Sand
I’m sitting on the cold sand
And there is a bar graph rising high around me.
Michigan’s waters shouting, receding:
“Minute! Details! Sandstorms.”
Black columns and granite ridges
Looking down, with
Perspective,
And depth.
Grey skies and windy
Conversation, swirling upward,
North then south,
Warmer and bringing snow again.
And I rode the wind higher now
And I’m still not the tallest around.
But now, geometrically, I see
Exhaust fans and greenhouses.
Falling again, to the noise and the
Sand. The car horns and the
Waters. And the swollen
Vein, drawing a line in the
Sand. No farther.
Poem 3-17-08
Find me in the back of the group
Find me in the reflection on imitation sunglasses
And behind tour bus windows.
Have you seen? 10 for a dollar.
One, two, sthree, four.
Call him a liar,
Call him a cheat.
And hear a hiss and a stifle
Five, six, seven, eight.
Before he changes his mind.
Write a sestina about my neighbors on this plane,
Using these words:
“Bible”
“Suit”
“Baby”
“Screaming”
“Hours”
And “more wine please”
And define and create “normal.”
Go back to normal food
And normal languages
And normal hours and
Lane usage.
Secure the borders!
Fill out the forms and remember
Left from right,
Goose down and biometrics:
Insulation for your
Welcome
Videos and flyers.
I’ll call them all liars.
All of them.
And we’ll drink tea made from crushed flowers
Saying:
“Nine, ten. 10 for 1 dollar!”
Have you heard?
He is risen indeed?
“He is risen!”
“He is risen indeed?”
I know how tomorrow morning at my church is going to go. My pastor is going to stand up and shout it, then listen to our weak congregational response and with a smile say, “that’s not nearly good enough, let’s hear it again! He is risen!” and again and again until satisfied.
And after the service there will be a real sense of joy, and they’ll say it to me and I’ll hesitate and I’ll buckle and I’ll talk about school and being home and how it’s nice and all of the things I’ve said a million times over the past 4 years or so in that narthex. Good morning.
“He is risen!”
“Good. Thanks. Ya.”
It’s not really that I don’t believe in the resurrection, I think I do. But there’s a certain lack of significance in Easter for me this year.
Maybe it’s because I pretty much just didn’t participate in Lent at all.
And a huge part of it is certainly that I’m just not sure right now how much Jesus matters in the world. Call it a lack of faith, certainly, but it’s been a while in the making. Christmas brought a lot of similar emotions. I found myself asking “what’s the point?” Everyone stands in the church singing “joy to the world, the Lord is come!” and “no more let sin and sorrow reign nor thorns infest the ground. He comes to make his blessing flow, far as the curse is found, far as the curse is found” and I can’t agree more with that theology and reading of the text. Yes, Christ came to heal the earth and the people, taking our sorrow and our shame and our suffering. But we’re still suffering and people are still starving and we’ve been in Iraq for 5 years and
I just have no hope.
And I have no hope because people were singing about the redemptive work of Christ 2000 years ago and they’re still singing and things are still broken. And I don’t have enough faith to hope most of the time. When I graduated high school, I was brutally tired of a gospel that meant little more than waiting for heaven and focusing on self-improvement. I needed a faith that worked for real social change. And I found it in North Park’s rhetoric and programs. But now, 3 years of work into the effort, I’m tired again and wondering if even this doesn’t boil down to, “wait for heaven, things will be alright then.”
But then there’s the fact that I still find the core message of the gospel incredibly compelling. I read of the Acts 4 church, living devoted to the aim of having a community where there was no poverty and where there were no divisions along racial, economic, or gender lines and I think “now there’s something I can believe in.”
I’m having a homeless man over for Easter dinner tomorrow. I know I’m fortunate to have parents who encourage me in that. For me, this is the closest thing that I’ll see to an Easter that I care about and can believe in.
Is He risen? Ask the man who’s eaten out of trash cans for 3 years. Does he see the resurrected Christ in the works of the church towards him? If he does, then I say “He is risen indeed!”
Is He risen? Ask the man who has been beaten by police for sleeping under an overpass to avoid the rain and the snow. If the resurrected Christ has been made known to him in the works of the people who will sing beautiful songs tomorrow morning, then I resound “He is risen indeed!”
Is He risen? Ask that question to the family of the little boy I buried in Zambia last May. If they can lift their heads up from the red earth and tell you that the in the midst of the wealth gap, the lack of clean water, and the starvation that killed their son and threatens their daughter that they have seen Christ in the works of a church that embodies His equality, then you will hear me the loudest of all, “He is risen indeed!”
19-Hours in the Air
Your cheap plywood door swings light on pewter hinges
Gray of cement punctuated by spots red
And the hiss and tick of sprinklers, water
Slapping against the window like branches.
And fog parts on another clear day,
Tempo kept on earthen brick.
Cement slops heavy into a mold, the truck of bricks
Heavy-laden, axles squeaking like those pewter hinges
Two days in the sun, children playing in well-water
Seeping into the earth now a much deeper red
And potholes punctuate branches
Just as they did yesterday.
Income rose high, years ago a heyday
On the edge of town, imported water
Purified in India, checks went to branches
In China. They don’t want our crumbling bricks.
They don’t need our pewter hinges.
No one knows our brilliant Kwacha, dawn’s red.
Like the lines in your eyes, red
Like the walls made of brick
Glass shards will due where electricity’s branches
Have yet to reach. Streams of well-water
Trickle on as constellations yield to the day,
Bending round corners like doorframes and hinges.
Skin, skin. Elbows likes hinges
Darkest of brown and sharpest of brick.
Laughter and dirt, there’s blue in the red.
The dirt-painted children, an elongated playday
The waving of arms, skinny as branches
Leeches, ringworms, and Victoria’s waters.
There’s lead in this paint and now in the water.
And there’s love in this house though hingeless
A father. Remember the lizard we found, with belly all red?
We stalked him and snatched right off of the brick.
“Muli Shani” we cry at the start of the day.
How we laughed and we joked and swung from low branches.
I’ll remember white paint on red signs, branches up from the graves
Squeaky bus-door hinges and brick-building to clear watery eyes.
Funerals are no friend of the day.
Spin
When I go to work
The fountain is still off.
Women are power-walking
And their dogs are still sleeping.
People throw banana peels out their windows,
Five minutes saved. The amusement park is silent,
Save for the sounds of the giant
Flag
And the flick flick of the money counters.
Tin Cans and Static
Hermeneutical disasters
on erroneous red letter
designations
and a flannel squirrel.
Text messaged sarcasm
interrupts a downshifting symphony
and gerunds get returned
with the groceries.
Cavities and Pepsi
pretend to be
a prophetic utterance.
We capitalize random Nouns.
Cold concrete meets
numb fingers and
instant coffee and creamer.
We drink cold beer with our cheap fish.
Answers always came
in tin cans.
But make them into a telephone,
and nothing comes through.
Ethernet cables
keep my bones together.
Tendons and sinews just can’t keep up.
Find me warm and open, covers and aspirin.
we’ll see if this lasts
well, once I had a xanga. And then that died because people graduated high school and lost interest in their old friends’ lives. Or maybe it died just because people graduated high school. In any case, maybe I’ll actually do the blog thing again, regardless of readership. Poems? could be. Short stories? when I actuallly write them. Rants? most likely.
