A Pound of Flesh

Tomorrow I will treat myself
As something lesser than I can be;
I will punish my appearance
For my undesirability,
And I will go about my business
As a wasted commodity.

Tomorrow I’ll agree with you
About my insufficient claim
I’ll stay silent because I know
I’ve no right to change the game;
I’m an unwanted anomaly
In the world of All The Same.

Tomorrow I’ll use what bits I have
To feed the shallow illusion
I will grovel for forgiveness
For being a poor substitution
I will accept my surface
Necessitates my exclusion,

Tomorrow I will crawl about
The rotten crust on which I’m born,
I will discount my existence
For the crime of being shopworn
After you drank my youth,
I learned to swallow my scorn.

And tomorrow I will drink it down,
And tomorrow I will judge my skin,
And tomorrow you will take the blade
Forged every generation
And exact the pound from all of us
Because you’re hungry again

But tonight I’m angry with you
For a lifetime of distraction,
For a woman’s only strength
Being the strength of her attraction-
Because your every passing desire
Is another pound’s extraction

In every passing generation,
Ad nauseam, with no drop of compassion.


Clockmaker

Roll back, roll back, let nimble hands
Mind the gears and spindles-
Roll back, roll back, the time of man
Before the hours dwindle.

Return me to my mother’s home,
Let her kitchen pot, just simmering,
Waft the world that I’ve outgrown
Back into a vivid memory.

Let me see my sister playing
All alone beside the stair,
Braiding and unbraiding
Her dolly’s long blond hair.

Let me again feel the crisp of summer heat
Through my fresh, unspoiled skin or
Crimson fingertips, stained berry sweet
With disregard for dinner.

To see mysterious, repetitious behavior
That used to thrill and frighten
Before I understood human nature,
Before the weight of what enlightens

When insects were still interesting
And maps were of hidden forts-
Let me remember petitioning
In undiluted desire or remorse.

Roll back, roll back just once
To sleep on my childhood bed
Before this clock has chimed
And all these times are dead.


Uncertain Principles

What is man?

A tapestry of tumbling collisions-
Blind intersections, forked decisions,
Miserable masses following a foreign flow-
Can we ever assert beyond yes or no
A reflection of unique identity?
Are we caught in a waterfall into infinity,
Into relational eternity, into isolation or annihilation-
Does the singular stand in violation
Against the plural body?
Safety In Numbers, requisite or commodity,
Undergirds the homogeneity of corporate expression
The Individual either bows in repression,
Or exists in illusion.

These things cause me great confusion
As I divide to find the mean:

Must you be seen to truly exist,
And if you truly exist, mustn’t you be truly seen?


My King

You are no respecter of persons.
You do not gaze uncouth
At heaps of hoarded wealth,
Nor crave to devour tender youth.

In You there is no shadow of turning.
You do not rise to set
As we frantically orbit your constancy
Spinning our dizzy, dancing minuet

And some of us fall broken,
Restless though we’re lame,
But You raise up the conquered,
And lend the indigent your name.

You exalt the humbled,
And Your heart stands for the poor
So they will stand inside Your grace,
Singing Your song forevermore.


Winter is Coming

Pink sky in morning
Warning me
Of the oncoming storm

My hatches are battened,
All but one
Waiting for him to come home

All lies still
On our quiet hillside
And still I listen with all my will

For the howling banshees I know
Of wind and spirit that go fleeing
Before the tsunami of snow

Soon to curl up under its robe of white,
To sleep in the spotless night:
A promise fulfilled in plain sight.


He’s Coming Back

I am a child tonight
And crying for You to come home again,
I live in the complexity of paradox,
And grace, and sin,

But tonight I just want You home again.

I’ve read our best wisdom,
And I know my diagnosis,
I know they consider You
My constructed psychosis

But You have never been so cold as this

The time between two points
Becomes the shortest term
And eternity ends and begins
In moments waiting firm:

Nose to the window expecting Your return

And I don’t mind playing the fool
I lose nothing to no great beyond,
And the warmest moments I have known
Are when You correspond

With Your betrothed wife.

And if any part of You is real,
You are worth every breath of my entire life.


Keeping On

How do I crack the veneer,
This polished feeling
That threatens to steer me
Into a reeling destruction?

How do I maintain this impossible facade
Long enough for the getting to get good again
Long enough for my walk with God
To break and reset what’s bent by sin?

How do I take every thought captive
When I myself have been a captive my many years,
How do I unwrap this
Bitter disappointment engineered

From my first breath,
To my waking prayers,
To the faithless death of caring

That threatens to devour me?
How can I absorb the world,
And yet be?


Hello, Again

It’s time to reopen
Metered communication
The celebration
Of the mystery of language
And enduring relationship,
Beyond numbing paralysis
Or faithlessness.

It’s time to heap coal
Into the faith,
To fill this space
With the heat waves of hope
Draped in robes of grace
Unearned, but unwasted
On the sole basis

Of His interventions.


The Emperor Has No Clothes

I’ve tried to read
E. E. Cummings
And as an author
I cannot speak ill of the read,
But as a reader
He writes suddenly, without thinking,
And I mostly go unfed.


NOLA

Dance among your dead,
And have you prayed first
On the beads you’ve thrown?
Save it for tomorrow
Today there’s just heat.
Inhale your legacy
And blow it out your brass
Into every waiting street
Drink, and be merry,
Eat your mud bugs
Before they eat you
And you wait in marble houses
While they dance around your grave.