a dream you’ve once known
But there are no roads, and I go mad
Being unable to drive you home.
You ask if your grandchildren
Will ever know you,
And I wonder the same of me-
Can it be done?
To know what color is the thing
Ever changing colors,
What reflection in the funhouse
Is facing the reality,
What signature of veracity
Is buried in the novel,
And what in my childhood
Isn’t boogeymen and butterflies?
And I’m angry because loving you
Is watching you kill yourself
Over and over and over and over
And one day you might die
The way that you lived.
That day may be upon us,
And you desperately tell more stories
In the hope they outlive the paper truths
But you’ve woven decades of mistrust
In manipulations, in preemptive accusations,
And wild recriminations
At the slightest intervention,
Yet we gather, we intend to help,
For the sake of the broken child in you,
Past all the sins that twisted your history,
Which you cannot remember, nor recognize,
And do not understand, and
Because you have no one left
To sacrifice for your stories:
There is no poetry
For such senseless tragedy.
You reared us in a mirage
Of plausible deniability,
And I cannot remember
If the ground was ever solid
Beneath our tiny feet.
I know you by our experiences,
Some gut understanding
That surpasses the tales
We both may tell-
We all tell, or keep to ourselves
Because of the fog you planted
That grew taller than oaks,
Taller than redwoods,
Taller than the tiny tots in your care.
You should have named us
Smoke, and Mirrors,
But am I being unkind?
What drives me crazy
Is that I cannot tell if I love you dearly,
Or if I love a story I retell,
I cannot know if I despised our times,
Or let you become the ogre you played
On at least some days-
You prided yourself on living a life
Beyond the mundane
For better or worse-
We signed those checks,
Sometimes we cashed them,
And spent them quickly.
I don’t know where that leaves me.
I fight to stay boring.
You spin fables of grandeur,
And I don’t bring the kids
Because children believe in fairy tales
Which may be why you want them to come.
I affirmed part of your affliction
As a form of cognitive dissonance,
Now I’m sifting through my existence
For the identical resistance
Using the same standard of measure
Contradictions fall in line
Beneath the surface of being, of time,
Of the manifold truths we indwell
Yet I sense in me a sudden groundswell:
A concrete contradiction.
You praise me now, even when I confront,
Because you’re alone, suffering the brunt
Assault of age, and neglect, and the distortion
That’s thrown half your decades out of proportion:
So you give me allowance.
But in your childlike gaiety, your eager mirth,
Your reassessment of my worth
In newfound patience and admiration
Your words recall aged condemnation:
I brace for the familiar snarling face
And I wait. But the stakes are higher
For us both, you defend against the liar,
When I do not accuse- it is no lie if you believe;
Though it may be wrong, you don’t deceive
To speak as you are convicted.
And herein, my dissonance abides:
In the reflection of my face in your eyes
I learned the visage of my countenance
The vast heap of disappointments;
The praise for values I didn’t possess.
And now you show forth a foreign reflection
Heightened assumptions and affections,
And I feel artificially lifted, poised above the precipice
Of the inevitable descent and maleficence
Into the twisted told-you-so’s.
Your unexpected approval spins on the head
Of the thinnest dime- the life you led
Lasted longer than my mine thus far-
You were wed sixteen years before
It all collapsed.
So in a sense, we wait for the decline
Revealing I’m yours, you’re mine,
Our intertwined fates await the indication,
Your snarling vindication
For years of prophecies about my future
But I want to believe the contrary view:
All your prophecies were just you.
My girls and I can have a different narrative
Than the lineage of our heritage
Mother to mother to mother.
You hate your departed mother so dearly.
I never knew her; but there is clearly
A family resemblance in the line
My precious daughters committed no crime
And deserve a better inheritance than we give.
Perhaps for this alone, I embrace the risk
The tender exposure to the mental tricks
That once crippled my childlike hope-
For them I can cope
Or try my hardest to cope
With the dissonance of who I am,
Who I have been,
Who I may still be:
Your darling little unloveable failure.
