The Faraday Box

Close to 

La noche de Los muertos

I open the

Faraday box

Keep one leg out, door ajar, 

Bit of light

Lent by a friend

You inhabited when

The world was still

An old wine skin

Blood and Spirit

I tell myself this 

New litany of 

Places for the dead

Who will all 

rise

Because of you

They kept it 

sealed for centuries 

Told ourselves we could 

be tourists there

Run our mortals’ hands along the stone

Ledge, trace rock, and DNA

Rise 

Rise 

Unshrouded Light

Already Rome.

I am not much of a pro-sports fan, although I try sometimes for the sake of my partner.

I feel less inclined to try now that the famously laconic Gregg Popovich had words for this recent election and the folk who voted red.

So many things you said worth noting Mr. P, but the one that stuck out the most?  Like if I could only pick one thing you said to comment on–You are afraid we are Rome?

Long been Rome, I would say.

 We have not only tolerated legalized infanticide for the last 43 years through Roe v. Wade, we now allow the concessions which provide the service of salting, vacuuming, dismembering, and dehumanizing small, voiceless humans through the months of their development in the womb both federal funds and deep privacy in order to abort and also harvest the bodies of these exploited children.

If you were to ask an ordinary person, say a woman or a disabled  person–would you rather be verbally belittled or carefully vivisected for spare parts?

Belittled, thanks very much.

The latter-death by legal and medical caveat.  Pretty disenfranchising.

To be clear, very clear–we, the citizens of the United States, have long been Rome.  Infanticide is infanticide is infanticide, Mr. P. 

How many millions of female, minority, Muslim, immigrant, disabled American voters did not vote in this election because we legalized their murder years ago?

No words will bring them back.

Minimum

He says

The least of these in the language of childhood

Neither emperors nor governors nor bards

Gather the little ones

…least of these

Army of small

Wanderers in the world 

They look for a Savior

Older Brother King

Who can 

Calm the storm

Speak peace to the wind

And tell all bedtime stories

With hope at the beginning and the end

Of each hard letter 

INRI

The  least of these-

M.

Roll the stone away

Jesus of Nazareth, King of the…

Minimum.

Sacrament

the tape is a blur of

ordinary splendor

songs sung loud in a messy 

house vivid patchwork 

some mention of a circus

close to the tear in the hand-made quilt

I touch your brow

tell you

take your medicine before you go out to play

Round, pink, chewable analgesic 

as you lift your head to receive the pill

Eucharist in the living room,

old and beautiful 

Words for “good” and “grace”

So close to your already liturgical

Beautiful like…

A rose

A ruby

A diamond

A butterfly 

A boy in flight

…if we had a fort..

Weighted Blanket

in a fit of unease 

she has an out-of-body experience 

Rising above the squalor

Imagining what it would be like

To live inside the perfect house

Instead–she dusts the counters and all the edges

with cinnamon to deter the sugar ants

Beats the air with questions

Washes and re-washes clothes, stones, teeth 

Delays bodily functions  

To search for

-The weighted blanket-

Surrogate mother/synthetic comforter

Lyrics/verses 

of a lullaby sung softly by the

Real One

George Instead?

having an ordinary name 

(Think cow or child’s toy)

Means misnomer–

Betty, Becky, pieces left out

Or added

My favorite-gleanor

So close 

To gleaner

I ask myself

What if it was George?  Harold? Londerson? Jamal?

Would I still 

Recognize your voice

Trace the familiar 

Lines along 

Your hands, your face?

Your gaze holds firm

Your love unswerving

Written, Word

A System of Touch

these interlocking pieces-

a woman in the crowd reaches out to touch 

Slowing down motion

to Jairus’ daughter

Take this stranger by the hand

(For science, of course)

Blindfold emotion 

-While the girl lies dying-

Somehow temporarily 

All of us

nailed to this single day in history 

When you let go of 

Everything you had a right to hold

Go where we never 

want to go

Then tell Mary

Don’t touch me

Last trace of hell still on my skin

You draw us to your 

Broken.

Make us whole again

With this system of touch.

“Hear My Voice”

I am a big fan of Jesus, even  though he is a little scary.

Why?  Well, there is the dying for the sins of the world thing, but there is also the stuff he idly seems to throw into his parables–weeping and gnashing of teeth, something about being salted with fire.

CS Lewis is right, he is not a tame lion.  He is the only and original badass and he more than deserves to be the divisor of before and after in human history.

Years ago I cried when I read an article about a nurse who visited new and at-risk parents.  She said that years later the babies she had visited would recognize her voice when they heard her in random places.

This mattered to me because I have a baby out there somewhere who might recognize my voice even though she was just 14 months old when she was taken from me.

The voice of love–that is what I hear when I read Jesus.  He is, by turns, funny, deadly incisive, ironic, and passionately in love with us.

Crucifixion and resurrection kind of passionately in love.

When I lost my little foster daughter I grieved beyond what is comfortable to describe.  I took my cry to God–why?

His voice was clear–if you have to choose for her to know just one of us, you or Me?  Which would you choose?

Him, of course.

Always and only Him, baby girl.

Hear his voice.

John 10:2-5

Take Hunger

take hunger, take thirst

Go

stand in the storm

know this to be true:

Thunder, wind, rain

fall splendor from this

Cloud-dark sky 

and lift these things

empty into tumult–

The way a man might lift his just-born

hunger, thirst

Once and only filled 

By the God of the storm