Prayer, August 17

Help me really come before You, Son of God.
Me with my dirty fingers, scattered mind, polluted intentions.
Sift through all this with me. I can't do everything. I certainly can't
do everything right now. But I know You want me to come to You
with everything. To submit to Your will.

I was reminded this week that harmony with You is the only beauty.
It is not some oddball, screech-to-a-stop-at-life, stunted attempt.
It is tapping into the sap, the lifeblood of the universe. It is drinking deep
each moment with a prayer of praise,
whether dressed in heavy skirts or naked in water.
It is allowing emotion, obeying honor, choosing love.


---

Letter, August 1

I wonder what you are doing today. Isn't each day rather miraculous?
Does it ever make you weak in the knees?
I'm not really sure what all this means, gym class and magazines and marriage...
what can be let go, and what is irreducible?
What is love when you don't feel it, and you just chug obediently
along the track because it's there?
Maybe you are tired of me asking questions. I'm not sure of myself sometimes...
am I actually steady? I seem pretty flighty, to me. I hop up in the middle
of writing you to answer my phone, take pressed flowers out
from between books.
They are delphiniums. I quite like them. It's relieving to find flowers I like;
lately I've been wondering if I like flowers very much at all.
They seem rather illusory and taunting, like the smell of a neighbor's BBQ.

We can't do justice to any of this.
Sometimes I forget to try anyway.
Will you really find me extraordinary and delicious? Will I find you so?
Or will we spend years resolving to make peace with a fluctuating image,
misaligned printing - the cyan, magenta, and yellow bleeding off the edges
where they shouldn't?
Will I be as boorish and perverse with you as I am with myself?
Will you teach me gentleness and manners?
Lord God, help me to be honest. To laugh and mean it.
I'm tired. I've been well fed, and I'm hungry for hunger. Want a little more of the unavoidable acquiescence of fasting.
Jesus, we call on You under our breath, and with our eyes open,
and with fingers on skin. Come, bridegroom.

---

Iraq (every pair of eyes is overwhelming)

Nazarene

you're calling me

until you can 

see my cheekbones

you can see, you can see my

neck bones

none of this oh, oh,

none of this is OK, 

no

every drop from your mouth, every drop

let me catch it on my tongue

this milk my very marrow, many many times before I tried to chew up

more than I could bite or swallow

kissed the bark until the leaves dropped off 

your face's planes, your plain face something pure 

if not eternal, what? wipe out the bowl, that grin off your face,

that levity around water

are you crisping up by the heater? or grown warm?

you man-of-war,

you're boring holes, I can't hold this, 

I can't hold on, O mother, 

Daddy, lift me down 

I climbed so high 

I couldn't see the ground

and every pair of eyes 

is overwhelming.

Supermoon

Swing low, swing high
whistle, howl, hoot beside
me at the full moon with your chains flying,
brother, laughing helplessly and too loud to be
reasonable. Was creation ever
meant to be taken indifferently,
of habit? A tooth-flossing duty, or a cough
and a gasp like vodka?
Far be it from me
(it is ever so close),
to blink at heaven
scooping down and whipping up
our heels, our hair, our hearts in hallelujah.


---

All That is Beautiful

All that is beautiful is backwards to you now,
her hair, her smile, laughing like a pristine
and impossible angel.
Everything a negative film, the whites black, the lights dark,
a stunned, electric blue
makes up the sky. It makes you grit your teeth.

Perhaps church people come to your door,
knock hard and ring the bell, like they are doing now
on mine. My ears are hot. I want no confrontation.
And neither do you. Nothing but a drugged sleep panorama
spanning into something clear, rain-washed, and everything all right
for once.

If I had opened that door (I already know what you are going to say,
and I agree,
and I hopelessly assent,
and am disgusted),
if I had opened my window instead,
I would have been a no within a yes.

So I fold my arms, watch from a distance
as the proselytizers migrate, stoop to stoop.
If we believe it matters,
enough flowers shot with good aim
pierce the ribs at last.
And beauty rights itself. 

em - path - Y

That black 

                bird 

             (brother)

folded wings and landed with a 

   bounce 

shuffled feathers. I felt

my neck stiffen

fingers flex

half expecting that paper shuffle sound

of evaporated leaf

sheaf dry

as sharpened feather

       shaft on shaft

barbed with little barbs

entire

crackling zinging 

insect

fingernails scratching bearded chin.

Let us practice listening.

Absolute and drenched 

in sound innumerable

syllable 

unravelled 

           tugged 

and thumbed under lamp

softened on tongue

lightfast

woven warm and home

at last.

Laugh Like Sarah

My King.
Here I am again, "small and unsure."
Give me words for this.
What paltry and circular thoughts I have. How can I escape?
What am I digging into, when I dig into You? How do I get through
the matter to the matter, to the stuff of life?

You see this tiny little fly traversing the fine hairs of my blanket
like they're hurdles.
You sense the faint, taut itch of my healing scar.
You smell my lavender oil and deodorant, my sweat.
You taste the strawberries' last lingering sweetness and acidity in my mouth.
Feel the thick of my waist, the dimpling in my knuckles, the fine flexing
muscles of my eyes.
Nothing, and everything. One actual thing, perhaps.

What is life worth? What gauges worth?
While trimming sticks today I wondered if I could ever be driven to cannibalism.
Would I want that badly to survive? Why? What kind of life?
What is most precious to me, when there is no applause?
Do I want to prove myself to myself? To the mountains?
To You, who heard me laugh like Sarah, Abraham,
at Your absurd promises?
I can't deny it.

"Will I now have this pleasure?"


---
Jenny and Tyler, "Skyline Hill"
Genesis 17:17, 18:12