Dancing On the Grave

October 6, 2010
My dear sister, Annette, asked me to pen a poem to be read at her funeral. It's not that she's dying--far from it as far as I know--she just wants to be prepared. This is actually two poems in one--she's special.


Dancing On the Grave
(A Song of Rejoicing
for the Funeral of my Sister, Annette Smith
written well before she moved on)

So you think this is a victory
because my vocal chords are silenced
and laughter no longer bounces off
my tongue through the gap in my teeth
that will fall to the floor of this box.

You think this is loss
because my hands are folded flat
and not clapping to the heartbeat
no longer beating
the song beat of a different heart.

Do you believe this is the end
because my lifeless limbs
don't sway in the Wind in the dust;
and the dust will devour my flesh,
and the Wind will blow it where it will?

This is just the beginning.
My arms now move
to a whole new groove.
I am one with the Wind
and the dust don't keep me down.

This is gain.
My hands are lifted high applauding
the one beat,
the only beat,
the eternal beat.

Ha! This is a victory.
Hear my song.


Annette's Song

The Lord has brought me through.
My God has made a way.
Jesus carried me.

Your Word lead me.
Your Spirit moved me.
Your Presence guided me.

And I lived my life in You.
And You lived Your life through me.
And we lived our life as one.

Before Your throne I kneel.
Before Your power I bow.
Before Your majesty I lay myself down.

In the company of all the saints, I lift my voice to You.
In the sight of all the angels, I sing Your praise.
In Your presence, I worship.

I worship Your name.
I adore Your name.
I love Your name.

And I have a new name.
And though I have always known Your name,
it is new.

YES!
YES!
YES!

Bless You Lord.
Bless You God.
Bless You Jesus.

Jesus.
Jesus.
Jesus.

The Heart of God

September 20, 2010

There is not a soul alive
that has glimpsed the complete beauty
within a conch shell.
Broken by the crush of waves
and washed smooth by sand
gives a partial and wholly different vision.
The only way to truly comprehend
the smooth darkness of its bright curves:
          crawl inside.

Can a man know the tenderness
of a mother nursing?
Neither can remember
the comfort of the infant
suckling mama's breast.
It must be lived in the moment of innocence.

To my knowledge,
no one alive has survived
the internal winds and pressure of a tornado
whipping about seemingly out of control;
dust and debris flung about on the outside,
while molecules of nothingness fill the eye.
But wouldn't that be an experience.

Taste and See

June 14, 2010
Straight from the printer to the blog.


Serenity lay in my arm,
left hand supporting
the bottle of formula,
ever moving fingers of her right
wrapped around my pinky;
working the nipple,
she relaxed as I rocked.

Reading the Psalms of David,
trying to hold onto Serenity—
the uncoordinated ballet
of her tiny digits
fingering the pages
as she gnaws the cover.

The Cleansing Power of Fire

November 2, 2009


I wept until I could weep no more.
          The rainbow did not
          appear in the sky.
          The ground was still rock hard.

I cried out so loud my vocal cords were raw.
          The wind did not
          blow or breeze.
          The trees did not yield their fruit.

I beat my fists bloody against the wall.
          The stars did not
          hold the answers.
          The earth continued to move.

Where else can I go?
Who else can I turn to?
          Let it burn.

Listen

July 18, 2009


sometimes a tune
     hummed
sometimes a word
     spoken
cool of the day
still of the night
connection

In the Dark

July 13, 2009
Seems like everyone who came to Jesus in the New Testament did so out in the open, in the streets for all to see.

Every head bowed,
     every eye closed;
confession is made
     to the All-Knowing Lord
who speaks everything
even to himself.

Now if the light is hid
on the hill
and no one's around,
does anyone hear
knees hitting the ground,
or the sound of the silent
prayer? Who cares
if you meant it or mean it,
as long as you come clean;
     it's really a personal thing.

But we're told
to drink of the cup
that's held
and passed around the company
of friends, of strangers, of
God knows who.

Why does anyone else need to know
my business, my religion?
We don't speak of these
at the table.

So I will
bow my head
and close my eyes
because when I do
you can't see me.

Purpose Driven Poetry

July 1, 2009


I want to write poetry that
               praises my God;
               rejoices in right,
               illuminates wrong;
               awakens the soul,
               revives the spirit,
               stirs emotions,
               challenges the mind,
               makes sense;
               breaks fallow ground,
               waters the barren soil,
               and grows;
               feeds the hungry,
               gives drink to the thirsty,
               uplifts the arms that hang;
               makes old men remember,
               young men desire,
               women weep;
               doesn't make sense;
               causes leaders of white-washed tomes
                              want to take me out and stone me,
               pisses off professors
                              of logic, and reason, and apologetics;
               pleases my God.
I want to write
poetry.

My Calling: God Spoke in the Shower

July 1, 2009


God spoke to me today
while I was in the shower
washing my hair.

Tell of my love.

I covered my head and my face
with my arms
and I wept.

David was a prophet.

Walking On Water

May 26, 2009

I want to walk on water.
               I want to dip my toes in the icy sea
               and feel the frothing foam
               hold my weight above the depths;
               to frolic over the fishes,
               to dance upon the waves
               and scream my lungs out
               over the roar of the storm;
               to have my steps lit
               by lightning all around;
               to be scared witless,
               but not fearing,
               knowing that it is not
               my flatfootedness holding me up,
               but by one word,
               but by Your word—
               come.

Peter did it.

Turning Night Into Day

March 2009
Trident Technical College, Copyright ©2009

This was written as an assignment for my English Comp I class at Trident Technical College. My instructor suggested that I submit it to the new school student anthology.

          The atrocities committed upon the Jewish peoples in the early twentieth century are widely known and well documented. Elie Wiesel is one voice among thousands declaring the inhumanity of those times upon his people and himself. At the impressionable age of 16, he suffered the loss of his father to starvation at the Buchenwald concentration camp, as well as the deaths of his mother and younger sister in the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp. Wiesel vowed to not speak for ten years of the torturous brutalities he and ten thousand other prisoners endured (Hurst and Pavlick). His silence ended when he penned Un di Velt Hot Geshvihn (And the World Was Silent), the original Yiddish version of Night in 1954 (McDonald and Trotter 506). Night asserts that what Elie Wiesel witnessed as a young teenager in the Auschwitz-Birkenau and Buchenwald camps was the numbing effect of constant brutality and the threat of individual annihilation upon social conscience and personal faith. What he also recorded, however, as seen through the refining lens of hindsight, was the glimmer of hope within his people and possible redemption pictured in shadowed Christian symbolism.
          In one chapter from Wiesel's account, the prisoners of the death camp are so numbed to the indescribable brutality around them that they are not merely unconcerned bystanders, but have also become willing participants. Wiesel depicts this condition when he tells of a young prisoner from Warsaw who is to be hanged for the crime of stealing. As the verdict is being read and the condemned youth stands defiantly before his executioners, their ability to be affected as a whole is demonstrated in the whispered question of a prisoner named Juliek: “Do you think this ceremony'll be over soon? I'm hungry…” (Wiesel 507). During this grave moment, Juliek's regard is for the prisoners' only meal: soup. Soup is their life. It is their sole concern. Soup is the currency of life. To preserve their own life “Two prisoners helped […] for two plates of soup” (Wiesel 507). The other prisoners do not seem to mind that their fellows assist. It has been said that if you do not resist evil you assist it. This saying speaks of this moment as the prisoners are no longer merely observers but have become actively involved in their own genocide.
          Wiesel, on the other hand, though “no longer troubled” by the “thousands who had died […] in the crematory ovens” (Wiesel 507), experiences a re-awakening, if only briefly, of the threat to his life individually. The sheer numbers of the atrocities committed behind the closed doors of the crematory are desensitizing. “But this one […] he overwhelmed me.” (Wiesel 507, emphasis added) Wiesel writes that as he stood watching the Warsaw youth: “I could hear my heart beating” (Wiesel 507, emphasis added). Wiesel's reaction to this single life and his awareness of his own evokes a scenario in which he appears to feel that “This is a person. A vibrant individual. Soon to die. I am an individual. Alive. Death, brutal death, is a very real threat to me.” But the reality did not last. The numbness settled back over him, for when he returns from the execution for the evening meal he “remember[s] that I found the soup excellent that evening…” (Wiesel 508). He is still alive.
          Although there are other hangings, it is the shock of executing a young child that produces a spark of humanity within the prisoners; but Wiesel looks upon the scene and loses faith in his God. This hanging is different from the ones before. The crowd spurns participation. There are no prisoners helping this time. As the chairs of the condemned are tipped over, Wiesel states that there is “Total silence throughout the camp” (Wiesel 509). There is no discussion of soup. This dying boy, dying an agonizing death, is more than the group conscience can bear. They openly weep. The “forgotten […] bitter taste of tears” (Wiesel 508) is fresh on their tongues. Unlike the hanging of the defiant Warsaw youth, this hanging touches their hearts. Wiesel, conversely, sees in the horror of this slow, tormenting death of “the sad-eyed angel” (Wiesel 508) the death of his God. As the other other prisoners question where God is during this atrocity, Wiesel responds internally. “Where is He? […] He is hanging here on this gallows…” (Wiesel 509). He sees no other explanation for how this could be happening than that it is God himself being executed. And at the end of the day, even his life giving soup now “tasted of corpses” (Wiesel 509).
          God hanging on a gallows. Wiesel himself may not have intended to use Christian symbolism to show the possibility of hope for the prisoners, but a powerful picture of redemption can be seen in the second execution. Author Dorothy Sayers once wrote:

If an image displays the universal pattern, it will display it at all levels and in all circumstances, whether the poet was or could have been conscious of these possible applications or not. (19)

God in the form of Christ hanging upon a cross is the central image of sacrificial redemption for the Christian faith. Wiesel describes this child as “the little servant, the sad-eyed angel” (Wiesel 508). Likewise, Christ is often referred to as the Servant King. In another parallel, this “child with a refined and beautiful face […] would not speak” (Wiesel 508) before his torturers just as Jesus remained silent before his accusers. Additionally, this young innocent “struggl[ed] between life and death” (Wiesel 509) while hanging between two adult prisoners. Three gallows—three crosses. The hearts of the prisoners were rent in two even as the veil of the temple was rent when Christ died (Matthew 27:51). In Christianity, the cross, the sacrifice of Christ, is the symbol of redemption, the payment for and setting free from sin and guilt. Likewise, through the loss of this one, this innocent, many are given an opportunity to free themselves, their hearts and their humanity from the bondage of this insidious holocaust.
          Loss. All who faced the threat of these unrelenting atrocities lost. The defiant youth and others—many others—lost their lives. Ten thousand captive bodies lost their sense of humanity, of compassion, of life beyond a bowl of soup. Wiesel lost his faith. Yet the loss of one life, though senseless and tragic, broke through to the hearts of these prisoners— prisoners of body, mind, and soul—offering an opportunity to be human again, redeeming them from the sin of complacency and freeing them to feel again.

Trident Technical College, Copyright ©2009

Works Cited

Hurst, John and James Pavlick. “Elie Wiesel Biography.”
          Academy of Achievement ed. Hugh Esten. March 2, 2009.
          American Academy of Achievement. March 6, 2009.
          www.achievement.org/autodoc/page/wie0bio-1

McDonald, Ann, and Jack Trotter, eds. World Views: Classic
          and Contemporary Readings. 5th ed. Boston: Pearson, 2008.

Sayers, Dorothy. Introductory Papers on Dante. New York:
          Harper & Brothers, 1954.

Wiesel, Elie. Night. Trans. Stella Rodway. McDonald and Trotter 506-09.

Take This Cup

April 22, 2009

This is another in the "Dirty Jesus" series. The opening scene of The Passion of the Christ helped visually. We need to remember that Jesus the man did not want to go to the cross. This was his struggle in the garden. No man wants to endure that kind of torture. It was "God in Christ reconciling the world to himself." (II Corinthians 5:19) "God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son." (John 3:16) Our Father in heaven loves us and our sin required a sacrifice. The Christ, the Lamb of God, provided that sacrifice not because "Jesus loves us", but because he was obedient to the Father. "For as by one man's disobedience many were made sinners, so by the obedience of one shall many be made righteous." (Romans 5:19)


Take This Cup

…and then you went a little way
into the garden to pray.

I'm sure your students tried
to pray. It's hard work;
they just had a big supper.

But you have big plans on your mind.
God's plan. Not your plan.
Not your will. His.

You are the Father.
You can make another way.
               ("I am
               the way.”)
There has to be
another way.
Where's the ram in the bush?
Your will be done…
in earth…
No!
Let it pass from me.
Please…
make another way.

Falling on your face,
the stench of damp
soil in your nostrils.
Clenching the dirt with white knuckled fists;
force of your fists pounding the pebbles.
Forcing air out of your lungs
toward the darkened heavens.
Sweat pours from dusty pores.
Stinging sweat mingles
with blinding tears;
together flowing
through the dust of the day
forming paths of mud on your cheeks.
Soaked and tangled hair lashes at your brow.
Skin taut against tightened flesh.
Breath. Breathing. Breathe.
Heart beating so fast it
seems to stop
pumping so hard. Too hard.
Blood oozes from sweaty pores.
Great droplets
drip
drop to the dirt.

The angel appears.
Not my will.
Thy will be done.

Take the cup.

Sheep Dung in the Upper Room

March 30, 2009

I suppose this could be categorized as an Easter poem. It takes place the day of the Last Supper. This is another piece that I want to include in my series concerning God getting dirty. The original inspiration came from one of our pastor's sermons (Cal Woods, Pointe North Community Church, Moncks Corner, SC) in which he related an experience in which he stepped in dog doo and tracked it into a church conference room.


Sheep Dung in the Upper Room

I jump out of the boat
and into the muddy water.
Dragging the boat to shore
silt and sand slide under my feet
and through my toes.
It has been a good day for fishing.
Hauling basket after basket
of flopping fish flinging
water and scales,
I think of the Passover meal
to be shared with the Master this night.

But the nets, dripping with kelp and fish crap,
need to be tended. Sand gnats
nip at my ankles as I hurriedly finish my tasks.
Running up the bank,
wet sand from my sandals
splat my calves. Rushing through
the pasture, tall field grasses slap my shins,
leaving their seed clinging to the sweat,
hiding in the hairs of my legs.

I push through the crowded market
of the multitudes making last minute
preparations for Passover.
The streets are covered
with discarded rotted figs and grapes
mingling with the dust of ages and
the urine of goats and dogs and sheep.
Heedless of where I place my steps,
I almost fall
when my foot finds the fresh leavings
of a sheep.

Vaguely aware of the odor
from my freshly soiled sandal,
I enter the upper room
and partake of the supper
with my brethren and the Master.
And though I try to ignore it,
the trail of dust and dung
I have imprinted upon the floor behind me
is evident to all.

Then,
at the end of the meal
after the bread has been broken
and the wine has been shared,
the Master girds himself with a towel
and washes our feet.

Shooting Star (for Douglas)

(November 13, 2007)
Douglas was my nephew. He was barely in his twenties when he was hit by a car while riding his bicycle.


I saw a shooting star
          last night
in a foggy sky,
quickly shot through the dark—
          too quick.
A glance away
          and you would miss it.
I guess that's what makes them
          special.

A speck of light falling
          to wherever stars go.
And if you happened to glance
          it's descent,
you've connected with the heavens.

But the connection is cut short
          and regardless of your ties
          or knots untied;
no matter the light years
          or miles that separate,
we are all still connected
to the shooting star.

The Darkened Firmament Is A Blank Page

(October 2, 2007)

…and the stars
          of a clear Autumn night
blink and shimmer;
          pinpricks of light
          in a blue black sky;
tiny dots
          as close as the back of my eye,
          faraway;
          forgotten
in the light of day;
          lost
in the blur of city lights;
          real worlds,
          humungous suns,
          fantastic galaxies
that glitter in imagination,
because at the end of the day
          of a clear Autumn night
it's all we have left.

A Whisper of Butterfly Wings

(March 6, 2007)
This was another poem I was "requested" to write. One of my "fans" at the restaraunt I was working asked me to write a poem on the "butterfly effect" (look it up).


A rock. A ripple.
A flutter. A flurry.
A touch. A slap.
A first step. A final act.
Lifting a finger.
Moving a mountain.
Random acts of pettiness.
Random acts of kindness.
A lonely man. A family clan.
A woman on the street.
A simple word whispered.
A complex speech shouted from the rooftop.
A mistake. A plan.
Benefiting the good, the bad, the ugly.
World war. World peace.
Heaven. Hell.
Yesterday's gesture.
Tomorrow's conjecture.

The Faith of Science

(May 2006)

Were you there?
Did you witness the Bang?
                              or the Boom?
(If no one was there, did it make a sound?)
Was there a bystander
          to the splitting of Dark and Light?
                                        Day and Night?

Did you see
the whorling, swirling, mixing
of rocks and gases,
compacted compounds
(ta da! the energy pill)
                                        (We still have to
                                        figure out where
                                        that little sucker
                                        came from.
                                        What?
                                        It's always been!
                                        Behold!
                                        The Omnipresent Rock!)
become planets and suns.

Was it you that started the clock ticking
to decree the cosmos birthday
to be in the billions and billions?
Start the clock!
          Atomic or planetary?
But wait!
Planets unformed,
          atoms unstable.
Time unmarked, irrelevant.
Rewind.
(The speed of light is slowing
          and the rowers keep on rowing.)

And it's all unconnected—
          connect the dots,
          see the signs,
          imagination unwinds—
your “evidence” doesn't scare me.

I oversimplify?
God!
Maybe it is.