True Blue

I sometimes wonder, do human beings really,

Really want to be made happy? Really?

We say we do, we get all touchy feely

Fluffy-pinky, winking and laughing hollow

Laughter after drinks and intercourse.

Of course we do!

     (But really?)

  I don’t mean wanting

The way a man wants ice cream after dinner.

But more like hot red beef wants salt, like fire

Wants wood, like heart wants pulsing blood, like blood

Wants fire and burns for battle, broil and brawl.

Like home wants ruddy ember glow, like farm

Wants wet warm springing days of living green,

Like crops want rain, and farmer crops, and drops

Of dew coalesce on thirsty emerald leaves

For love.

                Gloomy blue gray days of moping

Hopeless funk, portend our self-important

Snobbish refusal of color.

                                             Until one day,

A rescuer! Flashing fierce St. Elmo’s fire, singing

Metallic odes on jaw wire; lightning shooting

Neon pain, a feast of feeling, knocks me

Reeling, electric blue bright sparks impart

The truth of Blue.

       A toothache is,

          at least,

real.

In the Beginning

Words have lost their music, or so I hear.

Perhaps they never had any, or so they say.

I will never forget a soldier to whom I said,

“What is the most beautiful song you have ever heard?”

He stopped his talk, and looked at me in quiet,

For a precious half-a-second, before he replied,

“It never occurred to me that music could

Be beautiful.” Perhaps that is the point.

Words retain the music, but we’ve lost the ear

Because we’ve lost (or chased away) our silence.

Our silence? As if it were ever ours.

The Word draws power from the Silence Before The World,

The only power that is, the power of Music

The Music which is the Lord and Giver of Life.

When we become quiet, we begin to do the same,

But neither the words, nor the quiet, are ours;

And certainly not the Music which Is between.

Rather, we are Theirs, or else we simply are not.

Our words are lego miniatures of the Word

And even in them we play with Holy Fire.

If there be not music, then let silence reign

Or at least the rehearsal, barely attended to

By children playing bagpipes, violins,

Trumpets, drums and flutes, in eager cacophony

Always sharp, or flat. Some are merely young.

Others are always trying to play the wrong tune,

Or play their favorite tune at the wrong time.

Some expect they will likely do well enough

When the time comes, so they distract themselves

With sidebar talk; And some just like the noise.

Dead men fill the air with the burden of talk

Zombie conversations about nothing

And I, being dead myself, am fully complicit

In filling and killing the silence with empty talk

Struggling to empty words of all their silence

Lest we find ourselves confronted by

The aweful reality of nothing to say.

So conversations deaden, bore and stultify,

Wilt the critical function and reconfirm

Me in my headlong flight from bright reality.

This is not the courage of the bulwark picnic

In the cancer ward; nor yet the Socratic libation

Poured out for the gods; nor even of shaking the hand

Of a pretty girl. This is only fear

Conspiring to (just-so-happen-to) look

Out the other window at that precise time

As we pass the camo jacket with the cardboard sign,

As if we fear that poverty might be contagious.

Of course it is, but what we do not see

Is that we are already infected, and quite terminal.

Against all this we raise our timeless chats

Over tea and toast around the kitchen table;

Amid beer and pipes of aromatic smoke

In the cool of the evening, when the ancient garden echoes

Softly in the mind, tingeing words with music

Older than fig leaves. Conversations reach

Backwards and forwards into the now and always.

Silence dives still deeper in the single point

Where darkness dwells in unapproachable light.

Humility alone can bring us to this place.

Humility requires, demands, the incarnation

Of ineffable word in flesh of mortal deed.

The scandal of the particular is never more

Strongly felt than when at last we turn

From words to music, in this specific act

Of encountering the Word in scribbled sharpie ink

On a cardboard sign; or in the aching void

Between the lines of empty zombie talk;

And offering bread, not bread alone but Word

Eternally uttered forth from the Mouth of God.

 

Deadlift

Crushed my soul today

With three-fifteen times forty.

Useless without love.

Longinus

-->

Why was I reluctant?

I can only say it seemed so unnecessary.

I had been there for the whole ordeal.

We had already fulfilled the demands of hate,

Filled full, over flowed, spilled

The full measure of hate; killed Him.

Beat, flailed, threshed like grain of wheat,

Fresh flayed like meat, thorn-torn crownéd brow.

How brave He stood! How so silent?

Burdened, urged and cursed,

Tripped and whipped like a donkey,

Pushed, bullied and dragged;

Robe gripped and stripped, wounds ripped anew open;

Hung now-fresh bleeding flesh from stake

Nailed, travailed...

and now to be impaled?

Stuck like a pig with my lance?

Not a chance He is alive.

No breath detected,

No life suspected,

Elected to make sure, but

Need I? He is dead. Let Him be.

Behold the corpse!

Poor parched, dried out, bled out

Pale blue livid skin under red and black

Of wound and scab and muck.

I know the look of death!

Why have I not struck?

I had never paused before, human flesh is cheap

Insubordination steep. Why weep now?

Strange reluctance, ineluctable task

Final degradation, penetrating stab of hate.

“Give it to cold, old half-blind Longinus. Let him take care of it.”

So it must be, let pity die.

Hate welled up, swelled up, fell,

Black as coal, a hole of cold nothing in my soul,

Killed my pity.

I looked,

I hated,

I thrust.

Felt thunk of iron on blood soaked trunk

Of tree behind,

Even blind I,

Know to twist with wrist and rip

Free.

It is finished.

And in the act, the very act of pulling free:

Rushing counter-thrust of grace!

Riposte’ of Mercy burst unburdened out,

Frothed forth! Rushed eagerly, joyfully gushed,

Flushed my bat-blind eyes, and thrust me to my knees.

Defeated utterly!

Mercy filled my eyes (that looked on slaughter,

And red-rimmed laughed) with blood and water,

Filled them with tears, and washed those tears away.

Washed away the dry, grimy film

Through which I viewed the world,

All my life.

Of sinners worst, most accursed, who durst

Kill and mutilate mercy itself, I was the first!

First immersed in Mercy

Bursting forth to quench my thirst.

Not according to desert, but to my need

In heaping measure what I, unknowing, took,

He blithely gave for me who made Him bleed.

Prophetic Work

In a dream the angel said to me: “Lift up

O Man, prophetic voice to ask the world

‘Are you happy?’ Noting with compassion

The desperate dullness, unspoken in their eyes

Behind vehement affirmation.”

                                                            Why so shrill,

The gray voices of the elderly choir ladies,

Cracked, wavering, unmatched?

                                                        “You hear matter

Only, which has been only partially ruled

Since its Lord and Lady long ago

Abdicated their authority in rebellion

Surrendering to a spirit the world of things.

Atoms have not obeyed so well since then,

Atoms and the movements in between

In ear and air and throat.”

                                                Alas, I said,

Unruly matter! Such a clumsy tool

For so sublime a task.

                                       “Unruly matter?

Matter is innocent, docile to its law,

Perfect as ever it was. It is the spirit,

Unruly and therefore most unfit to rule,

Which bears the blame for this. The blame for all

Disharmony which plagues the life of man:

Unworship of molecular machines in cancerous cells, and

Of worms inside intestines, drinking blood, and

The preying of man upon his fellow man, and

The withering fear of being preyed upon, which

Shrinks the soul, bitters the tongue, pinches pennies.

The ownership of the poor by the middle class, who

Flatter themselves that they are not the rich, so

Not to blame.”

                        Complicit up to my eyeballs

I stood ashamed.

                              “Prophesy, O man,

And ask the world, ‘Are you happy?’ For all these crimes

Those curly heads and balding heads and gray

Trembling hands, enforce imperfect obedience

From dry larynx, arthritic knees, kyphotic spines,

Offering the very best of all their so,

So imperfect work. This we call “the Liturgy.”

Mercy

Lord, I worship you, crucified

In the bodies of your children, and

Crucified still more terribly

In the souls of your children
Who crucify them,
And in the souls of your busy children
Who do not intervene.

In all these, still you abide,

In perfect love.

Unfair

-->

You trammel me, O Lord, you hem me in.

Your grace surrounds, confounds, prevents everywhere

Inescapable. Ever present utter care

Abounds all the more around my sin,

Even which rebounds, resounds within,

Redounds unto your glory. As well the air

As grace I might escape; as your unfair

Ubiquitous immanence in all that is. You win.

For you have seiged me round with bread and beer

And tumbled upon my head (with only my shelf

To blame). You tripped and caused to slip from under

Me my plant-foot foolish, mulish heels; my fear

And bristling, brawny, barreled back; my self.

Let fly your locust cloud creation. I surrender.

Eleanor

Bright fish, praise the Lord!

With leapings, ignore my hook.

I still laugh with you.

Smoke Rings

The young man with blond scattered beard

And weird, scattered dramatic wit

Relit his pipe of aromatic

Wilshire blend, and then

Drew too deep,

Coughed,

Laughed,

Remarked,

“This is why I never smoke or drink,

Alone. You know I think

Between x-box, youtube, podcasts and texting

I would just inhale the bowl and go on to the next thing.”

And we three nodded,

Watching each other blow slow billowing smoke puffs

Sharing what wisdom was given

Us. Curiously,

Precariously,

Seriously,

Hilariously,

Preparing

For Heaven.

Perspective

-->

It was a weekday Mass, and we were spread

Pretty thin. You know, one to a pew

Or maybe two.

The Our Father came, time to hold hands

And the elderly Korean lady in front of me reached

Out to her left to her equally ancient friend

And grasped her hand. Then reached back to the right

Towards me, and left her hand outstretched.

I took it.

We never held hands at Our Lady of Good Counsel.

Father was old school and did not approve.

But I could not help but notice that in reaching

And stretching herself for her neighbor, left and right,

She shaped herself into a cross.

Cannot

Not.

Not I.

Not, cannot,

I cannot be good.

Be nor do,

Cannot do good,

Nor try,

Try good.

Not try, nor want, nor even see to know.

I cannot love nor live,

Give nor bless I cannot.

I cannot pray

Nor say

Nor sing

Nor ring the rounding bell

Nor tell

Nor teach

Nor preach, prophesy or praise.

I cannot add one moment to my days

I cannot lift up my gaze, my eyes,

Nor know the skies,

Nor even the mud that makes my form

Nor warm my heart

Nor finish any good work, nor even start.

I cannot

For I all but am not.

Am nought, What?

I am not aught but… what?

At my center a gap, an emptiness.

An abyss, a nothingness

An utter lack, a longing, a space

A place, an empty womb or tomb wherein I miss.

Miss whom?

Miss Thee, as Thou hast created me to.

My emptiness fancies itself a thing,

Tries to give, to live, to be, anything

But I cannot

For I all but am not.

Am unfilled, longing

(With strong longing, Thine,

All Thine, not mine) to be filled

Full, fulfilled, filled full well

As Thou hast willed,

Emptied so as to be filled,

Spilled out so as to be overflowed

And spilled ad majorem

Dei gloriam, filled and spilled and filled for aye,

All, ever, saecula saeculorum! I

Give up, and offer Thee nothing.

Fillest and killest though my nought, with Thy I AM.

Nunc et Hora Mortis

When I have been taught, when I have learned,

Truly been taught, been silenced so as to learn;

When I have ceased to babble and to quibble

Ceased to quarrel, grouch, gripe, grumble

Ceased to mumble

Ceased to fumble about for words, ceased to frustrate

The prostrate center by the erect mind,

Ceased to demonstrate, remonstrate, illustrate

(As even now I seek to illustrate my own absurd

Illustrations by the multiplication of words)

When, I say, I am silent and learn to turn inward

Out of words, away from myself, and burn with thirst,

With urgent yearning for that which is not I…

In short, when I number my days aright

Then shall I concern myself with two moments only:

Now

And the hour of my death.

For they are the same moment.

The same point of intersection, the same cross

Between the horizontal and the vertical,

Between the point which is my “I” and something

Someone

Probably quite dimensionless

Or at any rate beyond all dimension.

Now is the timeless hour of death,

The hourless moment of utter decreasement

To make way for His increase.

Now!

The hour of my death, which is His Life

As His death is my life and my life is now no more mine

Since I have been nourished on flesh and blood

Not mine. The only food

The only medicine to do me any good

Is Him. And He is only here and now

Which is everywhere and always.

The Sign of Jonah

I have long been anxious of signs.

I have searched for God in sortilege

And tea leaves, and on tarot cards printed

On the pages of my Bible. Clinging

To past and future I have wandered

Lost in darkness following fancy lights.

But the point of intersection was found in Starbucks

In the SM Supermall,

General Santos City,

Mindanao,

Philippines,

Earth,

Milky Way Galaxy,

Universe,

Mind of God and

Hollow of His Hand.

In a timeless moment within His eye,

I ordered a venti English breakfast tea

Three minutes steeped. Time not specified,

Implied that a barista would know.

But no. And I, foolish I who knew full well

Smell of overbrewed tea, received and paid

Said, “Thank you” and let it steep ten more

Before returning to the now to taste

The waste I had made of that innocent creature.

I know not what power tea leaves have to tell

The mind of God to their foolish fellow creature.

But unlike I, they answer to one only teacher

And praise Him without endyng righteous well.

In Lent our thoughts are turned to death and hell,

Heaven and judgment, and prominently feature

The cup presented in the garden to the wandering preacher

Who claimed to be who He is: (He Who Is)

Who saw, and mourned with sweaty drops of love

That tinted red the earth and washed it clean;

Who drank the bitter cup, the draught not His,

The mortal poison meted, not from above

But from the brewers of tea leaves (though truly we have seen).

Why blame the creature? The tea leaves did no wrong

They never claimed to know the mind of God

And if the brew now tastes of dirty dishwater,

Unmitigated by honey, whose fault is that?

There is still even now, thus, late, a chance for love.

My loins were girt about with khaki shorts

With flip-flops on my feet, and book in hand.

I raised the bitter cup and humbly quaffed

One-ing myself (by invitation) with Him

Who drank the worst I ever brewed for me.

It does no good to sink

Into myself and drink

Nod to Heaven, offer it up,

Toss it back and break the cup.

I must sip, sample, slowly savor

Swirling with my tongue the flavor

Strange, sharp and brown,

The rush to my head and down

Into my stomach the coarse

Clumsy

Callow

Tannic acid rudely forc’d,

Rudely overbrewed from innocent leaves

(At which sacrilege all creation grieves).

I must not waste

The moment! I must taste

And see its goodness

In its very rudeness

In its being-what-it-is,

All His and none of mine.

The bitterness divine

In-joys me and I enjoy

That tea like none other.

Blessed be He!

Pied Beauty

One of my favorite poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins, the Jesuit priest and poet.

Enjoy!

Everyday Prayer

I sing from a poetic soul, there is no such thing as a pathetic role. A gift from God, I nod and lift my prayer from where I stand, gleaning grand meaning from cleaning my kitchen. What need of bitching and whining? I am freed! My creed is twining to heaven in warm surprising smell of leavening, rising well formed doughs. My nose preaches and teaches my part in the psalm to my heart. Without a qualm I count my rosary on grocery lists and chubby, grubby fists. My holy water fount tossed across the floor by my toddler, waddling to gaze up at crazy me with big, wilting, guilty eyes over the half-spilled mop bucket. Sigh. I chuck it out the door to bless the weeds and address the mess on the floor and the wild needs of my child. Somehow content (at least for the moment) this seriously proves God moves in mysterious ways through my days.

Praise Him!

Nada te Turbe

Nada te Turbe.

Neither depths nor heights,

Neither length nor breadth,

Neither pleasure nor pain,

Nothing can separate

The ocean from its bed.

Nada

I shall not be perturbed,

I shall not be turbulent,

I shall not be disturbed,

Neither shall my soul be turbid anymore.

Nada te Turbe

Once I looked up to see the point

Of an iron spike in a sinister hand

Stabbing down upon me. I shook with fear

And thrashed and splashed away, but the spike passed

Through my heart and left not a single mark.

Nada.

And now I rest in limpid clarity

For well I know no evil in the world

Can harm me. No knife in the world

Can harm the sea.

Nada te Turbe.

I rest undisturbed, calm, at peace

Salt made sweet and ever filled

By water flowing from the Temple’s side

Opened by a Lance.

Transparent, the all but infinite sea He holds

In the hollow of His hand. And I drip

Through the hole left by the spike,

Mingled,

Lost in His Blood.

Nada te Turbe.

Paradise Refused

I saw two young people wandering rich gray streets

Comely, well-fashioned with boredom in their hearts.

They met each other and had some empty chat

Before making love. Then, realizing they were naked,

They stitched together fig leaves into masks

To cover up their faces. By common agreement

They went their separate ways to hide, for he

Had heard the voice of God, calling from her sky blue eyes.

My Sole Defense

In the end I shall be judged on love alone.

Love stands alone, my sole defense; The one

Criterion that matters, the moments in

And yet still out of time. Moments spent

In rapt awareness of the ineffable other,

In the museum, library, movies or a play;

In quiet nights wrapped up in loving arms;

In moments of extreme and total effort;

In the last expenditure of self, no longer

Able to remember that the self exists at all.

The far too rare moment of total gift

Of everything that moment has given me.

The self-forgetful, self-effacing moment,

The end and death of self. The self-intention,

Self-deceit and self-determination,

Self-absorption, attention, awareness… Slain

Swallowed up in a moment of otherly love.

Holy moments, moments scattered far

And wide across the night sky of my soul,

The general nothingness of self, gazing at self

With inward growing eyes, blackening the sky.

(Or perhaps the blackness of eyelids screwed

Tight shut against the bursting light of dawn?)

Regardless, when I stand before the Judge

Naked, with sins piled heavy on my back

In that moment I shall not plead innocence

For, of course, I have none. My sole defense

Will be the few, the few, the far too few moments

Of Love (not mine) that I was empty enough to receive.

Thanatophobia

Oh, you poor thing! You poor, poor hideous

Ancient crippled thing! Once you were the prettiest

Maid, the handsomest youth! The slow insidious

March of death has brought you here. How piteous!

My heart bleeds for you, after a fashion.

I hate death and sickness! With fierce passion

I denounce this slow wasting, this crashing

Crushing, cresting wave of disability,

And in my deepest, most heartfelt compassion

I offer you escape from your senility.

Go on, I say. It is quite all right. Utility

Outlived, it is quite right to embrace the finality

Of the morphine drip.

                                      (But do you know how much I

Hate you for the crime of being fat?

Of not being perfect? I hate the disgusting flab

That flips and flops and slides across your lap

When you try to sit up in bed. I hate the gasps

Of weakening breath, of death. I want to slap

Your wrinkled, flabby face for blocking my path

With your hobbling. I hate you at meal and bath

And checkout line. You stand condemned by the math

Of usefulness. Keep up or else incur the wrath

Of my generation.)

          You shall not waste in futility

But railing against it you shall dare to die

And cease to remind me of my own creeping mortality.

Thus shall I cure you of death. When once you lie

In convenient, forgotten darkness, on the slab

In the morgue, (or in the assisted living facility

Dying by slow degrees of useless drab

Aloneness,) then I will forget at last that I

Too must die. 

Rather a dark poem, so here is a little lightness to wash it away. Enjoy!

 

 Check out the Piano Guys' youtube channel at http://www.youtube.com/user/ThePianoGuys?feature=watch

 

The Widow's Mite

They asked me once… No, come to think

It was more than once; Actually when have they not

Asked me? But for the sake of the poem, once,

“Why? Why throw it all away? Why sink

Into oblivion? I mean, you know, you’ve got

It all! Brains, muscle, health. You dunce.

Why let it go?”

                        And I must say…

                                                       I don’t know.

I don’t know what it is that I am letting go

Of, I have let go of quite a bit in my time

Sacrificed time with family,

Time with friends,

Time with books

Time in Church

In my search

With vague frenzied looks

For insufficient ends.

Time in college,

Time at the park,

Around the campfire in dark

And much knowledge

Gained from teachers

And preachers.

Sacrificed time at the end of my life

With my aging wife

Time borrowed against my latter years

In health used up now

And wealth spent on things

I do not even remember. Silver wings

For a meniscal tear

A green hat

For an arthritic back

And a bursa spent upon

Who knows what? Need I go on?

And yet I have been the gainer, through it all,

A certain mental toughness, a confidence

I never had before; a physicality

Beyond the reach of most. My personality

Needed the reality, banality, inanity and all out insanity

Of such a life, to break at length through the dense

Obtuse mind’s self centered wall,

To see what truly matters.

And now, having seen much of places and climes,

Governments and men, through various times

And traded gold for success,

And achieved success and filled my mouth with the whole dusty mess

And chewed and swallowed and soliloquized

On the dry, tasteless, much prized

Dust, and how delicious it would be if only

I could season it with a little more dust…

In short, having become lonely…

At length I can hear

The silent voice in my ear

Deafening me with His love.

“If dust is all you have, then give it to me

Every speck.

Keep not one fleck

For yourself. Then you shall see

How I make much of nought.”

And so, I thought, why not?

Having made a hell of a try

Of this and found it dry,

If He offers me living water for the dust of earth

That forms my frame,

And shapes what fame

I might yet have achieved,

So what? He is to be believed.

And in the end all I have from birth

Is His, to give, to whom he will.

So it is willed,

Where what is willed must stay.

And so you can keep this whole mess

The fame, and fury, and utter pointlessness.

I will give it all for love and fade away,

And thus be filled.