A Reckoning

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From the deep chalice of my memories
I imbibe in the elixir of youthful life
While agonies breathe cries in muscles strained
By the ever-present struggle to master the day.

The soul’s tongue is fueled by that strong drink
So as to cast the shadows of pains far back
Against the wall with dark streaks overcome
By more than their present significance.

Oh to days long to be remembered
That lark in my throat that sang to the clouds
Carving pictures only the child’s eye can see
My wand’ring heart must not be loth to frequent.

And let this heart not soon forget
That moment when all days were a single breath–
Each breath, a gift of the whole of my life
No breathless dust of earth could ever tell.

A Sun and a Planet ~ A Love Poem

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Ah Sister Sun!
Ye lofty gleam
Illuminating every color
Soft blue your choice of setting

How many planets
Rove dismal paths
Set in a course through the universe
Seeking a place to call their home

Though many stars
Shine bright but far
So many places the orb could circle
If only for a little while

But only one
Has the size and spin
To keep the planet near
So that life can grow

And though she set
Weary and needing rest
Still her warmth stays close
Enveloped in the blanket of faithfulness

For many stars
Peep out and twinkle
Filling darkness with cold lights
Giving only stories to tell by the fire

Until the day
Returning in the East
When my beloved rises from her bed.
To grace my face that brightens as she fills my eyes.

Politics Play

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I feel like I should apologize for this. But history as my witness . . . I will not lest one can show me I am wrong.

The Generation rises to take their stand
Upon the political world stage
To fight for justice and freedom’s brand
That has inked the Declaration’s page.

The stage is set with prop and dot
Where powers quoth their scripted lines
And decisions break like winds of plot
Entangling their opponents in jungle vines.

How proud the idealist takes the floor
His eyes glazed by the light above.
He cannot see the long-locked door
Where no one cares to see or move.

The plays play on, the powers clutch.
The bills are passed, the upstarts fail.
But mighty arms of play power touch
Not the women who weep and men who wail.

Outside the theatre people starve.
The rich feast preying on the undeserving.
The French Revolutionaries carve.
A guillotine for the nerve-less head’s un-nerving.

So men will cast their ballots down
Like tickets to a show they’ll never see.
May God have mercy on the clown
Who thinks the world thus better will be.

The theatre will close. The powers scatter.
The people will seek out the purpose of living.
Then they will remember the soft pitter-patter.
Of the child they lost in their taking and giving.

ATM — The Ache of a Day Lacking in the Word

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Ah to me a drink so cool and refreshing greets
A weary wand’ring soul with burdens cumbering
All fractured by the similitude of shackles on his feet
After breaking step of march to cast his stride by lumbering

The sigh that lifts his chest to float downstream
Through shifting currents of his patterned thought
Trace several eddies fraught with what may seem
Tantalizing directions to follow but all for naught.

My Carowinding roller coaster plunges
(Through which state: North or South? I often wonder)
And shakes my spirit with what my past expunges
Made perplexing by the present clove asunder.

At the moment I am lost in life’s hard way.
At the moment all this ache has had its say.

Tornados in Oklahoma; A Burden for America

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Oklahoma got hit by tornadoes.
There was a sign reported on the news:
A cross hanging on power lines.
A woman said. “God is with us.”
This is my interpretation.

A cross hangs from the power-lines
Lifted unlit by the sun brightened clouds
The judgment of a nation brought down from the sky
Stopped short at the suffering servant raised up
Before the swirling torrent of the Heavens
Which could touch the land with fingers
Not a fist.
There are intercessors fitting into His palm.
Who pray that His hand might open.
He is good. But will He find faith upon the earth?

To you who pray for God to bless America, and to have mercy on us, but are unwilling to get involved, I have this word against you.

Why do you pray
And ask Me for things
When you are unwilling
To do anything
As a part of the solution?
Who do you think I am?
Who do you think you are?

The Lonely Caravel

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The agonies that stang awake
In solitude they prod the weather-beaten heart.
An outcry for lost love
In hope it can again be found.

The lips that crack, the tongue can soothe,
Only to let the liquid of your spit
Be evaporated in the cold and evanescent air
And your own soul’s water be depleted.

The cavernous hole your bleeding chest aches
To let another soul find rest therein.
These calls that welcome, become a plea
For someone, ANYone to come fill me.

The organ plays to fill a church
With painful piercing chords that filet my hurt.
Can the flood of beautiful sound drown woes
That clutch the mast and rise again in silent calm?

Trust breaks over me like glass
Upon a hardened shale piece cut from the mountain.
It shatters and makes a weapon not to be handled
By a child whose hand has never been sliced open.

Cries muffled by a pillow make my scream
A softened surrounds for a golden needlepoint.
The heightened sense of the sheets around my head
Swim noisily as I bury myself in them.

Such noise is the song of fissures in the fabric of our bosoms
Where friends beloved come and go, and good men break their word
The powders of such explosive interruption
Are loaded in a canon aimed for the hull of nearby vessels.

“Friend or Foe?” I cry aloft
But feign to hear their polite reply.
How can they know my ship will sink
If they board and take not the greatest care?

For in these waters, all men are pirates.
Their colors or flag make little difference.
I, a pirate like them, have a vessel of goods
And none to transport to, since I have no bay.

What’s this? A ship sailing less a standard.
‘Tis white! A great white shark no doubt.
To seem to play weak, only to prove the briggand
And use their own canon when drawn in close.

But nay, the song aboard their ship,
A song of thanks spills onto the waves.
As they pull in tighter, they cast me a line.
And pray we may lee our ships in tow.

My fever heightened, but my anxiousness was lightened.
My wonder was dazzled, and my canon upturned.
A song of my own filled up to join theirs,
Though a sharp eye, I kept lest they catch me unaw’res.

Twas the song of the humble I learned in that day.
From these once pirates, who had learned a new way.
To sail thankful and sharing, on the sea of the king.
And join ships that were starving, and feigned to be mean.

My bow broke waves and liberated spray.
My canon unloaded was pointed off the stern.
My cargo stores replenished from the friendship learned.
My own royal colors retracted and His white flag displayed.

To trust, and to wait on the Maker who is good,
To look with love on the people He came to save.
To chart out new seas, knowing this thing for sure.
He is the Captain of every Soul who surrenders to Him.

O Lord, my tired hull is heavy with precious cargo.
I fear none will take before it rots away.
Please show me that I matter to You,
And give me a fellow heart with whom to share this load.

The Lord is My “Wonderer”

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King David wrote how Yahweh is his shepherd. As I was studying the 23 Psalm, I recognized that David’s biblical understanding of who God is so tightly woven with his own personal experience as a shepherd that it bleeds into one another and makes something profound, poetic, personal, and powerful. This is my own “23’rd Psalm” of sorts. I didn’t find an English word for this, so I made up the word, “Wonderer”

Yahweh breathed a mist:
A seed of whispy thought heart-warmed.
The cavern of my inward parts surged with passion
While in still, dark quiet a song was born.

A phrase, a seed, a dewdrop falling—
Echoed against itself in this secret place
Ever expanding to fill the structured space
Of the created temple of God’s goodness
          Blossoming in Glory of Christ

          My Beloved has come nearer
Your grace has illumined Your image-bearer
Who rules and overflows his life with creativity
Which resembles Yours in a humble fashion
For all my little heart–the spark–is Yours.

O come, my One, remake the landscape
Make this heart burn hot to see Your kind face
For just as all light comes from Your own heart
Abba, Your spirit searches out my very soul.

The Flower of Hell

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There once was a flower
With a terrible power
Its air reeked of death
On its poisonous breath
Its pedals were all thorns
Pointed outward like horns
Its colors were deep crimson
Tipped with blood of its victims
Its leaves were like stone
And it grew all alone
Its stem was a shell
Infested by Hell.
Oh just look at it!                                                                            Hideous and horrid!
Who could but hate                                        this monstrosity florid?
To the untrained eye,                    there was no good to see
But the Gardener knew     there was life to set free
For he saw at its base,
A scar marking the place
A young seed gasped for air,
But it found no tender care
But dark creatures of dust
Made a home in its crust
It forgot why it arose
To what end life grows.
He approached the flower
With its terrible power
Smelling that stench
Making nostrils to pinch
And puffed out a whistle
That tottered the thistle
In the cool breeze it swayed
And death’s spell was allayed.
His eyes stared deep into the cold iris
Its thorns lashing out did not bemire his
Reflected in his tender watery eye
Was not the plant to slay, and die
But the living seed it bore within
For a crop of new flowers to begin
A cruel mark upon the garden’s name
Would be suffered for its life despite the pain.
With hands of great care, and words of good hope
He bathed the infested tears with lye and soap
So the insect onslaught might be reversed
And the plant might be as the seed planted first
Then leaves of stone, he scraped down to the vein
Where the lines still kept their chlorophyll stain
Slowly but surely it looked like a flower
Which held a significantly different power.
So its wound was soothed by tears that fell
From the eyes of Heaven to the scarring of Hell.

How to Catch a Muse

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Last night, I was talking with a friend who was bemoaning a lack of inspiration she felt in her craft-making. I wrote this this morning as an encouragement for her.

How to Catch a Muse
For C. Cook

How can a candle hold the flame?
How can a nest hatch the bird?
How can a pot harness the steam?
How can a poet harmonize the right word?

A wick is dipped in holy oils
Encased in flexible diligence
It bends only to the heat that boils
That melts away wax with effulgence

A mother lays her shell-bound young
In a nest compiled of twigs she recovered
But the warmth of her patience and slow-breath’ed lung
Is what nurtures the egg, ‘til new life is uncovered

A mouth speaks life in word and song
But silence and stillness seals up the dream
To stay and build up strength like steam
That Cooks the heart that suffers long

A rule can be broken for the love that predates it
A word may be chosen for the ear that awaits it.
The prize of the truth may be won by a sower.
Who plants truth in his heart, and pens love flowing o’er

For a flame, like a soul and a heart and a love
Share this common resemblance to the Maker above:
Just as pure and consuming, as living and free
And as one as His image bearer proves Him to be.