Resurrection

I waited two nights

in that dark room–languishing

in the stillness, its stone chill

wanting a fire.

Station Relief – Jesus is laid in the sepulcher

My companion: a dead man

cocooned in swaddling.

 

Minutes titrated into hours, while

the cave steeped in odors of decay

and dried blood, mingling with

the mosses and liniments.

 

I shivered like this for two nights

with my corpse friend, as the scorpions

and mice scurried in and out

of crevices, until a gasp arose

from the pit and startled

me from a dream.

 

Another wet respiration like God

breathing into Adam came and

the dark room warmed

from the beating of a Heart.

 

Before first light

He passed though the wall

as if it were a silken drape.

Ribbons of silver streamed

into the cave when He rolled

the stone away for me,

and I followed Him out

from the grave into

a new world.

Petition At Gethsemane

Forgive me, Father, I’m afraid.

These people need compassion; How

does my death love them?

When the crows pluck out my eyes

who will see your Children’s light?

The moldering Christ cannot

lay hands upon them, cannot awaken them,

comfort or protect them.

 

Take this cup, Abba,

give it to the zealots.

Milk-laden sheep of Israel ache,

bleating for the return of

their butchered lambs.

If Barabbas or Judas or Peter

won’t fulfill your prophecy,

then please, God, just this

once, couldn’t you drink

the bitter wine yourself?_

Purpose Decoded

Discipline isn’t a virtue. It’s a neurosis.

It’s a way to exist peaceably in fear.It’s superstition rationalized, normalized, sanctioned.

We miss things, details, miracles, being hypnotized by routine. We’re blind to magic, we discard the moment and embrace our lists and ladders. We’re convinced that we don’t know ourselves, like there is something to know. We’re certain that we are sabotaging our lives when there is only the story of sabotage that we observe.

We struggle with our perceived failure to have accepted ourselves, our alleged incapacity for loving ourselves. But the self that we would love is a hologram, an illusion and its purpose is to amuse. It was not meant to last. It was not meant to be known or understood.

When we abide in wonder, we are witness to the whole point of this. When we can laugh at the ridiculousness of it all, we are actualized.

Depth

Her oceans breached,

her clouds sagging with burden,

the earth flooded, and sank

to the bottom of the universe:

A blue rock in a black sea

in the long memory of God.

In a Nutshell

The science of desire: Gravity

The theosophy of desire: Attachment

The dysfunction of desire: Obsession

The consequences of desire: Everything

Flood

An Angel engages the afflicted clay

and listens with remedy in mind.

The flesh in throes, protests

its work, and by rasp and

rattle in Morse code breaths,

entreats Her, fluent in

the many tongues of anguish.

 

You don’t see me,

how I am treading

my own great tides,

swallowing oceans

of brackish woe.

Countless streams of viscous rheum

absorbed into a deader fabric,

you’re pulled away

from me in drams.

 

Your Angel, she removes

the sickness, packs the cavity

with her cold black cotton

and deals a deeper wound

where memory floats,

pinging in that void—

never landing, never leaving,

never quite filling it up.

 

 

Metal at Bone

For Mary, Queen of Scots

Geddon, no more trembling.

We are near delivered

into our reward, our blood

staining forever Gloriana’s guilty hands. And her soul.

God save the Queen.

 

Sweet Jesus!

Where are the angels, Geddon?

The blade draws up; we’re undone

under its lumbering weight, not

from the fineness of its edge.

It scrapes against our shattered skull,

and teeth ache from the cruel drag.

We are raining upon ourselves—the blood of kings,

spilling over our shoulders,

ears ringing with metal at bone

prayers sputter, then drown.

 

Why is death so difficult now?

Have we not earned Heaven?

Life pools on the ground, yet this throb defies the blow.

Our heart beats fiercely in spite of the blade, and no wonder.

It is the heart of Scotland; it is the heart of France,

and so completely has it loved.

We may fall into a thousand pieces, Geddon,

but there is no need to tremble now,

for we are amazed at the awful things we survive.