Category Archives: Poetry

“Brace yourself like a man”

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Job 38:1-7 KJV

[1] Then the Lord answered Job out of the whirlwind, and said, [2] Who is this that darkeneth counsel by words without knowledge? [3] Gird up now thy loins like a man; for I will demand of thee, and answer thou me. [4] Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth? declare, if thou hast understanding. [5] Who hath laid the measures thereof, if thou knowest? or who hath stretched the line upon it? [6] Whereupon are the foundations thereof fastened? or who laid the corner stone thereof; [7] When the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy?

Stray showers

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At first I cajole them, tell them their wisps stretch out like the spines and wings of angels and dragons, I compare them one to another–formidable strangers towering in sun-soaked splendor,

But when they keep back the rain, it is I who begins to storm, arms stretched and gesticulating wildly

Speak! I say

Rain! I say

Like the petulant child I am

Stomping my feet in anger,

As though that could work

As though it might just

Bring more than stray showers

The Imaginary Conversation

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He is gone now

Gone to me, anyway

But I think of the things I would ask him if he were still here–

Would persistent nausea be enough? Or swarms of stinging insects? How about dead bodies? Or all the stubbed toes and fingers gone unmended

What if this post-modernist hell of your own invention were not unbearable heat, agony and utter despair

Forever/

Just

… an airless room, waiting for a love which never comes

All your regrets all your missed chances

To cry like a baby

Wail for a Savior

Weep at his feet, hair in hand, perfume spent

Shaken finally by what you

Would have been without Him

You say the sweetest things

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You say the sweetest things

A soft answer turns away wrath

Love is always patient

What if you took the terrible letters of a curse of sorts

One you never willed and controlled and made it into an acrostic or a cypher-

The letters are a-b-I-r-r-t-u-w

What if that were a word by itself

And you-like the fairy godmother you resemble in rounded form only

No power only soft and aging

No longer the princess or the sleeper or the magic one

Just this one last spell-

Let the word when spoken

Set us free from past and illusion

Let it be the strange, scary truth of the thing-

Oh fragile love-

You say the sweetest things

Pebble Parable

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It was a simple thing

The man reached in and snapped off the treadmill

Came in very close to the boy’s face

Told him “the rules”

Only it turned out “the man” didn’t know the rules as well as he thought he did

Rules like the way a single pebble can make a concentric circle across the whole chest of a river

Or the way the question about what you would do with a time machine

Might just define a person

Forever, forever is how wide and how deep and how long I will

Love you like a pebble

Thrown right at the heart

Of moving water.

Indelible

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There are things that happen in the indelible. First, time becomes a character in the story, exerting control over both the narrative and the heart rate. It moves through each room, touching old pictures and hidden spaces, spinning a cocoon so thick it makes normal movement impossible and must be pulled apart like spun sugar

Next, change

Old you out to sea, pared down, bereft

So you

Write down promises

On every doorpost, every lintel, every exposed beam and limb

Let the words become living things

A forest in the house

She calls him

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Revelation 19:16 NIV

[16] On his robe and on his thigh he has this name written:

king of kings and lord of lords.

She calls him King of Heaven. I like that

Evoke the way you effortlessly possess

The sky, the clouds, rolled up One Day for something new. I want to gather these flocks of clouds, the silvery colors of this matchless afternoon

Wonder what is written on you

Wonder what you will write forever

On me

Mark me

Mark me out as your own