Tag: Poetry

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this king

Who are we to fall before a King on colt ascending,
palms pressed flat to scattered stones
that shake with ancient, living song?
We are adoration, lifted from the tongues of urchins,
setting play aside to ponder
what a King this King might be.

Who are we to lift our heads as eastern gates to sunrise,
seeing light we’ve seen before
as orphans through a weeping glass?
We are once-blind pupils in dilation, through stigmata
setting sight aside to wonder
what a King this King might be.

Who are we to stand within the Holy Home of worship,
sandals set aside in favor
of our washed and naked feet?
We are kin to Christ, no guest but children at the table,
setting rights aside in service
to the King this King might be.

Who are we to enter in such doors, drawn up from bone and
skin, through frames adorned like bloody
brows, pinned back with rusty nails?
We are blood-bought butchers cleansed, passed over in our feasting
on the broken blood and body
of the King this King might be.

Who are we to rise from dust and ashes in the dawning
of a Kingdom borne of sorrow,
of a King made sin for slaves?
We are witnesses of sound and fury in the making,
bursting open with the glory
of the King of Kings we see.

The earth is the Lord’s, and everything in it,
the world, and all who live in it;
for he founded it on the seas
and established it on the waters.

Who may ascend the mountain of the Lord?
Who may stand in his holy place?
The one who has clean hands and a pure heart,
who does not trust in an idol
or swear by a false god.

They will receive blessing from the Lord
and vindication from God their Savior.
Such is the generation of those who seek him,
who seek your face, God of Jacob.

Lift up your heads, you gates;
be lifted up, you ancient doors,
that the King of glory may come in.
Who is this King of glory?
The Lord strong and mighty,
the Lord mighty in battle.
Lift up your heads, you gates;
lift them up, you ancient doors,
that the King of glory may come in.
Who is he, this King of glory?
The Lord Almighty—
he is the King of glory.

Psalm 24
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borne

What breath we own is borne in dust.
We sow what once was and will be
to reap the harvest of our trust.
What breath we own is borne in Dust
laid low, made enemy, and crushed
upon the contour of the Tree.
What breath we own is borne in dust,
we sow what once was and will be.

“If you keep your feet from breaking the Sabbath
and from doing as you please on my holy day,
if you call the Sabbath a delight
and the Lord’s holy day honorable,
and if you honor it by not going your own way
and not doing as you please or speaking idle words,
then you will find your joy in the Lord,
and I will cause you to ride in triumph on the heights of the land
and to feast on the inheritance of your father Jacob.”
For the mouth of the Lord has spoken.

Isaiah 58:13-14
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unleash

They say that just beyond the gates
the garden waits,

earth’s bones will bend to angel hands
beneath the land,

and fountains of the deep will sing:
“unleash the springs!”

While we are weeping at the sting
of absent breath and hope deferred,
Remember death has been interred:
The garden waits beneath the land. Unleash the spring!

“If you do away with the yoke of oppression,
with the pointing finger and malicious talk,
and if you spend yourselves in behalf of the hungry
and satisfy the needs of the oppressed,
then your light will rise in the darkness,
and your night will become like the noonday.
The Lord will guide you always;
he will satisfy your needs in a sun-scorched land
and will strengthen your frame.
You will be like a well-watered garden,
like a spring whose waters never fail.
Your people will rebuild the ancient ruins
and will raise up the age-old foundations;
you will be called Repairer of Broken Walls,
Restorer of Streets with Dwellings.

Isaiah 58:9-12
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phoenix

Then the pale violet light of winter’s edge
flutters its wings on our table, sinking
in the night, scrabbling at the hardwood ledge.
We watch the fledgling falter, vanes shrinking
to shafts, to ash, its tiny blades blinking
back bright tears. We whet swords in its sorrow.
We part chains and bear forth barrels, drinking
deep with those unbound until tomorrow.

“Is not this the kind of fasting I have chosen:
to loose the chains of injustice
and untie the cords of the yoke,
to set the oppressed free
and break every yoke?
Is it not to share your food with the hungry
and to provide the poor wanderer with shelter—
when you see the naked, to clothe them,
and not to turn away from your own flesh and blood?
Then your light will break forth like the dawn,
and your healing will quickly appear;
then your righteousness will go before you,
and the glory of the Lord will be your rear guard.
Then you will call, and the Lord will answer;
you will cry for help, and he will say: Here am I.

Isaiah 58:6-9
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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
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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
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divinity in dust

(a pantoum for Ash Wednesday)

A Word upon Your lips may live,
but I am tired and crying out.
What drops of mercy can you give
to weary ones in dusty drought?

I am so tired of crying out
to broken people as they pass,
so weary of this dusty drought:
“All people wither like the grass.”

The broken people as they pass
adorn their brows with ash and cross.
All people wither like the grass,
all people live to know their loss.

Adore my brow of ash, O Cross,
and lift my eyes up from the grave.
All people here may own the loss:
Divinity in dust may save.

O, lift my eyes up from my grave!
A world fed from Your lips may live.
Divinity through dust shall save,
and drops of mercy will forgive.

A voice says, “Cry out.”
    And I said, “What shall I cry?”

“All people are like grass,
    and all their faithfulness is like the flowers of the field.
The grass withers and the flowers fall,
    because the breath of the Lord blows on them.
    Surely the people are grass.
The grass withers and the flowers fall,
    but the word of our God endures forever.”

Isaiah 40:6-8
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entry

They congregate in rows –
twos and threes
and some perching lonely,
on the cracked concrete curbs
lining the neighborhood.
They bow their heads,
or stare forward, or murmur
in tongues. Some only breathe
in the incense of our dust, breathe
out another prayer
for those who no longer breathe.

I know it –
the weariness that makes all the world
a pew, all the sky a sanctuary,
every corner invocation.
We have long
desired to come to rest
in the house of the Lord.

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sow

Into the midst of
the bombed-out front
where once grew grain,
a voice wails, “judgment!”
and another echoes, “blood!”
and a third screams, “war!”

And those who know more of all three,
and perhaps too much,
turn again to the field,
put their hand on the plow,
and press on
with the long, hard work,
breathing “mercy”
over each step.

Long after
such voices have faltered
and fallen silent,
these will come rejoicing,
bearing the work of their hands,
the fruit of their lips,
and a glad heart.

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fallow

There is poetry in the furrows of a field rent asunder,
and a wonder in the burrows of the small things’ furtive songs.
There is music in the lighting of a robin on a fencepost,
and it’s almost like a righting of an ancient set of wrongs.

There is rhythm in undoing all the work we thought was finished,
undiminished in the ruins like a gem when broken down.
There is legend in the silence of a story proven fiction,
a conviction like a violence that leaves fractures in the ground.

There is hope within the dying of a dream become a fetter,
inked-in letters slowly drying on the missive filed away.
And I listen of an evening to the light I cannot steal.
I will heal in the weaving of my name into the clay.