Showing posts with label Poetry. Show all posts

The Namer



The power to name, man’s first responsibility
His first task, given before the sea pounded rocks into sandy beaches,
Before fire’s ravenous flickering, before labor’s pains.

Adam stood naked before every name’s origin,
His warm breath exhaling
And breathing in this single great command.

It was after all, the Name that was before all else,
The Name Which spoke out over the water
And called it Good,
The Name that rushed into earth’s wounds and made them lips.

At their first splitting the name must burst out
Fountaining Life.
The Name was in him, was him.
He must Name because that is his joy, his glory, his greatest gift
To Name, to call forth the soul and sate its thirst for existence

Adam named all that came before him until finally
The Origin of all drew back it's veil to reveal
The last creation, his final act in flesh.

Adam beheld the creature before him
And with clay tongue cleaving to dry roof
Spoke “Woman.”
He looked into her eyes and it was the Name
He saw looking back at him

He hung there before his bride
The fountain’s parched lips part:
“I thirst”
With that he flooded into her,
For this first Adam must flow into the sea of the next
Through cascading generations.

He would be born with not one name, but many.
Wonder counselor, prince of peace, king of kings,
Sign of contradiction, the Name Made Flesh
In a manger among donkeys.

This Namer arrives in birthblood and baby fat
Helpless, thirsty crying for milk.
His first words change his parents forever, renaming them
"Mama," "dada."
Christmas Jesus Poetry
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The Mountainside at Estis Park




A wind blows across the cavernous expanse of my heart,
Singing like a wind pipe which pronounces to echoing hills
A myriad of sweet and painful sounds.

Oh

A word was said, so soft upon
The snowy stillness, the silent crags in the evening air,
The crisp frigid cold of sunset comes upon us like sleep

But this peace could not hold the weight
The word tumbled from your lips,
An avalanche on the quiet mountainside;

I am crushed!
I am thrown to your arms in heaps,
Covered up, enveloped in your "yes."

It was an avalanche,
But its catalyst was not born this this sweet disastrous day,
It began long before and has since been pouring down
With a slow and total force.

The lighting bolt that no one noticed but us
It struck as my thigh grazed yours
We sat together
A storm of sparks, stutters and shivers
Hidden only beneath a blanket and the thin masks
We carried on our faces
You could have stopped it then.

You could have ripped your skin from our closeness,
Gathering the pieces of your heart before they crumpled,
Taking the rest with it.

But you let it fall, and fall it did,
Tumbling, turning, exploding, hurling us
Headlong into this beautiful tumolt
Shooting cataracts of ice into the grey with deafening cracks
Towers, columns of snow slung to the heavens,
Only to float down as so much debris.
We are churned together.
What was once has been leveled,
Burst and berried under the new.

Only a single solitary shackle,
Lifting its cold iron grin from a mound of snow,
Is all that remains of the bygone cell
But soon a gust of mountain wind will carry
Its cold forgetful load and deposit it upon the waste
and all must be, will be white.

For the avalanche would have its way,
Who are we to stay its power, contain its magnificent weight?
No. I could not withstand such a cataclysm.
Neither could you.

I love you, she said, and more, so much more.
Love Poetry
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Inspiration


To Ben, Co-Creator and Inspiration.

The holy Pentecost of pen to paper,
When a language, then unknown to this little image of God
Returns to him, and is pressed through his being like a sieve.
These letters, scratched out of the white,
Marked and messy,
Tangled remnants of disregarded thoughts
Litter the field

But the rest remain,
Unmoved by their charred brothers,
Fixed and proud, spinning on their axis,
Spheres, wrested into being by their co creator.

They have been pulled forth and pressed through
To bring back those who have been divided since Babel
Each word is a language,
A tongue of flame above the artist's head
Prophesied foretold eons before at man's first beginning,
When the Beginning Himself said:
"Let us make him in our own likeness."

He was born to create.
Poetry
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Above Basswood Falls



Oh unconquerable cataracts,
Water piling over rocks and crags,
Rushing dash-smash and cast
High your vapors.
Ever do you empty yourself to fill up another.
Look how peaceful!
Look how tranquil!
The glassy pool below rests content
Your truest bedfellow.
You never hold back your happy gift,
Grip-clutch or clench
And you would cease,
Dry and die, and so would she.

And if in icy winter,
The one below, your love, should freeze,
and refuse your self-pouring
life giving streams,
Ever patient do you wait.
She melts to you,
She always melts to you.
Adventure Poetry
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Friday Bay


Friday Bay pt 1.

Blow bash, ye untired winds,
And find me yet upon the lake.
Though these waters roll and shake,
I only sink to bathe my sins,
To learn my heart once more to swim,
My head to follow in its wake.
Oh Soul! Cut free your anchors,
Forsake all your ties
To risk upon the fearsom depths, out I fling,
Till like the Son of Man did once in Galilee
I may sleep and dream amidst a stormy sea.

Friday Bay pt 2.

Lash me down!
Lash me down here a bed!
Let the spray wash and salt this bread,
Typhoon rain whip and blow break
Upon my brow
Ye windy sirens coo and call –
Ye are but hens!
Yes, despair's a storm
A melancholy song,
A wave tide surge and pull,
“Come deeper and sink-swallow salty water,”
She coos and coos.
Bawk on carrion comfort!
I'll list not, and not be listed.
I'll not be counted a wreck and sink.
Bawk on!
But morning breaks on your eastern back.
I'll weather you yet,
Lashed here to Christ, my mast and bed.
Sleep my soul, sleep.
Adventure Poetry
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Station XIV: Jesus is laid in the tomb


Soft linen wrapped sticky skin,
lain down in lonely dark stone,
cold earth’s womb.

His mother remembers the last time
She wrapped him up in linen.
He was all squinty eye'd and crying.
In swaddling finery.
He wore it like a prince.
He was much smaller then,
So delicate, so beautiful;
A promise, the hope of victory.

Her husband had put new hay in the stone trough
And when Jesus finally slept,
there, He lay still
Peace hung about him,
His adornment

Now, again, he lays, on stone
wrapped in swaddling cloths.
But now, body broken,
Choked, pierced, bashed, and bruised
Yellow, green, purple, blue
Cold lips and tender, discolored, hands.
He makes of this new stone, a manger.

He was born in a cave,
She thought.
Poetry
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Upon Visiting Villa D'Este




Ancient pines stretch here through alabaster sky
Joyful fountains gurgle up though age and time
In this garden, dead gods still lie,
Emblazoned in memory by their stone etched features.
They stand among these, their flowery graves.
Many new deities come here, to this burial place,
And trod perfectly lined paths,
Only looking, never feeling its peace.
Oh ancient gods! Thy beauty hast been perfected by age.
Oh Garden! Wouldst that though had not
Been trimmed or cut back and allowed to age even further.

I long to climb thy limbs,
Bathe in thy long forgotten pools,
And drink from thine ever spring fed fountains.
But for now I must be content
To simply write unto thee a tribute,
A trespasser upon thy grass.

Burst forth garden!
Conquer this voyeur people!
Wrap thine wild leaves about these
New gods of frantic movement,
And make them, as you did the old,
Still.
Poetry
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The Tree of Life






In the corner of a city,
Often passed by and forgotten,
Lies a small chapel named “Saint Clair’s.”
You can find it behind a heavy, chapped wooden door,
Down an ancient, murky alley
And to the right of an old well-

Thick jade vines climb all eight sides
Of its aged and tired bricks.
It’s hard to tell,
But it could have been a baptistery.

There's no roof over Saint Clair’s,
No Gothic spires or marble façade.
The alter perhaps was once baroque,
With all manner of
Angels and saints and beasts
Carved deep around all its edges.
Its cracked and broken now.
Its middle says “IHS,”
Which means “Christ,” I think.
The letters mark the face of a sun.
Moss and dirt sit, packed
In its ray's weathered crevices.

The mosaic on the floor is beautiful.
It's made of broken grey cobble stones
And wild poppies, which I hear grow
Only right before summer.
Their petals push up past the
Once proud altar rail,
Approaching the sanctuary
With sacrilegious courage.
Cypress trees and pines form
Something of a canopy over the whole thing,
A canopy peppered with bright little holes
colored in sunlight; They are majestic stained glass

Curiously,
Out of the middle of the broken altar grows the sprout of a tree.
I looked later in books, but never found one that matched.
I do not know it's genus or its name, but
The only way to describe it is to say this:
Its bark was ancient bronze, long aged, green and dark.
Its leaves were gilded iron.

I felt a compulsion to pull a leaf from the lower branch,
And look, it broke right off,
Red golden sap poured out from the branch all over the altar.
The scent of herbs, spice, nectar and every medicine filled the air.

The sap was almost too warm to touch,
But not near so hot as the fruit.
The fruit was fire;
The color of burning poppies;
Smokeless; flickering upon the leaves.

Again, I felt a compulsion to take hold
Of one of these most beautiful miracles,
I reached out and was surprised
When a fiery ball fell into my open palm.

Just then, a swan, one of seven,
swept off the broken altar,
And called out to me in a brass, trumpet like voice:
“Oh take and eat, ye son of man,
For power burns upon your hand,
To bind up and release,
To lie down and give peace;
Your blood is shed and mixed with His,
To cover all the land.”

A great wind blew as I ate.
The fruit was bitter and so I wept,
And then it was sweet,
And so I slept,
And in my dream I said
“Amen.”

I've never quite seen or heard such a thing,
And yet It grows dim in the dusty paths of my mind
When I sit among my life’s companions and delight
In the sun’s warm caress.
but the swan’s last words to me
I hear still  in snowy winter when I wake
in the black depths of the night:
“the gates of hell shall not prevail.”
“the gates of hell shall not prevail.”
Poetry
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Graduation

I am an old curmudgeon.
So many I have known have passed
Into another life, for better or worse,
Who can really say?
To labor or to search,
I too, soon will follow.       

But as I sit alone, and sink
Deep into my old and stainy couch
I think, of all the bumpy little lumps
And memories that make it mine,
And yet I cannot take it with me.
My couch is too big, too full to fit.

They will squabble over it,
My children, and brothers.
Oh! To whom will it go?
Oh! Oh! Oh!
But my rug will be burned,
Of course, and my room emptied out
A garage sale will be held, no doubt.

And I know my passing will be mourned by all
With a whole god damned celebration.
They’ll decorate with ribbons and toast many toasts.
They’ll shed tears of joy when I go up,
But in the end, I will still be gone, and
Soon, Oh so soon, be forgot.
Adulthood Graduation Poem Poetry
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When He Was Tall

The Ferris Wheel creaks and turns,
It’s all chipped red paint and kissing.
The sent of animal dung and barbeque smoke
Hangs low and heavy in the clang and the din.
I sit on a polished wooden fence and watch
The girls with big hair and pink shirts.

Their flushed cheeks match their tops,
They’ve been leading their ponies
In circles all day,
Carrying the most delighted little children
that ever did ride on the backs of these blessed beasts.

One boy in particular catches my eye.

A little boy with a Mohawk
Sits atop his mighty steed,
But his feet don’t quite reach the stirrups.
They dangle at the saddle
And they flop about that cured leather,
But know this,
He has never been taller.
He points forward and with great resolution,
As only little mohawked boys can have,
Commands the girl in the pink shirt
With a squeal and a giggle at once:
“FASTER!”
The little general to be gleefully screams!
He bounces an uneven and syncopated rhythm
And he holds onto the horn for dear life,
For the pink shirt girl begins to run.

He will grow up
And study biology.
He’ll learn about photosynthesis
And labor over lab reports.
He’ll memorize all the charts
Ag, Fe, Au
     Ag…
            Au
He’ll get a job as a doctor eventually,
And marry some woman
Who he’ll never see

And have a boy
Who he’ll never know

And a girl
Who he can’t quite love

And a good dog
 And a big house
   And a white fence

He will forget that day
When he was tall.

He will cut off his Mohawk.
Adulthood Poetry
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