i will stay with you forever
No matter what you
say or do
I will see you as a baby
Despite your sin and stink or view
I will never bring up “maybe”
When you ask me if I do
Love you here forever
When you have squandered like a fool
All the treasure I have never
Ceased to give to you
No act of yours can sever
The strength of love renewed
Dearest heart, eternal child
My one and always you.
pretend you had a lost daughter
Who in your mind will always be
A beautiful baby girl
Now pretend that in order to survive
You start to see your beautiful lost baby
In everyone
Then “everyone” starts to do things they really should not do
Go places they should not go
Smash through rules…
designed for their safety
So you, poor sot, try to warn them away…
From the crap they should not get into
But they don’t really wanna listen
Because who the heck are you anyway?
(Half-crazed stranger with some lost kid)
Yet you still
love them
You know because you lost a child.
So you go find them
In the crack houses
Strip joints
And IRS offices where they work
…and screw up royally
Because you know
That is what love does
Abstract-I get it
So let me try once more–
Years ago I rode on a bus in a country men travelled to in order to have “legal” sex with minors.
A white man got on the bus with a girl from this other country.
A girl, not a woman.
We. The people on the bus. Watched them travel together. Knowing (ball-parking, at least)…their destination.
Their terrible destination.
If she is alive somewhere I would hold her
Tell her her “job” was not her fault
Tell her I love you
(No matter what)
–I love you
Now please darling,
Come home.
don’t need to tell me
Time travel is real
I have stood in the room with you
When you disrobed
Mixed the paint
Self-portrait, pitiless and true
You weaponized unsparing
Light for me-
hair cropped close
Seemless undergarment
So that I could know
Exactly how to strip,
Bear cross, and follow
You to the last breath.
girl you got
Wings down your spine
Silvery feathers
An anthem in your head
Sing it, Girl–
Sing loud
Whole world to hear
Percuss.
heart a bird caged in bones
Use it all to
Question every undisputed
Law mitigating the force
Of gravity and light
With your full-throated
Iridescent flight
Rise up
Rise.
you think Vikings
Drawn swords and treasure chests
In the strong man’s house
Who ties and binds matters
The scars on His wrists forever
I am the plunder
So grateful to be found
Restored eternal
From the house of the strong man
Strewn with bones and promises
Redeemed by this warrior
King
Easter morning.
The sun rises on a rolling hill in New Braunfels as worshippers gather to celebrate the Resurrection of Jesus.
Yet as the dawn Christians worship, a savage domestic drama unfolds within yards of the sanctuary.
Felix Antonio Nieves, seventeen years old, dies as the result of what news sources have described as a protracted domestic argument.
The accounts of the last moments of Nieves’ life describe multiple weapons–stun guns, a pistol, and the shotgun used to end his life.
What is shocking about this story?
7:15 on Easter morning?
The quiet neighborhood?
The proximity to a church?
Or the knowledge neighbors have that their neighbors include law enforcement officers? That this is a neighborhood where people might feel safer because some of their own neighbors are officers of the peace?
Or again, that this neighborhood is within a mile or two of a police station?
Maybe. But what shocks me is that in a protracted story of domestic violence, no one called for police intervention until a murder had already been committed.
What does that say about Texas? About us? About justice?
We should call the police before we load and shoot a gun.
Why didn’t they? Why did no one call the police until it was too late to save one family from irrevocable tragedy?
The answers might surprise us all…if we were brave enough to face them.
We can say we do not deserve what we get–either lottery or traffic ticket. We can even get quite indignant about it.
And yet if we are to believe the Cross, we always deserve worse than we get. Death, plague, betrayal, are all the carrion birds circling the dilemma of our sin.
We do not want to face what we have earned in our rebellion against love.
Which brings us to our worth.
We are by native value just pennies on the ground. But we have been purchased at such an extravagant cost by the One who loves us.
This extravagant sacrifice is the center longing of every human love story–to be redeemed, raised, and transformed by a love that will not relent or tarnish.
That is Passion. Death by crucifixion passion. Resurrect us in His arms passion.
I-will-never-leave-you-or-forsake-you-love.
bring your lantern buckler
to the dawn gate
Where the night sky
holds on to the dark
Lift it high
Pray fire
for the dragon you have summoned
Knows all your gods
By name.
I tell
The young man that I have
Fallen a million times
(Felt like it anyway)
A million falls
A million failures
A million times
An arbitrary number
Not as funny as bazillions or gazillions
Arms spread wide to denote the bigness of the thing
God sent His one and only Son
…to fall like this?
Fail like this?
Criminal nailed to a tree?
His falling and my falling, so different
His fall just
To rise to life,
Me in His arms
What if
Words in a bottle were
Worlds in a bottle
What if
You and I
Were strangers in a room
Filled with people
Just as broken as me
What if
There really was
A connection between
Calvary and cavalry
And one could be used
To summon the other
What if you had a child
You loved very much
Who would be raised by
One kind of
Monster or another?
What would you do
To save her?
What would you
Do to bring her Home
?
Carrying Light 