Wednesday, November 30, 2016

Open Pit BBQ Lamb

My Isaac, come off the altar now.

This is the coming
off of the altar
After one has been bound
seen the glint of the blade
in your father's hand
After one has tasted the honor and terror
Of being wanted by God
I am ready father
I am at the table
A near-sacrifice passed over
No, not this one
He was ready to be offered
Was he ready to be spared?
How did he live again ever after?
Did he carry that knife in his heart?

Friday, November 25, 2016

Dear Mr. Heup,

Thank you for teaching me how to write. I would be so constipated and autistic without you.

Saturday, November 12, 2016

Robert Frosty snowfall freeflake

I shall be telling this all with a song
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged at a foothill, and one ––
uphill was behind a door and the other one —

You could see from this vista, how pleasantly unfolding
The gentle stroll, well-marked by heavy traffic,
Bridges and tunnels and highways that wound
Surely and safely back down to the plain
down, down where you would gain
your mirage life in the city
of man and for a mundane
thirty-three more years bloom
and build your monuments on the Atlantic shore
pay Caesar's tolls but wither your souls.

Beyond the door, a pounding sound
Someone wants to return from the other side?
Or no, ––not knocking
a heartbeat, a drumbeat,
a beckoning. Who is it?
You press in, unhinge, swing wide the trap
Behind a suffocating one-way gate, the ascending path

Vanished. Pack up your own baggage, pick up
Take up, take heart, and cross
Over the mountain bluff climb
Up above your dread abyss, the wilderness creeps in behind you
Do we have adequate supplies? I got the lighter, did you pack––
Wait, where did my companions go?
Where is my family?
The oil in my lamp burns low
Whose are these dry bones?
There is no bridge here, look though we might
Sunrise to sunrise, and between them, long, long nights.
Certain death awaits, your cargo you hurl
Into the swirl of the sea, o God!
Do you see? Are you asleep?
Why did you lead us here only to die?
There may not be a tomorrow if we sleep tonight

I led you here to wake you from the grave
I met you here to free you into my service
I Love you more than you want
to be loved I stripped
you to coronate you
I fought you to win you
I wounded you to heal you in me
you died in me you again live
This is the life of the world to come
I've already arrived its already begun

Two roads diverged and you
drew a line and pointed
at yourself
the accusations
the Way and the Life
you pointed with your sword,
to yourself, you spoke, you said,
you were Truth, so I...
I took the plunge
into your wounded side and,
my Lord! my God! I ––
I have been freefalling
into Your heart
ever since

Thursday, November 10, 2016

if your life is burning well, poetry is just the ash

dance me through the panic til i'm gathered safely in

Wednesday, November 9, 2016

Among my many contradictions...

... I am a gloomy optimist. Wolterstorff and Heschel make sense to me. It feels better than being a cheery pessimist.


give me farsightedness
strain my hope
for river crossings
promised lands
the life of the world
to come
tomorrow in Zion
the gates flung wide
we labored and sang
and the walls kept tumbling down

You ask how I feel about the election. I am relieved the blinders are off. Were you surprised to wake up today and discover that the bully beat the smart girl? I wish I were surprised. You thought we had made so much progress for minorities and human decency. Here is where you have called me a cynic. But your despair today––no, I am your gloomy optimist.

Yes, America is that absurd. Yes, so many actually do think that America belongs to white people. The work's just begun. It's everyone's problem now. All day around the city, people everywhere were crying in public places and engaged in civic conversations. Yes. How did we get here? By only caring in the eleventh month, the eleventh hour. Sorry Charlie. Didn't have faith in the system to lose. The unthinkable happened before – think of the Japanese Americans in WW2. It's gonna be okay.

Yes, I am hopeful. because now No, really, who is an American? is a question we all have to ask and answer, again.

Maybe this leads to the end of the electoral college system. Maybe it ends the two-party system. Maybe I should visit Taiwan before WW3 levels it. Maybe we learn to reach out to the margins, the ignored, the forgotten. Maybe the media shapes up.

Anyway there's no way he can do all the ridiculous things he said he would. That wall he said he would build, it's already there. That pipeline she's supposedly opposed to, it'd get built anyway. The ship fo state is this massive lumbering thing. And anyway as president, he can't just say whatever he wants anymore. There's always impeachment... right? She would have made a shitty Democrat (though a skilled stateswoman).

There's nothing new under the sun. Some years we plant for the seasons. Now we plant trees.

it's coming through a hole in the air
from those nights in TianAnMen Square
it's comin from the feel that this ain't exactly real...

on a visionary flood of alcohol
from the staggering account
of the sermon on the mount
which I don't pretend to understand at all

the sorrow in the street
the holy places where the races meet

from the wells of disappointment
where the women kneel to pray
for the grace of God in the desert here
and the desert far away

imperial, mysterious in amorous array
democracy is coming to the USA
sail on, sail on, oh mighty ship of state
to the shores of need
past the reefs of greed
through the squalls of hate
sail on, sail on, sail on, sail on

i mean i love the country but i can't stand the scene
and i'm neither left or right i'm just staying home tonight

// Leonard Cohen

Monday, November 7, 2016

camping


He will cover you with his pinions,
and under his wings you will find refuge;
his faithfulness is a shield and buckler.
You will not fear the terror of the night,
nor the arrow that flies by day,
nor the pestilence that stalks in darkness,
nor the destruction that wastes at noonday.
A thousand may fall at your side,
ten thousand at your right hand,
but it will not come near you.
You will only look with your eyes
and see the recompense of the wicked.
Because you have made the Lord your dwelling place—
the Most High, who is my refuge—
no evil shall be allowed to befall you,
no plague come near your tent.
For he will command his angels concerning you
to guard you in all your ways.
On their hands they will bear you up,
lest you strike your foot against a stone.

Wednesday, November 2, 2016

–28: By whose stripes?

He can do it. He can make His suffering far more (and more deeply) defining, scarring, determining –– than our own papercuts.

He can gather your broken body into His perfect one. Make your lack part of His completeness.

Fill up what is lacking.