the saving kind

The angle is bent as the eye is blind;
I’ve given up hope this will reach your ears:
Forgive me, I’m just not the saving kind.

I’ve come to reject each voice in my mind,
afraid to accept the word that appears.
The angle is bent as the eye is blind.

A dangerous thing, a hope so entwined
with silence, violence, and all I revere.
Forgive me, I’m just not the saving kind.

For every day that I am refined,
I yearn to break like a heart for the spear.
The angle is bent as the eye is blind.

For every day that I fall behind,
the need burns in me to show you my fear.
Forgive me, I’m just not the saving kind.

In all I don’t know, hold me fast, defined
by turning and facing a mercy severe.
My angle is bent as my eye is blind:
Forgive me, for I’m not the saving kind.

“Yet on the day of your fasting, you do as you please
and exploit all your workers.
Your fasting ends in quarreling and strife,
and in striking each other with wicked fists.
You cannot fast as you do today
and expect your voice to be heard on high.
Is this the kind of fast I have chosen,
only a day for people to humble themselves?
Is it only for bowing one’s head like a reed
and for lying in sackcloth and ashes?
Is that what you call a fast,
a day acceptable to the Lord?

Isaiah 58:3-5

exhume

Our lips are fluid, quick to drink
new liquid lies. We seem to think
some presence due to humbled ones,
some missive, set with drying ink.

Our fasts are full, or so we’ve spun
out in our vaults of loaded guns
a legend told in hallowed halls,
the legends of old battles won.

A foolish skin won’t hide our fall
when all within us mutes His call,
when all within is darkened tomb
and all without is splash-white wall.

O saints who long to make Him room,
awake, lay bare your bones, exhume:
His life will wrap your frame in red,
His life will cap your crown with blooms.

Begin in darkness, lay your head
upon the breast of broken Bread,
upon the breast that wept and bled
and drink the Wine that raised the dead.

“Shout it aloud, do not hold back.
Raise your voice like a trumpet.
Declare to my people their rebellion
and to the descendants of Jacob their sins.
For day after day they seek me out;
they seem eager to know my ways,
as if they were a nation that does what is right
and has not forsaken the commands of its God.
They ask me for just decisions
and seem eager for God to come near them.
‘Why have we fasted,’ they say,
‘and you have not seen it?
Why have we humbled ourselves,
and you have not noticed?’

Isaiah 58:1-3