Unfair

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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.

The Busy Mystic

I turn away with an ineffable sense of loss,

From the overwhelming presence of the thunderous Dove

To the silence of Monday morning push and shove.

But then amid the rush and rumble and toss,

In traffic, the grocery line, or while arguing with my boss

I pause and looking up I see above

My heart the piercéd Corpus, dripping Love.

I have never been elsewhere but at the foot of the Cross.

Here I stand, not by my will, but bidden

By numbered bones, flayed back and riven side;

Invited, asked for, called at His behest.

In silence, in safety, from the shallower “me” well hidden

“Thou” workest, transforming my “I” from deep inside

The camouflage of business.

                                                             Ite! Missa Est.

The Fate of Sin

And I ask, through angry tears, how can it be

That we who love still fall again and again?

In spite of prayers and acts and words of love, unfree

We daily fall to fear, and sin, and pain.

My Grandpa said, as his life began to wane,

“I sometimes ask, ‘Why did this happen to me?’

“But I know why, if I’m honest. The answer is plain

“I smoked for fifty years, and soaked up UV.”

Even at the end, in pain, eaten up by cancer,

He said “Without the pain I would never have come to know

How it is to float, embraced in a sea of love.”

Perhaps, under the Mercy, sin will have the same answer,

And that which beat and scarred us down below

Might yet, perhaps, be worship up above.

Transparent Mask

I see my friends when I love them. Love is not blind,

It hides nothing. I see them warts and all.

Even at my most besotted my wakeful mind

Sees and notes with eyes undimmed. My call

Is not to help you hide or build your wall

But to see and love what you most fear I’ll find.

I will not pretend. I will see unafraid. The fall

Denies perfection. May as well be resigned

To scraggly teeth and extra pounds, why try

To be a false ideal? You mock your own face

And silly quirks, far worse than I could ever do.

All my friends have cracks, and so do I,

And yet we muddle on by Love’s own grace.

Hide your cracks? I love them! They are you.

Death Threat

This isn’t meant to be a personal thing,
In fact it couldn’t be; I barely know
Your name, or face, or home or how you go
From home to work, and back, or what you sing
In the car on your commute. This shouldn’t sting
On any emotional level. I am not your foe
Just a professional, with bills to pay; although
In retrospect, it might be nice just once
To know the man behind the face behind
The crosshair reticle. It hasn’t happened yet.
But then I have to ask what kind of dunce
Would take the shot without first going blind?
Regardless, you’ve been warned. Do not forget.







Reading BadCatholic's blog the other day I noticed that his contact info said "All death threats will be disregarded unless written in iambic pentameter." So I wrote this. Took me about fifteen minutes because it was so much fun.