May will be the fecund dream
I ever read in mist ahead of me.
And I will sweat with minimal exertion
as chagrin drips down the temple
of my crinkled brow.
Ever the disembodied dreamer,
donning quixotic daily despite
the daily disappointment of my dreams –
Learning life is not a poem
I am meant to penetrate,
much less explain away,
but April come she will
just the same.
NaPoWriMo #22: Un
6 days behind,
I find it hard to write
a line just because
I said I would.
This is probably what they mean by
undisciplined.
And I am un- so many things,
and again choose to dwell
instead on who I am and let this
non-ness pass away like last week’s New Yorker.
NaPoWriMo #21: Trash.
The tattered notes are stacked and strewn across my desk,
spilling over from my bag and out of books I used to
pore through seeking out
some words befitting some occasion.
And soon they’ll rest in pieces among
fresh coffee grounds and eggshells
newly cracked and dripping wet
with embryonic
remains.
Only a hoarder would hang onto these
incipient ramblings, and I am something
worse —
a poet wishing for a home for every little-orphan-
annie word that ever cracked the door
inside my skull.
NaPoWriMo #20: Wait.
Easter’s early light does not ravish all at once.
Eight days Thomas waited —
twice as long as Lazarus,
and self-conscious of his stench.
Yet we are wooed into waiting
a while longer,
and if you would sit and wait
the while with me,
we’ll believe all
will be most well.
NaPoWriMo #19: Junia’s Not Alone (Draft***).
***I’m still working on this one. Probably all of these NaPoWriMos are drafts, but this one in particular.
Don’t say a woman can’t preach.
Don’t tell the woman at the well.
Don’t tell this Mary not to say what
she carries in her womb, or that Mary
not to tell the men about the tomb.
Don’t tell Deborah to stop judging, nor
Miriam not to sing. Don’t tell Rahab her
past prevents her from stepping up
and doing her thing.
Don’t tell Lois not to give her grandson
the message she received. Don’t tell
my Mother not to prophesy; don’t tell
my sisters not to preach.
Because Junia does not walk alone
in the resurrection parade;
we march on, following women
every step of The Way.
And you can tell them to stop talking
but you cannot stop their walking.
You can raise your voice to shout
and the rocks will drown you out.
But I do not claim to speak for them,
or for anybody.
My 0nly aim is to remind me:
In Christ, we are one Body.
This is just something I heard in churches
where only men got to be the mouth,
and the women were only invited to use theirs
to tell the kids to quiet down.
This is something they read in verses
cut out and applied to you,
but my friends and I all read the same Story,
only we read the names, too.
And we’ve listened to the way you talk
and compared it to our Savior
until it seemed right for us to agree
you aren’t doing Him any favors.
So we won’t try to silence you
the way you’ve tried to do.
In fact, be our guest, have your say.
Do your best, come what may.
Because the Truth seems to thrive
in a field fertilized by lies.
And you can tell our women not to preach,
but still, like Christ, they’ll rise.
NaPoWriMo #18: Stone.
The words go out like spores, and are carried
until some wind lets them fall in cracks and tiny
crevices. We are not conscious of all that may be
growing — in ruined places where gray stone lies
upon gray stone — and we have long since ceased
from wondering: Can these stones live?
NaPoWriMo #17: Four Moves.
Death’s black knights stand
stock still as king’s defender
advances half as far as he is
allowed to go. Then hidden
queen peaks out of shadows
as mitered bishop approaches
further. By now you should
know that the noose is near — one
ashen move and it’s checkmate,
dear.
NaPoWriMo #16: Thirsty Thursday.
Thirsty Thursday and Black
Friday, I’d have branded them
if demigods didn’t get the jump.
As Screwtape says, the infernal philo-
logical branch is always busy taking
names and making hollow holy words.
The Judas in me is half-
asleep with ravenous bore-
dom by the time the New Command
is handed. Down already
with this wicked Roman business. Now
let there be action,
blood has been the eternal mark
of revolution across our people’s frames,
so that he must Do Something,
even though I thrust him through the side-
door into leadership becoming such a King,
(and is not this labor worth its wages?)
To pass over this momentousness
would be a mortal sin when all
the City reeks metallic and lies
in wait with sanguine eyes.
See, even he tells me now to do it,
and I do
think a garden
will be fitting
for this story
to begin again.
NaPoWriMo #15: untitled.
You can bury these poems
and long after the paper
decomposes the words
will rise up from the ground
with fruit bearing
no resemblance to the seed.
Because resurrection means
everything good
bodily-borne and bodily-done
will have its place
in the Age to come.
And let’s face it:
my poems are deader
than a mustard seed
I drop
and nothing happens
til long after I
walk away.
NaPoWriMo #14: Heresiarchy.
Don’t give me no God
with no meat on his bones,
no super-spiritual holy wind-
bag full of tricks and
artificially flavored treats,
no Living Water polluted
by gnostic chemicals
that give me gas
and pass right through me so
I thirst like Tarwater who
could not take a drink.
Who taught you Heaven
floats in a sky as cloudy
as whatever consolation
one should hope to find
floating in seas of mist?
Instead Imagine:
there’s no heaven/
above us only sky,
and then imagine a
Heaven so drenched
in Life, it sinks down,
down, down to fill
and make the Earth
a saturated solution.
One will cost you nothing
and pay you back with
interest.
One will cost you everything
and is
free.
just words. 