ACTUS REUS

We yell and sin.
we pray to you with coarse words in coarse mouths.
we hate Nineveh and call eagerly for fire.
We unbridle anything half-tamed, lusting for freedom on out own terms.
we die little deaths & dig little graves
and we love the sacred raisin cakes at the funeral feast.
eve's daughters fence with adam's sons
and blood covers even the edges of the holy ground.
we get sick, stale, stuck, mired & unloved and caged
and then we yell and sin
with faces wet with tears and hard hearts
that turn to water
and sin is beaten back,
if we yell for Jesus
because he is the beater-back, crusher of darkness, the one
who takes the
hurricane of pain so that we can
yell and sin
another day.

Hallelujah

Lazarus' neighbor the morning after, at the well with Martha

Forgive me for being sensational,
but I need to know: Did he sleep well all night?

the problem is that it needs to be interesting enough to justify eyesight

lucky for me I live on earth.

Waking Up

a look from your eyes
and I lie bewildered in their net
my irridescent scales caught and quelled,
immobile.

a laugh from your throat,
and my heart breaks from a half-smile into a rolling ocean
overwhelming past and future, furious joy
unending to sweep away eternity,
unbound.

a touch from your hand
and i gasp. its small sureness inspires into me
radiant belief
"I EXIST, I AM, I LIVE"
which departs too quickly on white wings,
in flights of rapture,
imaginary.

three-layer cakes
and christmas plates
glowing in the candlelight
on this holly jolly night
tree stands tall
it's a ball
to play or do anything at all
freedom freely flowing through
the wreathful rings and weather blue
praise Jehovah
and the man
our fathers both who pay and plan

Midnight song

what do you do when the moon
is a silver wafer in the sky
and the barley field is blowing
and whispering
all night long?

Leap up! Tiptoe out of the tent
and run!
RUN! Barefoot
(the grass is crunchy with frost)
Bareheaded
(white haired with the starlight)
Barehearted
(God himself can see the thanksgiving
welling up out of your eyes
flooding the woods and fields
and drowning the song of the wind)

old thoughts

somehow open-hand and hearted words are here upon my tongue;
you're treating me like it isn't stained dark with forbidden fruits.
why does the bread rise only after it's entombed under a dishcloth?
when does the chick know to possess its yellow fluff and muscle its way out?
and why, why, why o Lord of knowing, why must i be weariness and blood,
doubt your strength in each minute, but not your eternal victory?

i love you now like i wanted you all my life

**********************************************************************************

Prelude

How could I love you more?
I would give up
Even that beauty I have loved too well
That I might love you better.
Alas, how poor the gifts that lovers give—
I can but give you of my flesh and strength,
I can but give you these few passing days
And passionate words that, since our speech began,
All lovers whisper in all ladies’ ears.

I try to think of some one lovely gift
No lover yet in all the world has found;
I think: If the cold sombre gods
Were hot with love as I am
Could they not endow you with a star
And fix bright youth for ever in your limbs?
Could they not give you all things that I lack?

You should have loved a god; I am but dust.
Yet no god loves as loves this poor frail dust.

-Richard Aldington

Almost....

The bald man wept and the donkey brayed
and Judas kissed our Lord betrayed
He sung in death to a demon choir
this hell-on-earth will end in fire
but now snow melts as small hands grip
misery tight like a blacksnake whip
savior save while deadman die
this, O Christ, is our christmas cry

On the shores of Lethe....

Death,
where did you learn
those queenly
manners and big-hearted ways?
You must have watched her days
so thickly
crowned with May-singing, until
Death.


Think.
Withold it, Cate.
make a fist,
keep the small ones for tomorrow
out of sight. You can borrow
the old list
if needed. Wait.
Think.

wrk. i. prog

Three tremble words white on the page
spread their little wings
and fly in spiral rings
around the tiny mountain of our age

Three knights ignore a weeping page
while waiting in the wings
can't stop, the bell rings
too bad he's small for his age.

Blotches and scratches adorn the page
their vows have lost their wings
though hands retain the rings
Love, like cheese, can smell with age.

ENOUGH ALREADY!

She gave me a watch that says tick-tock
but it doesn't match my party frock
I'll know just when it's half-past three
But I'll be such sight to see.
Father thinks I'm young and vain
but things that clash cause me such pain
Aunt Sarah says I'm sooo well bred -
MAMMA! Dan is hitting Fred!
Ughh, brothers are revolting things,
I'd rather have two diamond rings.

for Toni M.

it's been going on a long time,
stretched out like molasses in
a hot kitchen.
we made it,
baby we made it 'cuz we know the melody of friendship
but them chickens been scratchin' fore a
night and a morning
and
this Eve ain't got no garden.

don't smile that smile, unless you gonna
carry my weight for a little while, boy.
Oh and you'll run away back to Georgia so fast
the soles o' your feet will burn

she's been burning a long time
long time in that hot kitchen.
she made it out, she did
that one with the jet black eyes and all the hair.
indecent
without Adam
and loving
every minute of the striding & striving

to a young Cleopatra

Where shall be found sand for the sieve
of her mind? What man will last this life?
What god of fire and earth will leave
the bloody field for a brazen wife?
One, with hands of sin gloved thick with grace,
who burns the carpet of the eyes,
and falters not in cruelest race
but gets the golden-apple prize-
this cunning man will enter swift
with desert winds, and from her lift
that arrogance from off her brow
and clear her mind, nor to her bow.
A well of water will he be,
a mirror and a silver tree,
her words will drown, reflect, or bloom
his intellect will give hers room.
His sand has stones, nor is naive
aye, a warrior-king will sift her sieve.
yet desert miles stretch on before
the way is shut. She is the door.

NIGHTMARE

Dear You-know-who-you-are,

I've been awfully restrained today.

In fact, I've been a virgin-nun, a pillared-saint and a Republican secretary all in one
ever since you walked straight past me to those cucumber slices without one glance.
C'mon, the salad bar has NEVER been that interesting,
and what did I do? I keep glancing down at my hands,
convinced they are covered in the blood of innocents, or filled with the stolen bread of the starving or SOMETHING that would explain your cold shoulder of mystery that's freezing over my heart.
Do I get an explanation?
"Let me know if I am far from the light" was the second-to-last treasure I had from your lips...I thought we were talking about noetic structure & Descarte & studying for exams
but
were you referring to something farther-afield & closer to the kingdom?

I am sorry.

I am not very good at these quiet conversations. If you would let me sit across from you now, I could stare very pointedly at your tomatoes & be calm.
We could converse in lower-case letters instead of MY NORMAL ALL-CAPS. You could instruct me and I could quietly try not to worship the grace with which you cut up the lettuce into precise green triangles.
You could pretend at some semblance of order and control & feel affirmed.
BUT DON'T YOU SEE, O CAN'T YOU SEE, THAT I LIKE THIS WAY AND you do not and that's quite all right as long as we're just talking about Descarte and wax and the things that don't scare the living-tarnation out of the tangles in my hair.

this kind do not come out except by fasting and prayer....

good grief, this is ridiculous.
Maybe I'm asleep.
I apologize again.
Get your crutons and dressing.
I recommend the raspberry vinegerette, unless you're a ranch man........

....actually, I recommend looking at me , talking to me soon.

My head's beginning to smoke, and when I panic, i SPEAK LOUDER SO THIS THING IS JUST GONNA GET UGLIER AND WORSE AND oh well.
Go sit over there.
I'll go running.
By myself.
It's normal, I shouldn't expect ab-normal or special or spectacular.
i forgot to feed Cerberus,
and he eats his meat well-done so I've got to ditch this
half-baked dream zone
for the land of the golden chariots of day.
Peace,
my cold-shouldered friend. That was the last word I heard you speak to me,
so I offer it back to you,
in exchange for...

for nothing. There is no barter between the two of us. You
are of the night, and I....

I am of the day.

Peace.

S’il vous plaît

I'll fetch it for you, shall I?
Over the blue river & the waxing moon to the far green country
past the head of the horse, the sculpture of Vinzi
and the help of your family.
I knew what you wanted done the whole time -
isn't it possible she's innocent,
and you can stop asking questions. Have
you begun to realize the truth yet?
Deliberation & planning, all the eggs in our
baskets. Close ranks and smile.
Oh my darling, for God's sake, oh my darling...
it is too late,
the wife of the doctor will sit in that
chair forever. Play your saddest music
and get out the black lace.

Go, my child, your place is with the living.
I will remain here with the dead, with the many dead mouths and their questions.
That is not mercy, mother,
that is justice. But I will still fetch it for you,
the ending.
It's just over there, just past the river....

The Worshiper

He carried a torch for her, all these years
kept it burning somehow, he said, through long December days,
fueled from her paintings & the memory of
their walk down the Rue Mouffetard, and the knowledge
that she still wears his scar.
Beneath it, like an ancient star,
they stand. He
recognizes wild-eyes, but she can see
other changes mirrored on his face.
Not enlightenment.
Her journey through blackness,
with no-one to light the way,
no-one to crush the serpent or weather the storms of memories -
this
he does not see. The light is not strong enough to illuminate
the other scars at throat & back & blade.
Time tempers, time changes -
She wishes his torch more brightness
or more darkened shadow-caves.
No escaping from the knowledge now:
the slow minutes in Putnam County Jail
bought her bravery
at the expense
of
his Olympic love.

I Am Much Too Alone in This World, Yet Not Alone

by Rainer Maria Rilke
Translated by Annemarie S. Kidder

I am much too alone in this world, yet not alone

enough

to truly consecrate the hour.

I am much too small in this world, yet not small

enough

to be to you just object and thing,

dark and smart.

I want my free will and want it accompanying

the path which leads to action;

and want during times that beg questions,

where something is up,

to be among those in the know,

or else be alone.



I want to mirror your image to its fullest perfection,

never be blind or too old

to uphold your weighty wavering reflection.

I want to unfold.

Nowhere I wish to stay crooked, bent;

for there I would be dishonest, untrue.

I want my conscience to be

true before you;

want to describe myself like a picture I observed

for a long time, one close up,

like a new word I learned and embraced,

like the everday jug,

like my mother's face,

like a ship that carried me along

through the deadliest storm.

an oldie

Gloriously wasteful, O my Lord, art thou!

Sunset faints after sunset into the night,

Splendorously dying from thy window sill—

For ever. Sad our poverty doth bow

Before the riches of thy making might;

Sweep from thy space thy systems at thy will—

In thee the sun sets every sunset still.


George MacDonald

You missed me

You missed me in your bohemian night.
When you lift your glass to drink,
for the good times
and don´t find me to your side.

You missed me when among the new friends
your soul found, alone.
And know that at the end of the night,
loneliness and indifference
will be your partners to the daybreak.

You missed me in the nights of full moon,
when you stroll with the moon to your back.
For the roads of the night,
reminding of the time when the love flourished
in each word, in each expression, in each caress.

You missed me when you look for my eyes
among the multitude´s... anonymous looks,
in the sunny afternoon.
And don´t find those eyes
that smiled, when they were
reflected in yours...

Do you know?
I will also miss you! ! !

ENRIQUE ALBERTO HURTADO MINOTTA

A Ballad of Death

The tears that through her eyelids fell on me
Made mine own bitter where they ran between
As blood had fallen therein,
She saying; Arise, lift up thine eyes and see
If any glad thing be or any good
Now the best thing is taken forth of us;
Even she to whom all praise
Was as one flower in a great multitude,
One glorious flower of many and glorious,
One day found gracious among many days:
Then I beheld, and lo on the other side
My lady's likeness crowned and robed and dead.
Sweet still, but now not red,
Was the shut mouth whereby men lived and died.
And sweet, but emptied of the blood's blue shade,
The great curled eyelids that withheld her eyes.
And sweet, but like spoilt gold,
The weight of colour in her tresses weighed.
And sweet, but as a vesture with new dyes,
The body that was clothed with love of old.
Ah! that my tears filled all her woven hair
And all the hollow bosom of her gown--
Ah! that my tears ran down
Even to the place where many kisses were,
Even where her parted breast-flowers have place,
Even where they are cloven apart--who knows not this?
Ah! the flowers cleave apart
And their sweet fills the tender interspace;
Ah! the leaves grown thereof were things to kiss
Ere their fine gold was tarnished at the heart.

Ah! in the days when God did good to me,
Each part about her was a righteous thing;
Her mouth an almsgiving,
The glory of her garments charity,
The beauty of her bosom a good deed,
In the good days when God kept sight of us;
Love lay upon her eyes,
And on that hair whereof the world takes heed;
And all her body was more virtuous
Than souls of women fashioned otherwise
Now, ballad, gather poppies in thine hands
And sheaves of brier and many rusted sheaves
Rain-rotten in rank lands,
Waste marigold and late unhappy leaves
And grass that fades ere any of it be mown;
And when thy bosom is filled full thereof
Seek out Death's face ere the light altereth,
And say "My master that was thrall to Love
Is become thrall to Death."
Bow down before him, ballad, sigh and groan.
But make no sojourn in thy outgoing;
For haply it may be
That when thy feet return at evening
Death shall come in with thee.

Algernon Charles Swinburne

sort of a weird poem
i cut a lot of verses

TEN YEARS APART

You saw scandal in the tiny pink oval
poking through my sock.
Waterfalls terrified with their white-lioness roar
and you always held my hand
tightly in the park, in case the pigeons or
squirrels chance to feel gregarious.

I'd bring a hibiscus, and when you'd wanly smile
My fingers would dutifully dissect the fusia glory, and I'd watch your mouth,
hoping you'd be impressed by the pistil and elegant stamen
(and hoping just a little you'd be impressed that i remembered the difference)
But the orange-golden velvet dust angered your dress-front with familiarity
so we'd go home.

What would you be like if Gabriel had married you?
Not my gargoyle, guardian older sister.
I think you'd plunge through the brambles for blackberries too,
because he's fond of jam,
and the fragrance of my wet-moss garden
would remind you of mermaid's hair & other fabulous
and magical things he used to paint.

Now look at her, at her un-uncovered ruby-redness. She still hides and lies long buried;
and though I admire her & think her beautiful and careful,
my ten-year-old testimony is not heavy enough to mint,
so my unwedded sister refuses to spend.

for the striving one: Martha

no ties of blood to hold her down
just
all the dirty dishes
and
it is true, what you said, about ugly places
filling up
the soul with gritty feelings
and beautiful places
of the mind
quelling the greasy tide
of
self pity.

Romans 7 again

you made me look ridiculous in there

as if i care.

my mother was quite shocked - what will she think?

uhh...you've past the brink.

and what about that guy - he's much too old!

so why were you so brash and bold?

you're cruel. and rude. Leave me alone

yet i'm in your skin & bone....

His wound was slight,
the army, victorious.
Fell enemies were driven
far back beyond the border
but
Alexio was not at ease.
there were murmurs
and his head ached -
the last lingerings
of some kindly
spell?

OH PERNICIOUS WOMAN!

It would kind of stink to be the hero with the girlfriend/princess of awesome, cause you'd never get to brag around the fire with the boys. "Yeah, and then a magical forest sprang up behind us 'cuz she threw down a hair-comb...."

kind of lacks the usual mythic hero quota of machoness, dontcha think?

outside up, rightside out
i'm confused without a doubt.

poached french-toast? duck bombay?
you've chased all my sense away.

watch a book, read a bike -
is this what love is really like?

wash the pig, feed the car
you've made my wits as sharp as tar.

Bunyan, John, met a big blue fox -
my reasons crashed out on the rocks!

chase the moon, catch the sun
being with you sure can be fun.

scatter the sky, drink the stars
this world's a prison with no bars

classic fads and gold galore
O Poetic Muse.
You
I
adore.

Speak

my love it is deep
a well right into the earth
plunging down to where
the minerals
are brash to taste.

my love it is swift
braving treacherous paths,
rushing,unleashing
like a valkary horse race by moonlight.

my love it is high
towering up beyond the tree-line
careening towards the sun
reckless towards the light.

my love, it is free
uncaged & eager to be
gentle-eyed, gates open
and the one key thrown away.

you are silent, my love,
a closed window on a winter night
and around your mouth
there is a shadow of pain,
but i cannot yet tell

is it yours or mine?

#47

true beauty haunts no mirrored paths
or sighs in desperation at unseen eyes
self-obsessed, obvious, and whirling at the center -
no,
true beauty is busy living, hands helping
raw reality and eyes focused forward
diligent and square-jawed
weary, but resolved, and sometimes
when the light is just right
and she turns her head
you catch the faint outline
of a starry crown
heavenly.
true beauty, here on earth,
is measured
in glimmers.

Inevitable

not sure i can go on,
been camping out on the threshing floor
hiding from my donkey.

can't deal with confrontation today.

on top of everything, Granpa's brand new axe-head
is at the bottom of Goose Creek.
Uncle Elijah lied— certain elements are heavy as lead—
i would go to the temple
but my eyes are all red and Eli scares me.
it's not like i'm praying for a son.

rash vows are littered all around me,
so i locked the front door and
took my plate of manna out on the back porch.
my bush won't burn and
someone's been ploughing with my heifer.

you can blow the silver trumpet all you want,
pray for the sun to stand still
or take the bus to Endor,
but
nothing feels right.

I'm sore. Maybe I've been sitting on the household gods for too long,

feeding the living room lions or waiting for the oil to run out.

Increase my faith, O big-picture God,

because there’s no mustard sprout in my paper cup life

and I’ve never seen the Bronx River drown gangsters

or pharaohs or anybody.

nativity on her living room table

so quiet all around the stone manger
stone beards. stone baby.
starshine all around the stone mary
stone hands and stone head
the stone angel watches from an angle
the stone frankincense and stone myrrh
are offered in stone worship
and the stone donkey
nudges the stone wiseman
who is clutching his stone gold
with a stone look of surprise
in his stone eyes.

Across a thousand miles on a cosmic quest to find God made man. The stars cannot lie. But...a...child?

Back in the fearsome yore
of 1433.
when poor benighted man
made-do without T.P.
A band of English braves
made war on Sarcen knaves.
Both armies camped in sand
while reprieved from hand-to-hand.
Young Rollo no hero
as a knight they ranked him 0.
So he stayed behind to cook
or fill his colouring book.
One day the winds were high
but Rollo had to try
and bake some bread.
"THE MEN MUST BE FED!"
Richard the Lionheart had said.
So he got out the stuff
but deuce! it was tough
and everything blew away
which filled Rollo with dismay.
He'd spilled the baker's yeast
and it scattered throughout the middle east
so now their dough rises too.
I swear this story's...true?

(but not well-metered ;P)

I carried my life, like a stone,
in a ragged pocket, but I
had a true weaving song, a sly
way with rhythm, a healing tone.

-from The Healing Improvisation of Hair, by Jay Wright

Hero

By Paul Engle


I
I have heard the horn of Roland goldly screaming
In the petty Pyrenees of the inner ear
And seen the frightful Saracens of fear
Pour from the passes, fought them, brave in dreaming.


But waked, and heard my own voice tinly screaming
In the whorled and whirling valleys of the ear,
And beat the savage bed back in my fear,
And crawled, unheroed, down those cliffs of dreaming.


II
I have ridden with Hannibal in the mountain dusk,
Watching the drivers yell the doomed and gray
Elephants over the trumpeting Alps, gone gay
With snow vivid on peaks, on the ivory tusk.


But waked, and found myself in the vivid dusk
Plunging the deep and icy floor, gone gray
With bellowing shapes of morning, and the gay
Sunshaft through me like an ivory tusk.


III
I have smiled on the platform, hearing without shame
The crowd scream out my praise, I, the new star,
Handsome, disparaging my bloody scar,
Yet turning its curve to the light when they called my name.


But waked, and the empty window sneered my name,
The sky bled, drop by golden drop, each star
The curved moon glittered like a sickle's scar,
The night wind called with its gentle voices: Shame!


IV
I have climbed the secret balcony, on the floor
Lain with the lady, drunk the passionate wine,
Found, beneath the green, lewd-smelling vine,
Love open to me like a waiting door.


But waked to delirious shadows on the door,
Found, while my stomach staggered with sour wine,
Green drunknenness creep on me like a vine,
And puked my passion on the bathroom floor.


V
I have run with Boone and watched the Indian pillage
The log house, fought, arrow in leg, and hobbled
Over the painful ground while the warrior gobbled
Wild-turkey cry, but escaped to save the village.


But waked, and walked the city, vicious village,
Fought through the traffic where the wild horn gobbled,
Bruised on the bumper, turned toward home, hobbled
Back, myself the house my neighbors pillage.


VI
I have lain in bed and felt my body taken
Like water utterly possessing sand,
Surrounding, seething, soothing, as a hand
Comforts and clasps the hand that it has shaken.


But waked, and found that I was wholly shaken
By you, as the wave surround and seethes the sand,
That your whole body was a reaching hand
And my whole body the hand that yours had taken.

PARODY TIME!

The Orange

By Wendy Cope (probably written AFTER she graduated from college)


At lunchtime I bought a huge orange
The size of it made us all laugh.
I peeled it and shared it with Robert and Dave—
They got quarters and I had a half.


And that orange it made me so happy,
As ordinary things often do
Just lately. The shopping. A walk in the park
This is peace and contentment. It’s new.


The rest of the day was quite easy.
I did all my jobs on my list
And enjoyed them and had some time over.
I love you. I’m glad I exist.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
END OF TERM

by Cate Pilgrim (definitely written before she graduated from college)

On Wednesday I had a huge test,
the length of it made us all cry.
I fought hard but lost to Jacob and Dan-
they got A's so now I want to die.

And that test, it made me real grumpy,
as schoolwork things always can
so quickly. The cramming. A talk with a prof
This rage and disgust - not a fan.

The rest of my week was quite awful.
I missed two dumb exams on my list
and failed some 'cuz of questions leftover.
I hate life. I've never been kissed.

SPEED POETRY with Jensen ;P

Porgy was a smull yet mighty troll
who made his home in a grassy snoll.
He had warts on his hands but none on his feet
He was a gentle soul. He ate no meat.
He was kind to slugs and liked to dance.
He wrote long poems about romance.
Every Thursday night he would comb his hair
and visit the home of Esmelda the Fair.

Esmelda lived with her thirteen cats
twenty mice and fifty bats.
She has long green hair and lovely eyes
To hear her sing was a rare surprise.
Porgy loved her and swore one day
He would win her hand and sweep her away.

After Chapel

I am like a child at the Feast of Passover, squirming in my clean, pressed pants, impatiently tapping my dress shoes, wanting Dad to lift the last glass and toast Jerusalem so I can go out and play. The matzo is dry, and my nose burns after gulping horseradish. I think my plenty suffering.

Sometimes I find the ritual, the structure, the starched crispness of this community unrealistic. Christians fit a narrow typology, and I find myself squirming. "LIVE! GET REAL WITH GOD! BE THE BODY, BE THE CHURCH!" I cry, looking around. Yet the LORD was not in the whirlwind. Perhaps it is not time to call Elijah, but to dance with Miriam.
Perhaps this is this is a taste of the afikoman -why should the friends mourn while they have the bridegroom?

Kay's Journal: To the Snow Queen

Waiting for the winter snows in summer I would be a fool
Yet more foolish he that thinks that Time's hand heals;
Words once spoken have faded not at all - oblivion is cruel,
Denying entrance to the weeping guests I send. It feels
As though the pikes are pointed in, formations up at arms
against the father-land! Conspiracy? I bid the traitor stand
Confess, and die together with his lies and charms:
"Time will surcease bring." - put trust in that when wisemen build on sand!
I spurn despair, but doubts within me rise. What is the cure
For death of love? Fetch out black velvet and a sombre priest
fashion our coffin from eternity; fill with memories, obscure
and lithe alike. Call in mourners. Wail loud for love deceased.
After all depart from covered grave
& the eulogy's been said,
perhaps, perhaps it's done?
I'll go home, clean house,
and burn
that
ice-
cold
bed.

"He walked slowly out into the sunlight. He thought: but the truth is so much more than that. Truth is too personal. Don't know if I can express it...Strange thing. You would die for it without further question, but you had a hard time talking about it." - Chamberlain, Killer Angels

Last Year: for J. Laurence

and then they looked down at their feet, marvelous mis-match,
and the clock didn't matter so much,
because their deep laughs rang so hard that the hands fell off
and the second hand forgot it needed to move first
and the hour hand was astonished with the tone
& color of the night-noise.
so snow or no snow, they danced with piano keys, and the notes hung like bracelets from their wrists, except they flung them out to illuminate the treasuries of their un-dreamed dreams,
which they were saving
for the nights when the hallway was full of shadows
instead of good things,
like friendlieness, e.e. cummings,
and
fudge.

THE MURDER OF MOSES

By reason of despair we set forth behind you
And followed the pillar of fire like a doubt,
To hold to belief wanted a sign,
Called the miracle of the staff and the plagues
Natural phenomena.

We questioned the expediancy of the march,
Gossiped about you. What was escape
To the fear of going forward and Pharaoh's wheels?
When the chariots mired and the army flooded
Our cry of horror was one with theirs.

You always went alone, a little ahead,
Prophecy disturbed you, you were not a fanatic.
The women said you were meek, the men
Regarded you as a typical leader.
You and your black wife might have been foreigners.

We even discussed your parentage; were you really a Jew?
We remembered how Joseph had made himself a prince,
All of us shared in the recognition, sense of propriety,
Devotion to his brothers and Israel.

We hated you daily. Our children died. The water spilled.
It was as if you were trying to lose us one by one.
Our wandering seemed the wandering of your mind,
The cloud believed we were tireless,
We expressed our contempt and our boredom openly.

At last you ascended the rock; at last returned.
Your anger that day was probably His.
When we saw you come down from the mountain, your skin alight
And the stones of our law flashing,
We fled like animals and the dancers scattered.

We watched where you overturned the calf on the fire,
We hid when you broke the tablets on the rock,
We wept when we drank the mixture of gold and water.
We had hoped you were lost or had left us.
This was the day of our greatest defilement.

You were simple of heart, you were sorry for Miriam.
You reasoned with Aaron, who was your enemy.
However often you cheered us with songs and prayers
We cursed you again. The serpents bit us,
And mouth to mouth you entreated the Lord for our sake.

At the end of it all we gave you the gift of death.
Invasion and generalship were spared you.
The hand of our desertion, resignedly you fell,
And while officers prepared for the river crossing
The One God blessed you and covered you with earth.

Though you wer mortal and once committed murder
You assumed the burden of the world and for our understand.
Converse with God made you a thinker,
Taught us all early justice, made us a race.

- Karl Shapiro -

-The Boy- j.b. Leishman

I'd like, above all, to be one of those
who drive with the wild black horses through the night,
torches like hair uplifted in affright
when the great wind of their wild hunting blows.
I'd like to stand in the front as in a boat,
tall, like a long floating flag unrolled.
And dark, but with a helmet made of gold,
restlessly flashing. And behind to ride
ten other looming figures side by side,
with helmets all unstable like my own,
now clear as glass, now old and blank like stone.
And one to stand by me and blow us space
with the brass trumpet that can blaze and blare,
blowing a black solitude through which we tear
like dreams that speed to fast to leave a trace.
Houses behind us fall upon their knees,
alleys cringe crookedly before our train,
squares in flight; we summon and we seize:
we ride, and our great horses rush like rain.

(translated from Rainer Maria Rilke)

As If
by Jim Peterson

When I was Shakespeare,
the weight of a new manuscript under my arm
bound and tied with leather
was enough to sustain the fight in me.
And my hands, which wanted nothing more
than to turn the pockets of strangers inside out,
curled up like fists even while I slept.

When I was Shakespeare, the moon
etched my face on the windowpane,
the sun carved my shadow in the dust
and the dogs abandoned by the dead
could not obliterate it.
The critics who sat in the galleries,
who never felt the rain on their heads
in the midst of a soliloquy,
who never tasted the cold roots of originality
bitter and foreboding in their mouths,
scribbled their tiny paragraphs, their palsied puns,
then avoided my eyes later in the pub
as if I ever gave a good god damn.

wearynes

Stinking tar, roiling pitch and the relentless smell of dead fish hangs over the deck, augmented with pungent gusts of air from the galley below. As the bell for the second watch rings out, a tall figure slides with weary grace from the mast top, and crawls covertly along to the prow, grateful for the darkness, absence of moon and presence of star-obscuring clouds. Sleep perhaps will come, let fear and anxiety float for a while on the vast black ocean. How many nights have passed in this manner? Raw red hands clasp the planking, splinters driving deep into the callused palms. He no longer felt the desire for adventures. He no longer felt young. Two years ago he had been new to the ways of sailors, unschooled in the ship arts, new to the sea…new to the now familiar longing for her…

High School

Amy puts Premium in her tank
an insignia of rank
but when he passes on his bike
her eyes begin a hunger-strike.


Shakespeare at 1:00 in English class
His sweater and smile strangely clash.
He's good at math yet loves the Bard -
poor Amy loves a wildcard.

Eleventh grade romance:the tragic tale
of rich girls with cars who fall for male
poets in sweater-vests. The end is sad
especially if you're Amy's dad.

Amy and Malcom now live on Main
so Amy can ride to work on the train.
This Christmas is tough, there's not much egg nog
because Malcom supports himself from his blog.

C O U R A G E

I am the sacred book
heavy as lead.
I lie here full of
words
no-one's read.

Open me, if you dare
and donkey's bray will fill the air
Listen well, if you can
hear of God become a man.

I'll be a sword
to slice thy soul
I'll be a balm
to make thee whole

Pick me up
and prepare questions.
I answer them.

Do you know:
I was the first
word.

Taste the banquet
come now,
preferred.

For Eleanor Farjeon, One of Martin Pippin's Girls

Martin cocked his head to the side, squinting down his nose at Jocelyn.

She squinted back.

"No kiss but a right-handed one for you, dear Jo." He placed his lips against his palm, and lightly pressed her forehead. She wrinkled her forehead, then tossed her dark head and snorted, in what she hoped was a stiff and prim manner. "why thank you Martin."

Then he turned to Jeniffer, curled up small on a pillow in the corner.

"Do I get a right-handed kiss too, Martin?" Jennifer's pale skin looked rosy in the firelight, and for a moment Martin's eyes weren't periwinkle, but a sober blue.

"Ah, no Jennifer. For you all that is left is the left-hand." He delivered it.

"A left-handed kiss means you will walk cold miles under strange stars, alone and betrayed, Jen." She turned her face down to the kitten purring on her lap, and then looked up with puzzled eyes as Martin added softly, "But you will do some singing."

Done with her grand manner, the hint of pout lingering small by her red mouth, Joceyln chimed in, "And what of a right-handed kiss? Am I as cursed as Jenny?"

Martin laughed. "The bearer of a right handed kiss will swim in the blue water in a bright bay, and.."

"Alone?" Jenny cut in. "Martin, will I be alone?"

He walked over to the the fireplace and stretched his long arms from one end of the mantle to the other. He took the china shepardess and and placed her gently next to the curly-headed china shepard.

"You may be alone, Jo, but not for long. For someone must hold your left-hand, lest it work mischief abroad." Martin caught her eyes, and she met his gaze boldly until he whispered "There are enough lone wayfarers walking this earth Jo."

Then Martin put both hands together.

"What have you got there, Martin?" asked Jen. The kitten's claws were hopelessly entangled in her lace petticoat, but she had noticed the cup of his palms.

"What have I got?" Martin mumbled, looking down in surprise.
"Why, I've got peppermints!"

And so he had. He gave one to Jo and the other to Jen, and when Jo tried to break hers in two so he would not go without, Martin found a third mysteriously tucked into his upper vest-pocket.

(And that is the story of Martin Pippin in the Winter Parlor)

Mr. Greatheart points out to the pilgrims the bones of one Heedless who was "foolishly venturesome.

Bunyan experienced the Scriptures almost as physical presences. The Bible, he says, "was so fresh,...that I was as if it talked to me."

Mr. Greatheart has walked with me as well, and I am a Pilgrim indeed. Yet the bones of one Heedless are not having the freak-out effect I desire...O LORD! Long have I been a venturesome fool - Forgive me, and awaken your Word with the dawning, to meet with me ere the sun illuminates all the day's lust alluring alleys and pathways.

May I venture to wayfare in your WORD!

neocortex

the Alborz mountains loom, another Boulder, almost the seventh swan
ludicrous
and beautiful
This is Tehran? This is the hub of evil? Where are the groaning women? Where are the noosed necks & fanatic secret police?

walk into a coffee shop, rent a pair of skis, walk down main street & see:

They are wearing Ralph Lauren and throwing snowballs.

The eye cannot lie: propaganda & mass media are all lies - the eye cannot lie
and
i
haven't seen any pictures of suffering.

make me like the running deer
scatter my heart to run after you
in twilight or sunlight
may i graze in your pasture

Anele: uoy evol I

what do you when apathy has a throat choke-hold
and you just sit & listen to blood pound
you don't care to recall air is necessary
you usually like breathing it?

i don't know what you do, but i always remember that Filibuster would be a very good name for a duck, and there is a little girl who said so that NEEDS me to be very un-apathetic if she's gonna make it & blood pounds in both of us & hers needs to stay inside her and her wrists, and then i do a little mental brazilian jitsu-jitsu on the apathy, wack it a few times with Romans 7 & Co. and buckle down to the hard business of living, the daily duties that challenge me so little that I realize the hard part is not in their completion but in my attitude towards them.

and one day i want to write a story about a duck named Filibuster and the 10 year old boy who slept on the kitchen floor with his new puppy & the breakfast table with Sicily missing from the map, for green tea with honey & the house where even the pictures on the walls cry out in grief and where her every other breath is drawn to say "Death, where is your victory" even though it seems as if the battleground proves it to be right there in the piles of unaswered mail.

in a world this sharp, this fallen, there is no room for apathy

For Destiny (who needs a good teacher)

I have seen you, with the hard eyes
watching the boys shoot hoops
and not even flinching when asphalt & skin meet.

teach me.

teach me how to hold in the tide
conquer and quell and wrest back
the suprised cry
and tears.

teach me, you with the hard eyes, teach me how to suffer.

Teach me the art of the careful harvest. I do not want to share my pain
the lighting striking long lasting sharp encounters with reality.
I have hands, show me how to handle these things.
I want to hold them like you do,
careful lips pressed together, and the hard
eyes that watch
details
and learn so much, with out giving away anything.

teach me, o hard-eyed woman, teach me how to survive.

begin a ballad & where will it end?

tremble trees turn and twist
tithe your leaves to breezy mist
grey-shanked clouds roam through the sky
and Harnod Well is frozen dry

heather sway and thatch lie still
this winter's brought a cutting chill
Rosser Dike's beleagured sore
woman, go and latch the door

on nights like this, my da did say
send the travelers on their way
light no lamps and save the bread
for fell things walk abroad, he said.

tarry starry northern wind
bid our sons to make an end
all the chores til morn will keep
and i would have them all asleep

for fell dread walks abroad tonight
it's in my heart not all is right
you heard how Chapman cursed the rood
and faith, the man was of my blood

what is in my heart, Lord, besides empty silence and holes?

what pours from my mouth, O Creator, except stammering syllables of doubt?

where do my eyes stray, Jehovah, other than back to the grapes of Egypt?

the crooked path he will make straight; the broken reed he will not break

What was in your heart, Jesus, when you went to Bethany? Holes and the horrible hush of decay & sorrow? You know.

What did you say, when she broke your Father's command, when there were stones at elbow and foot? You did not doubt the power of Love.

And your eyes, drawn to heaven not by doves or lightning but faith - your eyes sought the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

let the mind of Christ dwell in you richly

sherpa

nondogmatic mouth

juniper sprigs of incense

praying heavenward

On Hopkins Article Rachel Leon gave me ages ago - I LOVE!

I have been reading about Gerard Manely Hopkins - here is a beautiful description of him and his struggle to understand what makes life worth living, written by Paul Mariani:

"But what of those for whom the titanic struggle is all within, as with this lowly porter on the island of Majorca [the largest island in Spain]?
What of those who are bedridden, crippled, house- or prison-bound, who suffer with silent courage from depression or migraines, or who have been given the task of reading thousands on thousands of examination papers and whose salary they never see?
Does not the God who over millennia and with infinite patience has hewn the very continents, melting mountains along with glaciers, or each spring for untold ages past has veined violets cell by cell and watches over the slow growth of cedars and oaks and maples, can not this God 'crowd career with conquest' when nothing seemed to happen, as a man, who merely did his duty day in day out in a world without event, was molded cell by cell into a saint?"


-Paul Mariani, Hopkins' Late Poetics: The Christ-saturated Thing Itself, p. 111

Decision

The bumper sticker said Cross the Sea or Stay and he chose and so did she, so now she's swimming across an ocean of tears

go

I’d noticed them on a few other trees near base camp, light pink rings of fungus decorating the bark, centered a darker crimson like a bulls-eye. Now as I hiked up the steep incline past the jutting bones of Buffalo Mountain, I noticed them again. Natural targets everywhere. A few of the trees appeared as if a woodpecker marksman had been practicing, which led me to wonder if the local Indians had ever thought to use them for archery practice. Working as a camp counselor all summer, I’d made up elaborate stories about the local Indians, the Shawnee Tribe. Tall men with fierce hawk faces and uncanny raccoons-tracking skill. Bold women who ate crawdads and knew how to make weapons out of daisy chains. Their skill with the bow had grown to mythical proportions yesterday, as I was running the archery range, and right now I had seventeen ten-year-olds hiking up Caleb’s Trace behind me. . . as soon as they caught up they would want another story. Hmmm. It ought to involve a bear. Or better yet, a whole posse of bears. Bright Otter was a young brave. . . but wait, I was supposed to be scouting out our campsite. This wasn’t the time to be distracted by Indian boys or tree-fungus, however pink.

Training.

"Come forth! I call you out and come!" And there you were standing in front of the toaster with your back out to me, summoning your poptarts out with all the eloquence of Sauruman or a some holy bloke from some ancient time. I had to laugh, y'see, because you've been doing that kind of stuff since you were weaned, and I'm not doubting you'll do great things, it's just i so enjoy watching you cut your teeth on everyday life. I'm glad I get to be part of the training. Not everyone is so lucky.

those poor rats

NO
FOOD OR
DRINK IN LAB

stream of consciousness

Tremble, Prudence, we are remodeling your house into something lovely; French windows open on the spreading yard where we're replanting the Victory garden with camilla bushes and gracefully weeping willows. Here, we will put in a fountain that the children can splash in, and there, out on the West lawn, we will put in a tennis court where the fathers and their daughters can breathe strenuously wearing pastel-colored summer clothes. We have done away with the high ceilinged nursery and the governesses back bedroom, and I'm afraid the butler's pantry has also been replaced by a breakfast nook and rubber plants.

You see, my dear, once you offer to sell, you cannot control what your new tenants will do.

Most of Life

most of life she takes
with mouth wide open and eyes half-shut -
look through the poleroids and note her eyes
squinched up with joy,creases spreading out - a network of love-lines, loveliness,
binding motherhood & Dad & us all up tight.

Rage, rage against the dying of the light...

her mouth is open now as she sleeps
like some stone goddess all her features now in harmony - the light is buried
even so she adorns this hospital room. The muted white walls
had forgotten the beauty of the human battle -
my mother's war-cry still echoes down the startled corridor
and
I long for her to reawaken and re-engage. Molars exposed, eyelids compressed,
and life inside coming through her parted lips:
Pain and my mother,
locked in struggle for the glorious, mundane, tedious thing we've named
"old age." LIVING IS LIVING,
whether sunrise or sunset, and she wants to live hers to the
full and proper end...

Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay. . .

I have not written it yet, but perhaps I will.
When she wakes up.
How my mother loves to laugh,
laugh with mouth wide open.....

Burn or be burned

On the rack, the self-same concentrate of arrow-thoughts
and prayers and dark-eyed passion, the same petualance as before;
Another turbulent sowing, yet why should the harvest be any different tonight?
As if a child, half-dressed and illiterate, should be made a prophet,
as if mouse-brown eyebrows launched Helen's armada.
milk it dry, but don't be ridiculous. Cross the sea or stay.

but what shall I do?
"burn or be burned but she must have" - benet wrote that
because when something's not easy, it must be right. give me
a creed, a song, a vinegar litany pressed through swollen lips
and out into this empty silence;
pledge or gentle promise, i don't care, but let it last, and
matter so that I may begin to know the stammering,
low and human voices
that flicker on the edges. To talk with them I need
to find the proper resonance, to barter, I must grasp their same values -
will the crimson glory of autumn do it, or the fine fire in a woman's eye? Are Nature and Love
going to persecute this spreading hollowness?
Darkness...a faint cold outline...like walking trees,
oh it's no use.
Tuesday again, and its all for cold, dark and aloneness - "Aloneness" which is good says a small little puritan voice inside,
but hopefullness has gone the way of Merry England and poor, pretty Jack.
the blood has been proved,
the prophet has been named,
and the wandering goes on
among stars that have a different birth
but the same birth-day.

Confessions of a Wolf

wade the night
through snow or owl calls or whatever else comes to mind. Night
is dark.
Dark is
not dark to me
and when the pack falls behind
and i drink from the icy
stream
i live. i have teeth. I live.

TRADE: (Part of my POETRY-FOR-PIE campaign)

The ton of the crou,
the wheat of the buck,
the ride in the cab of your dad's pick-up truck.

The leave of the French,
the tic of the tac,
I'm gonna leave you just so I can come back.

The cake of the fruit
and the chit of the chat
You're the welcoming part of my welcome-home mat.

Unarmed Combat - by Henry Reed

In due course of course you will all be issued with
Your proper issue; but until tomorrow,
You can hardly be said to need it; and until that time,
We shall have unarmed combat. I shall teach you.
The various holds and rolls and throws and breakfalls
Which you may sometimes meet.

And the various holds and rolls and throws and breakfalls
Do not depend on any sort of weapon,
But only on what I might coin a phrase and call
The ever-important question of human balance,
And the ever-important need to be in a strong
Position at the start.

There are many kinds of weakness about the body,
Where you would least expect, like the ball of the foot.
But the various holds and rolls and throws and breakfalls
Will always come in useful. And never be frightened
To tackle from behind: it may not be clean to do so,
But this global war.

So give them all you have, and always give them
As good as you get; it will always get you somewhere.
(You may not know it, but you can tie a Jerry
Up without rope; it is one of the things I shall teach.)
Nothing will matter if only you are ready for him.
The readiness is all.

The readiness is all. How can I help but feel
I have been here before? But somehow then,
I was the tied-up one. How to get out
Was always then my problem. And even if I had
A piece of rope I was always the sort of person
Who threw rope aside.

And in my time I had given them all I had,
Which was never as good as I got, and it got me nowhere.
And the various holds and rolls and throws and breakfalls
Somehow or other I always seemed to put
In the wrong place. And, as for war, my wars
Were global from the start.

Perhaps I was never in a strong position.
Or the ball of my foot got hurt, or I had some weakness
Where I had least expected. But I think I see your point.
While awaiting a proper issue, we must learn the lesson
Of the ever-important question of human balance.
It is courage that counts.

Things may be the same again; and we must fight
Not in the hope of winning but rather of keeping
Something alive: so that when we meet our end,
It may be said that we tackled wherever we could,
That battle-fit we lived, and though defeated,
Not without glory fought.

A Little Infinitude

Dear Frank,

Today I climbed up the tree of my being
and sat in the high wind of an existential crisis. It was pretty tremendous,
and I almost came to the limits of neither earth nor abyss, before I climbed down again
to make dinner for Hannah and the boys.

I miss you.
I miss your irritating de Bevoirian sense of timeliness and the maddening way you counterpoint my assertions about the world with "As a matter of fact..." just so i'll take the bait and we can tussle for a bloody half-hour in bloody half-earnest.

When you are gone some part of, how shall I say it,
life's unencumberedness
is lost.
It's been pickpocketed. Tatterdemalion beauties stay in the shy corners,
and everything's just a bit stark.

Mother always told me
men tangle up the skein of reason,
but she never said the other part,
that you re-wind the tangles into reasonability.

Did i mention that I miss you,
or that
it is autumn
and the leaves on the tree of my being are flushed to crimson
and ochre and
(my favorite) babylonian gold? It doesn't much matter. I realize this is absurd, but


Come home.

They're predicting high winds for the next week.

A brief poem: For Jules Mazarin

Sagacious. Cardinal to the last,
a man who vexed the comfort of kings
and never avoided contention, with red galero
broad in the midst of duty or doctrine.

Don the dalmatic, o cardinal bishop, that shows us your soul;
above the simple white mitre your canny mind and eyes
are masked in pious downcast silence; we know your kind
and hope you know your place.
"His Eminence Cardinal First-Name Last-Name" are you aware
the man you walk behind
did surely see the face of God,
and made us feel the power of His austerity?

You Came, Too - Nikki Giovanni

I came to the crowd seeking friends
I came to the crowd seeking love
I came to the crowd for understanding


I found you


I came to the crowd to weep
I came to the crowd to laugh


You dried my tears
You shared my happiness


I went from the crowd seeking you
I went from the crowd seeking me
I went from the crowd forever


You came, too

in progress

God spoke to Moses from a the middle of a burning bush in the boondocks of Midian, I recall hopefully. Maybe he'll speak to me from Joan's space heater out here in rural Virginia - there's sorta a flame at the top

Joan and Cheryl, two ex-hippies sitting on a porch with the fading green hills of October darkening in front of them, concerned with the small prayers and problems of homemakers. God has not called everyone to bleed and suffer and go without sleep and food and flushing toilets; he has allowed some to sit in rocking chairs with dogs and cats and homemade gingerbread warm from the oven. Joan talks constantly, forcefully. She gestures and tosses her short, chic hairstyle for emphasis. She tells informative stories. Around her is the brick-a-brack of 50 years of traveling- bright Jamaican magnets on the fridge, Ethiopian butterfly art on the walls,a mix of Mediterranean and home-style country clutter. In a calm chaos she grinds her Brazilian coffee and warns me not to follow the wisdom of the world. "Put both feet in Truth, in Christ."

kneel down and listen to them pray
feel the warmth through the ceramic
of a mug bought halfway around the world
and wonder
if
a porch and a kitchen
a dog and three cats
two sons
and an introverted husband upstairs reading
is fulfilling the Great Commission.

DOOM:

A rather insensitive eulogy to threatened worms everywhere



Overcast Friday, wake up worms!

It might rain & kill your squirms –

this day might end with puddle-seas

soggy grass and harried trees;

for you little guys down in the dirt

all that water could really hurt

as for me, I'm feeling fine

the week has crossed the finish line;

papers done, classes out

IT'S FRIDAY NOW, just hear me shout!

THOSE WHO MATTER MOST

ISMENE:
Please don't tell a soul what you are doing.
Keep it hidden. I'll do the same.

ANTIGONE:
For god's sake, speak out. You'll be more enemy to me
If you are silent. Proclaim it to the world!

ISMENE:
Your heart's so hot to do this chilling thing!

ANTIGONE:
But it pleases those who matter most.

ISMENE:
Yes, if you had the power. But you love the impossible.

ANTIGONE:
So? When my strength is gone, I'll stop.

ISMENE:
But it's the highest wrong to chase after what's impossible.

ANTIGONE:
When you say this, you set yourself against me. So you'll just let me and my 'bad judgment' go to hell. Nothing could happen to me that's half as bad as dying a coward's death!!!
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

When my strength is gone, I'll stop.
Her strength and purpose burn so clearly--the impossible is the only voice she'll listen to; it alone speaks to her heart to do what is RIGHT. Life is struggle; we must to distinguish between the highest wrong and those who matter most.

seldom anticipated

man is perfectable by his own initiative.

he is lazy and distracted.

woman is perfectable by her own understanding.

she is just distracted.

L'etat c'est perfectible....by the people?

solstice

It's as if autumn died in me today; i embody the ending of a gold october.
my thoughts all tarnished, decomposing brown -
Plath and Rilke seem passed, brittle like bits of dead leaves. It's the tag end of something in my heart.
the geese have flown on, the orchards picked and abandoned,
i can't even write in meter.
Why? why this compost of unease? Why these lonely piles of brushwood?
You said you loved me, and I replied in kind,
but...there is a puritan sabbath soberness within,
physical and spiritual disconnect - it's as if autumn died inside me.
Where is the flaming maple? Where is the harvest moon?
Where is our mad laughter joyous in this sharpening wind?
I can't even write in meter.
My thoughts are dormant, stale....I think I will wait for the snows.

Nihonshu

Swathes of silk-
kimono days
a passing glancing, prancing gaze;
hobbled, stilted, fractured words
are bound within. Tormented herds
stamp the ground and shake the plain-
can my heart in one remain?
Like the stork out of the sky
awkward legs and awkward cry,
Like a wagon in long grass
like Yun's army at the pass,
halted, bitter, mired I
long for you,
my samurai.

Endless shadow-dreams do prove
that with you I am in love.
Moonless nights find me awake,
Your letters strong as ancient sake.
Return my friend! the swallows fly
the willow weeps and so do I.
My sash undone, my bed unmade
your absence sharp as Fusu's blade.

Return, my friend.

return.

WHAT COLOR IS RED?

Red was a color I thought I knew. Flashlight up against a hand - the red life shines within. Red I learned early from sharp things and stuff squirting out of me, from the book covers and dragon pictures of my library days, and the tiny columbine rockets sprouting in the backyard. "Red," i said, "That color is red."

But OH MY!

Alizarin
Terra cotta
Venetian red
Amaranth
Burgundy
Cardinal
Carmine
Carnelian
Cerise
Chestnut
Coral red
Crimson
Dark pink
Falu red
Fire engine red
Fuchsia
Magenta
Maroon
Mauve taupe
Orange-red
Persian red
Pink
Persimmon Red
Red-violet
Rose
Rose madder
Ruby
Rust
Puce
Sangria
Scarlet

East Germany

of course, economically I'm still rather depressed.

otherwise i'm fine.

SPECTRUM

monday: unduly blue

tuesday: olive drab

wednesday:fuchsia funk

thursday: eyore grey

friday: scarlet bits

saturday:raw umber

sunday: babylonian gold

First things First

As I was saying to you, O my heart,
Be still.
Remember what I said to you, before his heartbeat and hands were offered,
I said "Be still."
And do not cry, and do not think I will believe you if
you reply "I am."

For the heart that desires constancy from man will break.
Be still.

QUESTION

a small rock lay in the path
lay like a small doubt
right in the way of the careening hooves of a thousand horses

it wanted to cry out, but it was a rock, a stone, a solid silent nothing.

why wasn't it given a tongue to clamor, or a drum to strike or a larger rock
to shadow it
from
the four thousand unchangeable shocks
that
rocks are heir to?

"My life's long radiant Summer halts at last,
And lo! beside my path way I behold
Pursuing Autumn glide: nor frost nor cold
Has heralded her presence; but a vast
Sweet calm that comes not till the year has passed
Its fevered solstice, and a tinge of gold
Subdues the vivid colouring of bold
And passion-hued emotions. I will cast

My August days behind me with my May,
Nor strive to drag them into Autumn's place,
Nor swear I hope when I do but remember.
Now violet and rose have had their day,
I'll pluck the soberer asters with good grace
And call September nothing but September."
- Ella Wheeler Wilcox, September

enthralled

"I have come to a still, but not a deep center,
A point outside the glittering current;
My eyes stare at the bottom of a river,
At the irregular stones, iridescent sandgrains,
My mind moves in more than one place,
In a country half-land, half-water.
I am renewed by death, thought of my death,
The dry scent of a dying garden in September,
The wind fanning the ash of a low fire.
What I love is near at hand,
Always, in earth and air."
- Theodore Roethke, The Far Field

The day-before-the-first-of-october feeling: for midterms

i think the Fall fell while I was falling behind
and now i want to fall asleep
in the autumn sunshine
and forget this fallen world
and how much it hurts
to fall
and
have to get up again.

i wish i was a leaf today.

the Difference

The one spoke reams about her dreams and laughter and showered her with star-words, while
the other woke up each morning and asked "where are you?"

that was the difference, you see.

OCTOBER

I will lay me down and fall
asleep.

drifting leaves will cover me

I will lay behind this wall
to weep.

heavy stones will shield me.

I will lay here in your thrall
and deep

your wings will shadow o'er me

oh autumn,
what a crimson-falling wall you are,
a quiet, witching thing
the apples and chrysanthemums are causing me to sing!

my friend

she said stop looking for doors that lead OUT and start finding ones that lead THROUGH but he said will you go with me?

I'm Glad You're Back

i come out, still pulling on my sweater
and you are sitting
right there
grinning straight into my earliest morning face,
a cheerful affront
to monday.

i thank God for you my friend.

Perhaps

Yes, i think there is one more love poem in me tonight. It is shy though, and is hesitant to step around the curtain of weariness that hangs between heart and pen.

Come out, my lovely thing.
Come out into this dim warm room and let me hear you sing.
It need not be a noble song
nor need its verses go for long.
In truth, o starry child of this most dark-filled heart,
even at song's sweet end there is the start
of melody that stretches on and on right out of time
whose very essence is sublime.
I'm sorry if I've startled you with words. I'm coarse and spare
of grace, while you are only and alone most fair.
And so begin.
I will silent sit and silent weep, for lo
and very briefly must I yield
to sleep.

yet let them not call me beggar who once did hold your gift within my ear -
i am king of wealth beyond their scope for I know you, my dear.

Gomer

It must end somewhere.
the well run dry and the oil run out.
it can't keep going on -
surely there isn't enough left. You can stop pretending.

I remember once you told Dad that no matter how harsh his words were, you knew he loved me. And how afterwards I couldn't believe how much I hated both of you.

Herbert said we are twenty different men within twenty seconds, but i've never seen you change.

I'm sorry.

Your strength revolts me when I'm at my weakest. I guess I just wish it was a more equal fit, that sometime,
sometime maybe you could come to me,
maybe I would have something to forgive.

Written On the Occasion of Your Birthday

I want to write you a birthday poem,
42 stanzas and a grand finale that Neruda and Keats
would turn green at & have to eat the rest of the cake to comfort themselves.
I want to bake you that cake, 6 stories high girded with chocolate and reinforced with
butter & all the good things that you deserve for having survived this long.
Twenty years. 86,400 seconds every day, every day since
your little wrinkeldredself first breathed in. I want to write an ode to your hair, to your hands, to your mouth, things which for decades have caused wonder
to light up in the minds of those around you.
It's your birthday, and you deserve the Arc du Triomph in verse & cake & candles
and a million cards that categorize the billion reasons I love you from nose to toes,
but it's 1 am & i'm tired & my poetic side malevolently went off to chase unicorns
somewhere, and i'm weary beyond bearing - not quite as weary as the lady that night in primordial pain, her cheeks two concetrated roses of effort in her pale face. Your mother's pain gave you the chance
to taste Time & feel it for yourself - I am not as weary as all that, not at all.
Mostly, i'm just glad its your birthday
and you haven't jumped ship or skivvied off into the jungles of some city or adventuresome place - i'm glad you're twenty here and now, where i can
track you down
and hug you till your bones crack. Maybe someday i will write you a birthday poem,
so stay alive.

1920 - The September After

i would like to know just one thing from you:

why do you leave your shoes on the mat
on all the mornings
of the nights when you don't come home so that i have to stare at them over breakfast
and lunch
and the late lonely dinners when i almost wish
that you hadn't come back
from that war you can't forget.

That One Night (for M. B. Martins)

There was one night
when the moon didn't rise
and it rained until the middle of the next afternoon.
I woke up alone in bed, and after stumbling around all morning, we met up again
in the middle of a puddle.

it was still raining

Your ankles were white, white as alabaster. Your eyes were tired
for a lot of reasons.
But then you splashed,
and the puddle and the silence shattered,
and I wanted to carry you
all the way through life until the poppy-fields bloomed into your dreams.

But instead we went down to the dead-endstreet
and put flowers next to a weeping Mary
and the body of a dead Jesus.

and then it stopped raining.

Political Science Research Methods

FIRST QUESTION: Are you curious by nature?

ANSWER: Heck yes. I mean, of course I am. Burning with curiosity that would light ten-thousand cats on FIRE!

SECOND QUESTION: Are you a drug user?

Art Critic

He was a man unaware of the fair,

unaquainted with the painted,

and unimpressed with the best.


"Art matters because life matters."
according to that logic, "Socks matter because feet matter"...etc.

Ecclesiastes

there's a broad & arrogant suspicion
spreading among the young
like a disease.
as each day goes by i notice it more:
they think they will inherit
this world when we are gone.

they do not realize this world will die with us.

Goodbye

My breath is sore within my chest
my chest is sore beneath my shirt
my shirt is torn above the breast
from where you arrow caused this hurt

In disbelief I mark the wound
A wound of spirit and of kin
Could kin of mine by blood-ties bound
cause this grief now lodged within?

No splintered cross or thorny crown
No crown or cross claim I to wear
I wear but what you’ve made my own
This fresh and crimson stain, despair.

I stagger back - my hunted heart
Haunts the ruins of our days.
No wholeness there, no joy, no art
all destroyed by traitors ways.

Bridge and boat lie burnt behind
and burns the friendship that we knew.
One hour past your words were kind-
How strange is change to false from true!

A Plan

take it wise & slow/a look before a leap
this desert rose will grow/baby go to sleep

take one step at a time/one ephiphany a day
time alone will prove/if love can make a way

patience in your touch/iron in our will
we don't know too much/we probably never will

building higher walls/around an open gate
should we walk though now/or baby, should we wait?

The Queen Mother and the Queen.

weak & wounded words pour from my mouth
o mother no
not again not another exchange of hurt.
i am finished,
in your eyes i have seen love, i swear. what about the
sledding times? apples and horses and diamonds-in-concrete?
hold tightly to that memory i try to, but
don' t you see in my eyes, the normal defeat
weeping. (its been years. its been years)
i think that as new baby i was afraid to cry in front of you.
i have always been awed by your strength, but afraid too.
once, i think, you were tender & green & shattered even as I;
but somewhere somehow you became
a tower of thorns
and why why why do you want to add another dagger-child
to your quiver?

more noise (abandon ship).
there is no wildness like that of a reckless woman; no savagery in the world like her tongue.

from A Letter, Written to Miss L. in My Head While In Key West

Dearest-my-friend,
the thought of you and your ambitious summer plans and appetite for literature and good poems inspired me to try and hold on even when my brain had gone all sleepy and numb so i fought to remember: what were all those poems that coursed down my face early as i walked and sweated under the huge cloud formations in view of the sea? I will try to remember and if i cannot oh what will you say? You will smile and shake your head and say "child, thoughts can be as whorled as the shells tumbled in the surf and their beauty sometimes eludes us like a wave snatching back its treasure. Only some shells stay on shore long enough to hurt your feet, and only some thoughts form long enough for their beauty to cut into you. Just write down what you can, silly girl. That's all you can do."

So i heard you say that in my head and it was less lonesome and then i lay and for a while thought about the book Killer Angels and the Civil War. I lay, sweaty and dreamily happy with stars in my eyes at the great deeds of Chamberlain and Kerlain and Tom and Meade and Hood and the tragedy of Lee and Longstreet and the soft decaying dead and the rank smell and the fierce eagles that watched Gettysburg destroyed. I lay on a white beach in the south, in the Deep South of Florida and there are no slaves or weeping slave children, but just Americans and it is an odd feeling, stepping out of the heat of that horrible, exulting time back onto the beach of America. I feel stretched and breathless, like i have been in the grip of some thrilling fever....battle-blood.

These men are in my heritage.

I want to be a warrior.

(Isn't it remarkable how books make you think bigger thoughts and dwell on greater truths than you are actually capable of doing? They are mind-stretchers, laboring with pick and axe to hew out enough complacent ignorance so there is room for doubt and questions and homegrown, original thoughts).

VALIDITY

max weber
seems like someone who
would come in and order a large americano
and rib us barristas about
our politics, skills, and choice of shoes;

someone we'd only put up with
if he tipped well.

TEN OUT OF TEN

Amazingly graceful and without scent
i can't believe i ever went
a day without admiring you
and all the crazy things you do

i'd never guess you had to fart
your honesty delights my heart
the way you burp is joyful, too
I like everything you do


for a certain non-roadtrip carride i will never forget.

Rational & Cautious

i'm fighting laughter:
you're in the middle of a forest fire
with a dipperfull of well-water
you gathered at the world's end -

but this is the the world's beginning
and
it's burning with the sunrise and flames from where my eyes
met your eyes.

the wise man who sent you out with that tiny silver cup
who turned you out and sent you off with a high quest and glory-thirst;
the old, scarred knight whose tales of brave adventure spurred your feet
through lone and undiscovered countries-
don't you think he too, long and long ago, reached his journey quest,
dipped up the stars
from that fabled & unchartable deep
and drew that cup of striving to his lips
to down a draught unparalleled...

don't you see, before that liquid mystery kissed his tongue
a billow of smoke
from an olive grove afire
walled him in, distracting and the seeker in him paused,
just long enough to hear the cry
of a desperate, wide-eyed dryad in distress...

look closer: why is your ladle's handle all scorched and charred?
you are not the first foolish son
to sail past the sirens
to the uttermost of reason and enter the forest beyond.
nor are you the first wise man to find
that love,
love,
love is burning in unquenchable light around you.

Come on, laugh with me-
your journey was not vain!
Come, let's watch the colors of the cinders dance
and marvel at their brief and brilliant rain!

monday

walled in by days
where little but the noise of straining hearts is audible
mired in thoughts
that circuit in unsatified interrogatives
beset by feelings
small growing things fighting for any drop of rain
I,
I think of You, who once was darkened by walls and mired for me.
And Your heart, O jesus,
your heart feels what mine cannot.

Create inside another one.

Like yours.

Remember

August 15, 1:30 p.m.

Paul Dwyer: Yellow polo and red L.L. Bean fleece vest that his daughter picked out cover his gaunt frame, his shaking hands the spotted and bruised of the very old. He travels slowly, even just rolling the walker into the library takes an eon. Libraries don't look much different than they did in the 1930's back when he was in school, except for the computer monitors. I was online trying to figure out my class schedule when I noticed the old man. "B.G. 224" and a B-17 were on his baseball hat, and beneath the brim were a pair of prominent blue eyes. As he looked around the Patrick Henry Library, those eyes watered. "I wanted to see this place...before I passed away," he mumbled through his remaining teeth. The librarian continued giving the tour, timidly raising her voice when Dwyer kept saying "I'm pretty much deaf!" Curious as to why our tiny library deserved the last pilgrimage of a dying man, I asked him why he was here (rather loudly. The librarian was not happy with my tone, but I didn't care). Paul Dwyer is one of the last WWII veterans still coherent, and the first one I'd ever had the courage to talk with about America. Bloody Omaha, 9,000 dead on the beaches of Normandy. The doughboys who bore the brunt, Don Gionova standing on the flight deck, 21 years old and full of life, and then two hours later crashing into the North Sea, plane destroyed by flak. "We didn't have a body, we couldn't recover anything. We would go down to the Officer's Club and hoist a glass. That's all we could do." He marveled at the era of Strategic bombing, how the pilot's trained at 1,000 feet but then in actual combat bombed from 2,000; often destroying only the frames of the enemies' artillery and not the weapons themselves. How their radar systems still in the "initial" stages of technology were sketchy at best, treacherous at worst. How his desk in the Astro Dome got wiped out by a piece of flak when he miraculously wasn't at it. "The men you were with, 10 of us, we were family. If something happened to one of us, it happened to all of us." Several times he lowered his head and I thought he was coughing, sick. But he was weeping, weeping for an America that was worth fighting for, that our boys died defending. "You see the rapes and robberies that are happening in this country, not in Baghdad. These are problems that need solutions now. I've been looking for answers, I've been looking for answers my whole life, but I haven't found them yet." He flew in on D-Day - the weather was so bad they didn't drop a single bomb. He spoke of the Luftwaffe and countless names and dates. It was marvelous that an old man's memory could be so sharp, yet tragic that all he was dwelling on were the dead and gone. America has lost its hope for Paul Dwyer. He attended Harvard and Notre Dame studying economics on the G.I. Bill. He married his sweetheart and had 4 children, none of whom married. When his wife died of emphysema "Half of me died with her" and now he's just waiting. Korea, Vietnam, The Gulf and Iraq are merely "history repeating itself" in the same old cycle. He tried to move to Ocala, nice quiet Florida because it was the place to retire, but was drawn back to Virginia in the end, to D.C. and the shrinking circle of veterans he loves, his brothers.

I found out the reason Paul Dwyer was at the library is that he had donated books to us. He was looking for 8 volumes of Nubbin's biography of Lincoln. "There's no point in reading what people are writing nowandays about Lincoln when you've read these books," he confided to me. "They just keep cutting out excerpts of the great biographies and repackaging, reselling them to make a buck." He wheezed, he talked slow, he forgot names and he idolizes the America of the past, and he bears on his body the marks of a different era - a living piece of our past, my heritage: An American Hero.

The Arena

What do you notice when you're on vacation.........?
******************************************************************

In the arena where the competition is fierce
you have held your own nicely;
there were only 3 or 4 awkward pauses tonight. i am impressed.

you've begun to relinquish the story-book
misinformation
the comfort of a sheltered, sequestered mind. welcome to the table.
we play for money here, so stack your chips
and don't shake like that--you're eyes should give
nothing away...free.

Keep your oar in as long as possible, let him lead,
let him dream, let his handsome ignorance
pay the bills for as long as this
gloriously ill-fated round lasts. but then assemble your weapons.

Get them out like you mean it, this time draw your blade
for conquest, not just defense or survival,
if there's a blink or a stagger, draw blood without a second thought.

I know, it seems rather feral, to corner the weak & move in for the kill,
but what are your alternatives?
You've waited a long time for a significant word, an order,
a quest, but as far as I can see,
the angels never showed up.

Are you just gonna wait for ever?

Jesus went out as usual to the Mount of Olives, and his disciples followed him. On reaching the place, he said to them, "Pray that you will not fall into temptation." He withdrew about a stone's throw beyond them, knelt down and prayed, "Father, if you are willing, take this cup from me; yet not my will, but yours be done." An angel from heaven appeared to him and strengthened him. And being in anguish, he prayed more earnestly, and his sweat was like drops of blood falling to the ground.

When he rose from prayer and went back to the disciples, he found them asleep, exhausted from sorrow. "Why are you sleeping?" he asked them. "Get up and pray so that you will not fall into temptation." - Luke 22:39 +

are you willing to wait for even a little while?

It's all good

she used to think in that situation she'd have a stinging retort & a dagger-stare, but these days she doesn't feel so brave. so she's talking to Him more.

INTERDICTION

For her house leads down to death and her paths to the spirits of the dead. None who go to her return or attain the paths of life.
Proverbs 2: 18-19

Ha, you haven't met her - she's like Skylla
times ten.
An immortal devastation
a wrought evil
crafty, crafted from the shattered reputations
of old flames, younger brothers, and good friends
everywhere
there is no nightmare or chaos
formed by imagination or bounded by language
that gives expression
to the brevity of her goodness.
Did you catch that? I said
GET OUT OF TOWN -
there is no fighting her. Don't be a fool,
don't trust your
upbringing or your love
of honor or virtue or the-girl-back-home.
Illiadic bravado will get you exactly where
she wants you -
tethered to the mast and raving mad.
Trust me, all that avails is flight.
So flee. I can't believe you're asking this
or I'm answering. It's not like your some holy monk, not with that physique. What's the matter, don't your eyes take in
the deadly shore, pretty bluntly
strewn with the bones of those "enchanted" by eternal evil itself, now
a heroic breed of skeletons.
What?
Me? Jealous?!!!
Fine, Rower-boy, shove off. You just keep surfing that wave, ride the wine-dark sea
into her hell-hole.
Moor and be merry, that's what she'll say,
right before her song shatters your eardrums.

Why must I always try, always warn them. It's not like they ever listen,
and it's certainly not good for my self-esteem.

Hail, Hail, Lion of Judah

Broken cry at Golgotha.
Torn curtain;
a Roman spear in the last sacrifice, in the hope of Abraham.
His left hand and right are outstretched.
The fingers of the Godhead reach out to clothe me.

I cannot grasp this kind of love.

"Let the little children come unto me."
There are veins starting, wrinkles & sunspots - I'm not a little child anymore. Remember not the sins of my youth... His love is deep enough to swallow the past? My past?
I worship.

"Come, you have have no money, come buy milk and bread."
That statement is ludicrous, a fantastic offer...and then I look around, at all the grubby children, naked & starving.
"Lord, where will we find food for so many?" He replies. But not with words only.
With action.

Three days.
Darkness.
Decay.

Death.

Myrhh and aloe and spices could not conceal it.

Death.

Welfare and education cannot cure it.


I do not have to grasp this love. I just have to hold my cup steady
long enough for it to pour down
and overflow
into the streets.

My street. Your street. His love is a river; the water and the blood flow from wounds. He bleeds for them.
(For us.)

Christ has taken hold of me; I am no longer free/
/Sin the master is no more. I'm done with slavery.

Bhutan: some random thoughts inspired by Nat. Geo

King Wangchuck quietly crossed the hall, the ancient Samteling tiles cold under his royal feet.
He could feel the wheel of heaven turning.
The gardens were spotted softly with lanterns, small red dragons with open mouths, and he walked to a bench and sat, wrapping his long sleeves tightly and tucking his hands close.
It was now, in the dog watch of the night, that the weight of his name pressed him most. He stared at the jet depths of the ornamental pool, blind to the golden glint of koi beneath the surface.
His name.
Jigme Singye Wangchuck -Druk Gyalpo-The Dragon King. Foreign dignitaries knew him as Singye, as did Choden and Pem, his oldest wives. His children when they were small had shyly called him Daddy Druk, and he smiled into the darkness.
Father Dragon.

Had he ever called his own father that, he wondered? Probably.

Dorji, Third Dragon King, was a warm man and an enlightened ruler. He read a great deal. He loved plays and poetry, wine and dancing (and one woman, one woman only). He was the first Bhutanese king to brave the skies in an airplane, and he loved his country with his whole heart.

Once, when Singye was only four year old, Dorji had stood on the steps of Dechencholing Palace and challenged a rioting crowd of hostile lords. They were angry with the way Bhutan was being run, furious with the 24 year old dragon pup who was scorning centuries of tradition by introducing dangerous changes under the guise of "democritization." Yet Dorji had faced them, standing on the steps in the pale October sun. He had been majestic, kingly in his gilded headpiece, as glorious as a priest in the dzong. His advisers refused to appear before the crowd; they were afraid. So he went out without entourage; he was the most striking thing on the horizon, and he knew it. He was their king, and they knew it.

"Our mountains are high, my Lords, but they cannot keep out the wind. The times are changing and we cannot hold back from these changes. And we should not, as long as they are good and bring good things."

Grim faces stared back at him, the faces of men with land, with armies, with ancestors and established houses- men who's mouths dictated what was just and unjust - men with power. King Dorji was going to free the serfs. He was going to end feudalism in Bhutan, and chink away at the wall of ignorance and fear that isolated Bhutan. The young Singye had watched with his nurse from a flanking terraced window, and held tight to her hand. His father sounded almost angry. "Would you have the Druk Yul be a place of peace, or war? For our actions here today do not go unwatched. Kings and princes and peoples of many tongues watch Bhutan."

1971 - Bhutan becomes a member of the United Nations. In painfully acquired English, Dorji makes a fifteen word speech. Lords and dignitaries and princes from the greatest nations under heaven listen to him. Bhutan is attempting the impossible; she is trying to leap the chasm from a Middle Ages form of existence into the 21st century. Dorji is determined that she will succeed. Bhutan is not just a tiny indentation on a hill straddling the China/India border; Bhutan is the Druk Yul "the land of the thunder dragon." Starving peasants and serfs with worn down teeth and hearts need to hear the dragon roar. As does the rabble of lords and nobles still an angry mass before the steps. Dorji was no dragonlet.

"They see our green land and venerable priests; they see our children and our well-tended dzongs. But they also see our starving and sick and broken, our bad roads and one-room hospitals." Your starving. Your sick. Your worked-out men and skeletal women. Your profits, and he looks them in the eye. The lords shift restlessly, feeling foolish in their traditional garb, their antique swords heavily in hand.
"Men of Bhutan, we must make war upon the weaknesses of this land, so that we may hold our banner high in the company of all. I ask you to make this your war, for I have already made it mine, and I wish for brothers-in-arms. Go to battle on your land- it is the end of oppression and hunger and disease!"

A small splash in the pool, and the October crowd disperses and King Singye Wangchuck is back in Samteling Palace garden, alone and aware that he is seeking comfort in ghosts and memories. He puts his chin down on his chest, wishing to be lost in memories again. He is old, and has been Fourth Dragon King since 1972. He was sixteen when Dorji died; he was the youngest monarch in the world, and everything he did for a very long time after, he did for Dorji. But times had changed in Bhutan, and both Dorji and his beloved wife, Queen Ashi Kelzang Chhoedon Wangchuck, were at rest under a green hill in Thimphu.

With the rising sun would come more changes. Assamese separatists had been using Bhutanese territory to launch raids against targets in India, and Bhutan was an ally of India. Singye had spent most of his rule fostering good relations with the giants of China and India. Bhutan was just a sliver of untouched forest between them, and if India decided that the Switzerland-sized nation was hosting terrorists, it could be the end of their autonomy.
Singye pondered his options.
But in his heart, he knew he was going to declare war. His adrenaline surged.
War.
The first military campaign in over a hundred years, and it came under the reign of the Fourth Dragon.

(good grief. so this is why you have to plan a plot BEFORE you start writing. well, wangchuck, you are boring. I'm gonna let you freeze your little Himalayan butt off staring at the pond full of koi until you decide you're gonna do something. Sheesh. You do have four wives, after all...)

this CAT

she walks over & drapes her fatfurry stomach all over the keyboard.
i wake up & she's licking the skin off my left eyelid.
there is nothing i can do if she wants to lay there- apparently she has a monopoly on sunshine.
whenever i walk through the door, she will bring me a gift - a little lizard tail with the back feet still dangling, or a the antennae of a cokeroach.
she dominates the room. i should be thankful she doesn't shed.
its strange. when i pet her i forget & usually end up hollering upstairs for you.
thats when the silence hurts the most
& i sorta hate her purring.
doesn't she know this house isn't supposed to be so cheerful?

After reading Romans 9

He raised an indignant hand, calling for silence. I saw his face
and the mirrored irritation in the eyes of the whole synagogue. Again,
he raised his right hand - and my heart shattered -
o my brother!

I could wish myself cut off from the Water of Life if it would let you drink
(your own prophets have spoken it: if you stand, you will be shattered; the ram's horn & silver trumpet will not avail)

you walk through Netanya, Rehovot and Rishon Lezion,
the scowl of centuries still furrowing your brow;
you are diligent. you mix the charoseth & you call for Elijah - but the aficomen is just so much broken matzo.
You hope obstinately & you will not listen-yet you walk in fear and call it tradition.
you sneer, you call us "messianics" and everyday you
stumble on
the Rock of ages.
I weep for you, men of my race. He wept blood for you, men of my ancestry.

It is not as if God's word has failed
though my heart may fail;
Sarah had a son and Abraham was faithful,
but not all who descend from Israel are Israel -
o men of my race, why do you exchange your inheritance of glory for the shards of old scrolls?
For I could wish myself cursed...
You strong-jawed men, you busy-handed women - you are the rightful heirs! Yours is the adoption,
the legacy of divine glory,
the covenants,
the receiving of the law,
the temple worship
and the promises;
Yours are the patriarchs; men like Moses and Issac and Jacob and Joshua and Gideon and Abraham!

You have been accorded honor upon honor, if only you will don the wedding garment. You have been given the leading battalion, a place of glory in the ranks of a victorious army.
You are first-born. Take this pride and make your synagogue the dwelling of a mighty king! Ah, this unceasing anguish! Do you not see that from your blood & sinew is traced the human ancestry of Christ?

His hand is no longer upraised -It is withered. The time for waiting is past and in horror I see
that the synagogue has become
a tomb - the Torah lies unmolded amid the moldering dessication.
They would not shift camp, they would not follow the pillar of fire and cloud incarnate;
yet he came, he became One who's face glows like coals & he carries the Book and eternity surrounds him.
O Israel, O Israel. He loves you with an everlasting love,
come! COME!

it is written

Psalm 15
A psalm of David.
1 LORD, who may dwell in your sanctuary?
Who may live on your holy hill?

2 He whose walk is blameless
and who does what is righteous,
who speaks the truth from his heart

3 and has no slander on his tongue,
who does his neighbor no wrong
and casts no slur on his fellowman,

4 who despises a vile man
but honors those who fear the LORD,
who keeps his oath
even when it hurts,

5 who lends his money without usury
and does not accept a bribe against the innocent.
He who does these things
will never be shaken.

it is written

"Do not spread false reports. Do not help a wicked man by being a malicious witness.Do not follow the crowd in doing wrong. When you give testimony in a lawsuit, do not pervert justice by siding with the crowd, and do not show favoritism to a poor man in his lawsuit."Exodus 23:1-3


it is written

"Hear my cry for mercy as I call to you for help, as I lift up my hands toward your Most Holy Place."
Psalm 28:2


it is written

"David said to Gad, 'I am in deep distress. Let us fall into the hands of the LORD, for his mercy is great; but do not let me fall into the hands of men.'" Samuel 24:14


it is written

"Have mercy on me, O God, have mercy on me, for in you my soul takes refuge. I will take refuge in the shadow of your wings until the disaster has passed." Psalm 57:1


it is written

"Even though I was once a blasphemer and a persecutor and a violent man, I was shown mercy because I acted in ignorance and unbelief."
1 Timothy 1:13


it is written

"Let us then approach the throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need." Hebrews 4:16


it is written

"And forgive your people, who have sinned against you; forgive all the offenses they have committed against you, and cause their conquerors to show them mercy..."
1 Kings 8:50


it is written

"Shouldn't you have had mercy on your fellow servant just as I had on you?"
Matthew 18:33


it is written

"Take your brother also and go back to the man at once. And may God Almighty grant you mercy before the man so that he will let your other brother and Benjamin come back with you. As for me...I am bereaved, I am bereaved."
Genesis 43:13-15