Restless when still empty, though filling, the pits eaten by all our disorders
Into our lives rotting, infecting the soles our journey treds itself out on,
The tireless time, churning one more moment after the ever next…
Always the same continuing to be different, we
Have no means of distinguishing except for the flickle
Plunk of each feeling we abstract from our thick, complex, composite web of feeling…
From the whole we drop into the crystal glass of introspection to analyse
How the shallow waters are churning out of the bottomless depths we
Believe to be inside us, hidden from most touch
By the fact of living in-world, not feeling all the surrounding spirits, the witnessing
Cloud enlivening these fleshy bits of dust; we dig in nails
And scrape forth blood, the ruddy, pain-seeping material essence of being alive..
Texture of our breath, blood which inflates all.
We hope or imagine to experience, tanicle of invisible…
We fall into faith, then it is all we blissfully know until
Skimmed by our skepticism, we are reduced in our substance
And catch a breath of airy, gnostic lightness-in-being, souls fly like angels
Bourne up in wings towards the being-in-death, state we run from or
Thill in horror to embrace, waltzes like our sister, dancing in grace
Spinning to the pace of black hole dance, drawing all in; are we hopeless?
But I, I encounter my death all day long, in and out
Of the very body in which I’m formed in and given to—
My work of the perpetually living, to continue the struggling
To find the love for the disfigured and the disabled…
The home of six daughters I care for each evening,
Opening my heart to bleed in their behavior ust a
Bit beyond my comfort or pity of embracing
Empathy standing-with in the pain, providing
Barriers and guards I could not erect for myself to
Insulate their peace—a peace which I too covet
And can’t find in my own contrivance and self…
My longings are slakeless, and wrap together
In horrific desire of adventure unto death.
Death greets me on the streets when I step beyond
My cloister of streets into open city, where buildings masking,
Compounded on buildings are interwoven by a constant human traffic;
Heartless or heartbroken, each face a mask, a veil to hide
The heart worn under each gaze, guile in each eye, longing deeper…
Giving away or holding closer when pressed up to death
On this fact of existence called city: street-living or housed.
The dozen beggars, for each walker like me, overwhelms
The heart’s supply of pity , empty sentiment of cash-giving, and threatens
To unleash all that which can do no more than emptily ache, wide-eyed glances
And speechless, hides the natural smile, the torch of love’s brightness,
In grief; a truer lover would move to death and act in joy.
It seems to easy to train in systematic desensitization
This soul to face death all day long, and to reject
Each hint of self-slaughter, of weakness or need
Which could stir a memory or regurgitate old guilt
And threaten the gaudy, falce placidity I’ve created
With the howling prophecy of truth; you’ve already begun the
Massacre, finish the killing or repent beyond, to resurrection.
My stiff stride reveals the dead man in me,
Still with an unnatural death, allowing my hasty
Existence to haunt the mind and torture the heart
Wracking beyond past old guilt to accept normality as loss;
To settle for less, to keep my heart from opening
And blossoming into a flower of grace…
Some dark ring I invited to fall around a glitterig aura,
Not my own, but the love You shone in me.
My lips are blackening with the wretching taste,
The revolting feel of my dreams handed over to You;
To stop and compare at the end of each day… too late
To catch up and seize the vagrant desires I hoped
To capture and surrender beyond chance of regrasp.
You know I fear most…myself, for in each weary rest
I fall back into forgetfulness… just to wallow
In the muck of broken trusts.
The grieving families I come to, clothed in Your cross,
Offering to try and bear up their griefs and their losses…
Leaving me with holes in my hands, unable to held,
Depressing anxieties like thorns, in my brow…
My heart thoroughly pierced, the heart fell out with water and blood.
My feet ware holes through bones too… the walking and travel,
Far less, my pocketbook burns to a crisp,
Looking for an opportunity to give, but without
Any graces of my own to pour from my heart… only Yours.
Shallow, so shallow, six feet under unto death…
Yet more a loss, to lose love… cutting away a part of the heart.
I give my heart away so feely… Jesus Lord, that I
Lose my loves every day. I ache and I pray:
Another cry to You, emptying through and through…
For if not You, I fill me with mangy horror
Of worry and regret; make me anew each
Morning as the psalmic prayers promise.
Here’s all the howling horror of death I carry, now,
I’m giving it to You, kiss me in peace.
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