If tragedy is a long-shot and comedy is a close-up
Then what is the Facebook shot of a young mother slumped
Out cold over the body of her own
Wailing child
On a van
On the way
To the methadone clinic?
In Plain Sight
Reply
Category Archives: grief
Among the Dead
just moments before the blast
There were only living
Breathing children, women, men including
one who knew the truth about the vest, the explosives
wrapped around the heart
of time about to turn
A wedding into a bouquet of broken
Body parts everywhere the survivors said
The ones who could still talk
remember the calamitous before and after
But few will acknowledge the lie at the heart
of the chest-wired-to-slaughter
-grim wedding of deadly injunctions-
You, child, whatever they promised you they had no
right to say these empty things
Imposters all scorch, blood, and bone
Before the implacable throne of the hereafter
Trauma Litany
I have swaddled my hands, wrapping the knuckles and the wrists, the wrists, palms, and knuckles again until they are bound. Then I have pushed these bound, mummified fists into gloves curved, padded, slightly weighted.
I don’t swing at people. I have, I can, but when I do I hold back, talk too much through my mouthguard, obsess about trauma.
Agent-causing-trauma. I-am-the-agent-causing-trauma.
On the bag I do not hold back. I aim for speed then alternate with power punches, slugging at the heavy, impassive face of a leather bag filled with sand or rags. Its resolute, anthropomorphized gut, its impassive reserve.
I do not worry unduly about traumatizing the bag. I can–am allowed to–wail on it in repeated, staccato acts of catharsis.
Because of trauma.
Because when you live long enough you have stories.
Stories linked to the pain of a very broken world.
The puzzle of trauma is the why and the injustice.
So I will call the why the jab and I will call the injustice the cross.
You see where I am going with this–the cross. The strong-right-arm move of a superhero God.
Whose go-to power punch so far was allowing the trauma to wash over him.
The trauma of the trial.
The trauma of the desertion.
The trauma of the betrayal.
The trauma of the kangaroo court.
The trauma of the beating.
The trauma of the spitting, the mocking, the shame.
The trauma of power in the hands of bad men.
The trauma of the broken-hearted God.
The trauma of the family.
The trauma of the thorns.
The trauma of the nakedness.
The trauma of the carried weight.
The trauma of the pierced extremities.
The trauma of the hours.
The trauma of each breath.
The trauma of blood loss.
The trauma of being forsaken.
The trauma of out-poured wrath.
The trauma of the grave.
The trauma of hell entire.
The prophet Zechariah gives us a picture of how we will respond to this trauma–
They will mourn for him as one mourns for an only child
This litany of blows. This way that we must walk through the swaddling, the trauma, the raw lonely pain.
Because when He said it is finished, He meant it. In the oddest k-o win ever, the victor takes the blows, both jab and cross and appears to lose it all only to give each of us the power to
Fight trauma
Oh-Rescuer-God-
Jesus.
A Word for Mountains
I am always uncomfortable with the things that J says which are elastic-impossible.
So You are telling me if I have a little bit of faith I can ask mountains to fall into the sea?
Yes.
This would be galvanizing if I had never tried it. If there had never been a mountain I really needed, really wanted, really believe could be…moved.
The heartbreak of the unmoving mountains.
So first, an inventory–
Mountains are so big, so high, so holy
Why should they move for me?
Today my daughter said the thing that did not staunch all the grief of unmoved mountains, but did let me see how the unanswered questions have long been answered.
She said the mountain is a metaphor for God.
The relief of it was palpable. God. I know God moves for me. Moves toward the Cross. Moves the boundaries of eternity. Moves toward the prodigal son. Runs, actually.
Suddenly I see.
It was never the unmovable mountains, it was inexplicable stones moved away from terrible places to make room for the God of resurrection.
Nothing too hard for J.
Ever.
“Profound Sorrow”?!
Use your wallet, Mr. Parker, to express your sorrow. Tell Mr. Celestin to do the same.
Or tell me how I can send my ticket money to the family of the victim.
Because one story impedes the telling of the other.
The Speed of Darkness
you ask me these absolute questions–/No matter what? No matter what. /Or–What is the speed of darkness? /I look it up–either: /Darkness is just the complete absence of light ….so it travels at the speed of light /Or the more dire–As soon as the light is gone, darkness returns, so you could say that darkness travels faster than the speed of light /the light just a flicker in the doorway of the world /The darkness a cat ready to pounce /a sea of trouble, waiting just waiting for the light to tire or wander off /so that it (the darkness)
Can overwhelm, flood in,
Return.
The reunion of broken parts
you take it for granted–
All those exes and the whys
Algebra–the reunion of broken parts
When no one asks how they got
So broken
We must all search for that
Ancient mathematician
His ability to see how
To…
Piece us back together
Bone by bone
Until every x is solved
And every y has its
solution
Chinese Box
some stories hold
Such trauma
That in order to
Tell them
You have to use a Chinese box
What, you ask, is a Chinese box?
A Chinese box is a
Story
Within a story
Within a story
Not to be confused with
Chinese handcuffs
(Which is a very different thing indeed)
For example:
Once there were some children who lived in an apartment with their (biological) mother and father. They did not always eat. Sometimes they were left alone. The father beat the mother.
The loss was unbearable, said their foster mother. The boy was mute. The girl was cagey.
So small. So damaged. So angry.
They called her bad mommy, bad mommy, bad mommy.
Because there was only the one.
One room, one closet, one subterfuge, one million wrongs
In the circuits of his mind
He tells the story of the bad mommy, who was (he says) too much drama.
As she pieces together the past she neglects the symmetry of hearts, circles, and peanut butter sandwiches among the survivors
Because, as an ordinary prophet once said–every trauma has its own story…
Within these concentric
Chinese boxes.
Topiary Angels
the trees are animate
Watching over
Us
Towering water fowl and prehistoric raptors
They have been
Put.
Under.
A.
Spell.
For millennia
Slowed down so that
They must rely on outside actors to
Shake them free–
The wind or
Small children shimmying skyward
Begin to give voice, lend
momentary quickness
To these beauties
Tied to the wet, dark earth
Searching for treasure
So carefully, so slowly
Through the roots
Waiting for the Day
When we will all be
Set free.
Reflect the sky
some things remain dark
Obsidian dark
No matter how much you try to put distance between
The two of us
The video footage cannot, will not excise your presence
Obsidian dark
Is not your chicken-scratch handwriting
The horrible story I made you write down
Or the things you left out…
That so many people helped to…diminish
None more than you
The damage which will always be
dead dog on my chest
Ghosts of dogs should haunt us both
But let yours bark incessantly outside the grainy film of your transgressions
While mine
Returns whole, resurrected even,
To the cement driveway by the old house where the children played with the water hose and the blue plastic wading pool
Joy
They fill the screen with joy
For a moment even you could see
The way the thinnest layer of water poured out on rough cement
Reflects the sky
Reflects the light from the endless sky
Reflects the glory of this endless day we
…walk toward the sun, my one-time-child
Before the night
Falls forever
Carrying Light 