Category: faith

what even is

this place at this time

maybe it’s a story about being a body in this world
in an age of destruction on the verge of
remembering her collective life
despite the current bluster
i cannot be alone
in having have felt it creeping all of mine
while regularly and inexplicably injured
by the force worked so aggressively to stifle
that still, small voice that has always been
all i ever wanted to hear until nodding
in response to this thing
David Wagoner wrote, which I paraphrase
regularly in my thoughts
as Here is the place where you are,
and you must treat it like
a powerful stranger.
so here we go again––


Hello, strange stranger, you are
all of us now, and i can’t keep from
dreaming some possible arrival
even here
even now

to present yourself

ideas for an educational panel of inquiry

Here’s a talk i am going to give
in theory anyway called
teach like an animal
& its genesis is in understanding
that i failed in my intention
of becoming someone who
knew things well enough
to tell them with authority
the more i look the more
convinced i become that
there is a lie at the center
of the whole idea of knowing
and it is congenital with the myth
of the preeminence of self, and
i want my panel to include
shapeshifting nature &
the pride of ancestors refusing
to be erased, whose voices echo
in the shimmering electric currents
coursing though the cells which
make my body of my mother’s
and the mothers before her.

I grew up reading a single
line about an all-knowing God
on loop, and even this God
said only i am that i am
in response to demands for
explanation but knew how to
show up–for the stutterers
and the dispossessed, the wretched
and the women, who consistently
challenged the important somebodies
when asked for announcements, when
asked to show face, who turned to sashay
away revealing only the back parts
in graceful admonishment of the
asking mouth’s presumption
of being filled in a single
gulp of word and then
done.

phalanx

in flight

Hello, i
am still here
flying through sky
into riverbed, into body in river
in bed into ocean ––either way
disinclined to make points, only pointing,
ever to erosion and becoming and I tend
to erode the best intentions of anyone who tries
to name me as a fixed point & sometimes when
i take this skin shirt out for air i am reminded
to dress in layers after going into places
where so many are so eager to use
their ready points as points
of contact when these
only make me bleed
& then I am back
to being current––
again

yes but

questions of direction

how do i go?

only by revelation
only behind a veil
only through a glass, darkly
only by messenger
only dream vision
only the back parts,
sashaying away
with a wink
reminding
not to forget

not
to forget
is there anyone
who will remember?

turn it over
and turn it again
for everything is in it
this is how you teach
a stone to talk you listen
to the river that smoothed
it
& hold

raising a hand

to learn

Teach me
by your presence and your song.
I am too full right now to take
anymore of answers. I have been
here all day sampling those & now
i am overfull and still malnourished.

I cannot be alone in this. I won’t.
Let us sit here together awhile,
friend, attending

a concert of
shared breaths, our resounding
amens.

i dream of possibilities

in atmosphere

if cessation of air then
if balloon i can hold it maybe
if i can carry it over
if you catch (if you see me)
if in what happens after that i may remember (that point)
if what pierced was the inlet of air (and not skin)
if remember
if i ask you will you (try please)
if to prevent this you may (show me)
if i am breaking and fear (to remember how)
if whether an alternative (or what?) ever was
if can be helped
if this breaks everything open in the end
if asking you where does that leave me or us standing
if to this question one answer is back to the floating again
if dizzy just remembering that vertigo and
if terrified to go so far and high so fast
if needing help at altitude will there be any or only the snipers again
if alone losing air at that distance will there be others
if so and we burst at those heights will it matter
if skins gone
if breathing
if not something
if i knew i could explain at lower elevations
if i go i need to tell you i have tried before
if i go i need to tell you i am scared
if i go listen i could not speak before of this fright it had more dimensions but
if language would allow i would have shared with others i saw shaking too but
if this is time for turning to another, calling hold
if i or you should try
if what is here
if when is now
if_____then, how?
if i am running out of pen

at first light

this dark glass

turning a page from the volume at my side & long unopened i saw the book of love come after the book of annihilation where to everything there is a season and all seasons point to their eventual end & so now here i am, casting bread over waters to find it later where rose of sharon & lily among thorns & i remember looking how i could not find my love so now i call open, dove when i come to your door this is the strange soul begging for its only work

ars moriendi

if it goes like this what now

the week for learning
how it was death
been knocking
on my nerves
was the week for learning
how
now might be
an entry into this
high time
to set some things
down and go
into that long channel
with high archways
of blue-white ice
where a single bird silhouette
flaps waiting, high above
& also you
in that passage
where we can’t take what
with us when we
go

at the end

of a long and winding perch

they tire me, these boys
who mean to make me
an old woman so young
meaning I guess to put
an end to possibility
for fear of their constant
little deaths but we manage

to love somehow in a place
of constant beginnings
far from their halls of
perpetual mirrors

& invite them in, and
they mean well but
get sick before arrival
afraid i guess to enter
anywhere where they
are not the all and
its eventual end.

current

ache

i wanted to offer once upon you
i wanted to give you time
of which you were always saying
i don’t know where it went
now
there is a city on fire, and
there the burn scar, and
there the wild white sun again
eating the distance between
dream and despair and
it is the smell of you i miss
now
when i leave, afraid you
will wander off, walking
into the flames to see their
dancing because it really
is so much more up close
than what any aerial view
can tell you or high budget
film they miss the terrible
now
grace of those licking tongues
you can only see this when
they are right outside the
window-wall, with only
the glass between you
for now i wanted for you
an hour you could not
lose like your keys
your glasses the moment
we were almost inside
now
i lost it, too, waiting
like come here and
after a certain point
getting out is no longer
an option so you watch
the flames through the
glass knowing that if
it were the glass of another
time it would have shattered
by now but not knowing how
long this new stuff will hold
out