Oh, God I know how we have tried
where pipe has burst below the Gulf
or man poured into it his pride
of place and privilege till it stank
of sweat and sin and suffering
and floated to a poorer shore,
our lavish petty offering.
And I, I stand before them all
The Worst with pen then pen again
all bleeding in my pocket’s heart
the black, vague, unpublishable.
And were the skies of parchment made
not skies we’ve used but walls and trains
and bathroom stalls and table tops,
felled Amazons, fried Kindle brains.
We’ve written on the ocean floor
and staked our flags into the sky,
we’ve sent The Beatles to the void
and sealed gas chambers with a lie.
Though not of parchment, still of waves,
though not of paper, still the sound,
though not the skies, we’ve taken reams
from flame and water and the ground.
Were every stalk on earth a quill
we seldom use the reeds today
unless our name’s Hermione,
we choose to press – it’s keys we play.
As beatles scuttle down night’s wall
the sound, the sound of typing rose
to me – a terror glazed in prose –
some dragged-dead sound: a typist’s maul.
We’ve hammered, punched, and primed the keys,
grew one long tail to history.
We’ve stroked Your love like a lover’s spot
but to some climax take it not.
And every man a scribe by trade
I hear that literacy’s rising
in the places tech has preyed
on countries without road or school
for power, peace or shade.
They read the books we’ve never read:
The Whale, the Brothers (less undead),
The Hunchback, and The Book once made
by sixty-some in sixty times.
That Book, they learn, was bound for them:
to give them pardon for their crimes
and learn to write along with Him.
To write the love of God above
oh let me, help me, make me try
or if not Your agenda, love?
Whose program bids me come and die?
For if it’s mine, my death is vain
and if my country, death is hate,
if for family, kilt the dove
against those outside kindred fate.
To die for writing all your love
on sparrow backs and under crates
would push me past some sacrifice
for kin, self, business, or the state.
Would drain the ocean dry
(reverse of Noah’s time and place,
fulfillment of temp’s cry)
if loaded in my pen all space,
if I, immortal, write
forever then another day
like a programmed keyboard meant to play
each song of languish-made-okay
till I wrote myself to the Judgement Day
I’d need another night.
Oh God of mercy, give me strength
to write I must write:
nor could the scroll contain the whole
this too we men have tried,
for no more books than about this man,
nor sculptures, planes, or grains of sand,
nor half of all canvas (if canvas can)
are made for any other theme.
God gave instead our light its gleam
behind the man who cried
the blood, which better forms an ink
for pens, unlike our kitchen sink
of ocean black and draining thin:
red letters, scroll of skin.
though stretched from sky to sky
the skin-made scroll at one sky’s end
not tanned, but soft applied
to wood and iron, bone and piss
first slayed, then buried, still is this
your prince, your savior, one called Chris?
(We hear fiend hiss his lie).
But then, three days, our scroll’s complete
then rising up, new body meet
foretaste of healing: skin to skin,
scroll stretched from death to life again
and from sky to sky ever after end
enigma knows defeat
in red ink larger than the sea,
in a scroll of skin like a prophecy
written on either side,
in reeds like railroad ties on end,
like printer paper gauze descending
upon a warmed-up grave, ascending
Love to Love aright,
rewrote the tale of the world’s ending
Love with Love in sight,
He lives and does not need defending,
Love. From Love we write.
From Love,
…
with Love,
In sight.
about the 54 @ 27 ::
It’s that time again!
When I was 23, I read this stupid article that claimed the perfect age for writing quality poetry is twenty-three. Well I freaked out like I do and cranked out work like I can and it resulted in 46 poems written at 23. A year passed, I calmed down, then I freaked out again two years later and wrote another bunch of poems called 50 at 25, all written before I turned 26 on April Thirtyish.
Will I keep up this twice-my-age regimen on the odd years? Who knows.
But this year?
This year I’m trying a more holistic approach. 54 poems crammed into next spring will kill me, guaranteed. But one a week? That’s doable and the blog has languished of late. One a week-ish I can do.
So let’s do this thing.
Join this guild of renegade imaginations.
:: sign up for email encouragement ::
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