I tire of us
Top of the food chain (for now)
And rendered myopic by shear foolish thinking
You think you will be made immortal by
What?
Clever rocketry, singing voice, signature ass?
Naw. We all just be
bits of fur
Here for a minute
Gone tomorrow
Best prepare for when we go
up or down
Yonder.
Sometimes I can hear them through the digital quilt of my son’s smartphone, San Antonio songbirds not unlike the full-throated prophets I hear in the backyard, not minor prophets, like Micah or Nahum, although come to think of it these would be good names for the night birds. No. They are small, easily overlooked, not altogether heard which leads me to my theory about Isaiah, not a minor prophet at all but must’ve wanted to be for awhile in the naked days when his voice competed with the spectacle of it all–ordinary-man-naked, not rendered complete until the blood-and-agony Redeemer he sang about
Proves true.
All the million things I leave undone, my own personal Pacific swirl, Bermuda Triangle, fourth dimensional hole filled with things I should organize, give away, relinquish or abandon
Like anger or the mold that grows along joints and fissures
I would call the same band by two names
Pascal’s Wager or T-shirts
They would sing exactly the same songs, be beautiful and wise beyond their years, know why two names for the same band …have their
father’s ear for music
their mother’s words
And a cleaner house once all our borrowed stories are returned
It is a small label inside a second-hand London fog. Sez “waterproof” in a way that means tell the dam story. Which I tell in my head in one way or another
Every day
Protagonists too vivid to fictionalize and actual jackass antagonists who are surprisingly two dimensional for real people in a small
Awful story I don’t want to tell, but my lovely black raincoat says I must.
I have distilled what I have left of hope for
You and me
Into
I used to think you were home
The woman should be dressed in black, the color of mourning, sure, but also the color of the charcoal outline of her once too solid flesh turning quickly into whatever charcoal is made of, burnt things, carbon, dust to dust…the man the groom the former love turns to choices made willingly in digital time, ushering in darkness through every door, every window
Their home now
They are….home now.
Isaiah 41:14 NIV
[14] Do not be afraid, you worm Jacob, little Israel, do not fear, for I myself will help you,” declares the Lord, your Redeemer, the Holy One of Israel.
Badass Isaiah walks naked through the streets of Jerusalem, stopping occasionally for a tuna sandwich and thinking about clothes. Clothes of the invisible God. Clothes of the kinsman-redeemer. Clothes eventually gambled away at the foot of an impossible Cross.
Who trades a God for a worm? Who does that?
A fisherman, I guess.
Luke 5:10-11
Over my shoulder I hear the PBS lady tell my sons about blizzards, how they are just snow storms unless the wind is strong and fast. Here in Texas we have driving rain, not driven snow, and it is the percussive light which wakes the dogs in the night. Poised for a fight. Hurricanes have the eyes of Quint’s soulless sharks as they roll across the landscape of childhood and wakefulness I will momentarily regret the home I left in fear. Regret what I did not leave there. Regret what I did, but not the winds. The winds around the eye, the deceptively calm eye, of every storm that changes the landscape
Of who we once were.
This started as a break up but ended with old friend, Wakefulness here in the dark, in the storm
It was a dark and stormy night! But it was the dogs that kept me up
Dogs of the past
Dogs of war
That dog whose name* I can’t remember who re-enacted classics like The Prince and the Pauper.
When names and sleep elude you, there are sheep. They start out chalky, outlined, and two dimensional, but they elaborate
In depth, complexity, and general fluffiness, but also about the weather, dogs barking at night, and all the ways it was and wasn’t my fault this chance we took hurt so much.
*Wishbone
The weirdest thing how brave not knowing makes you. Not knowing the crash. Not knowing the presence of wrong. Not knowing the feral son has been a monster all along. He will not turn into a real boy instead he will be ever-so-carefully excised from the picture of the ordinary house, where trees have grown a rampart around all
who survive him.
Carrying Light 