An iron clutch without hope of release
gives way to an embrace
where death and dragons are vanquished
with a kiss from the once dead lips of the truest man.
Yesterday, too ordinary to see –
today, too bright to miss –
unless you were looking elsewhere.
And the happy songs of women
tell of news we should never have heard.
Dullards refuse, and, breathless now, men must admit
what was then has become heaven’s now.
What sounds are these I hear
of sobs and sighing, seering pain of doubt.
If leaves could talk what might they say
of a crying God, a hopeful hopelessness wrapped in trust?
* * *
Raked across an endless heart,
the bursting bastions of familial love
come couched in terms of unsteady prayers, yearning, yet wavering.
One, two, three faltering steps toward full submission to…what?
* * *
“Must it be this way? Must this broken sentence require my full stop?
Let it be but a misstep, a simple error in divine judgment, and a world
hurled into disarray is called back again.
Must you kiss away their pain with my blood on your lips?”
* * *
Daylight friends become nighttime strangers.
Eyelids, heavy with grief, fear and confusion
flutter and fail. Closed and unseeing they become
when sharp and sure is needed most.
* * *
Gruff and groping they march,
crashing through grass, garden and grove,
sniffing and snorting with dark and heavy purpose.
A poisoned kiss stops cold their treading, hateful boots.
* * *
Two cold lips meet two warm cheeks.
Foe, one time friend, greets friend of all foes
and the world holds its breath –
pausing hell’s raucous revelry and heaven’s sonorous singing.
* * *
Ponderous parade of an army and shackled lamb
whisks down backroads to audience with puppets and clowns,
whose dirty, back-room deals deal out kangaroo justice,
promising the untimely sham of caustic, casual connivances.
* * *
Spewing, spitting, spluttering out lies,
the venom of their dalliance denies all place for truth.
And a king receives a pauper’s sentence.
And a pauper refuses a king’s ransom.
* * *
The dam of reason well collapsed
and the hammer of hate posing as justice
falls as teeth, claws and fangs bite deep
tearing open his back. Men flay the skin of God.
* * *
He is dressed in the accoutrements of power
the punch-line of sparring, jousting jokes
fit for fools, bullies and frightened little boys
with big fists and a caged bird.
* * *
His walk of shame, will soon regale his fame
and repeal the petty finagling of men, insane with lust
for blood, and bone and sating their angry palettes
on the sight of sorry sacrifice.
* * *
Bones meant for healing and holding faces in tender embrace
part for fiercer spikes, a government’s answer
to the unanswerable questions posed by a hated God,
whose broken feet stay secured to the place of their forgiveness.
* * *
Now begins, indeed, a most sinister work.
An only child, spurned by a doting Father scorns
the unsearchable pain of eternal loneliness that supercedes
a lesser pain: political torture by tiny men.
* * *
The uncertain winter sky belches forth
her mystifying darkness and the once joyous birdsong
succumbs to a silence, infinitely louder,
dripping with the shame of what shouldn’t have needed to happen.
* * *
Time’s bullseye is set in its fitting of that heaving breast,
gasping for breath, groping for a sorry excuse for waning life.
But oh, what shines forth from such battered spirit:
the alchemy of grace, a gavel strikes with love.
* * *
“It is finished” – such words, by heaven hitherto unspoken,
hang in the air like molecules of exhaled proclamation:
a deed done means another can begin,
and in 3 words, the world is forever changed.
* * *
Carrion collective circles high above,
the smell of death and forbidden dinner ripe in the air.
They, whoring, hope for bits of flesh, hair and bone,
meal of mangy wing-ed mongrels bent on the efforts of others.
* * *
Not so for this diamond, bloodied, limp and alone.
A poor man’s corpse blesses a rich man’s tomb
and scented linens shroud the face of passion
that, for now at least, lie pristine and still.
* * *
Why should such a tale, so swift, so sorrowful
twist itself into our earthly fabric?
How could such shameful chaos perpetrated by pawns
undo the fickle fate of cowards and kings?
* * *
What sounds are these I hear?
They are the mournful sobs of a Mother,
the shameful cries of deserters,
the longing sighs of the dead…
Photos: http://www.artbible.info
If not for this, then all would be that,
and when forsakes why,
and time gasps for breath.
Stand still with nowhere left to go.
Sing these notes now,
these words for this, not that,
waiting for the longer wait;
the unplanned non-plan;
all counting, forsaken, in the business of nothing –
and watch what yet will come.
In those long and pasty days,
wrung out with the common befuddlements of
our race, there can seem to be no
end to the tributaries,
soggy back roads,
sullen detours, the personal politics
of working in a chain gang fog.
The sun, warming and full, is the same to
saint and sinner, soldier and sailor.
But doubly-parsed is its heat, meted out to all,
recklessly packaged for warmth, whim or want –
hope to one, threat to another, necessity to all.
Yet in between the particles of dreams lie
the pocked and random picture of our days.
To hoist and heft, backs bent and necks strained,
seems lighter when singing – or laughing because
the joke is good.
To laugh means more when everyone hears
the same words but the punchlines are different.
And only the skilled purveyor of the phrase, delicately
turned and timed with skill, can help the cautious and
skeptical, proud and aloof, naïve and wide-eyed alike
to get in on something good.
The better the tale, the shorter the toil.
So we dig deep to find the best tales straining
to sort and sift and make sense of
the broken, unpatterned pieces
strewn about the edges of things.
So, with subtle indirection, the toolbox of yearning
wed to oratory, wed to a cloud of unknowing,
expecting nothing more than a tale well told,
comes the bard and we are given –
a road for our story.
_____________
Dedicated with great respect, gratitude, and love to pastor and friend and retired bard, Duncan A. MacLeod
When nothing but shade
remains on our contentments,
the leaves return
and the budding forest of unborn
dreams, breathes more loudly still,
of wonder,
aching.
Photo found here
I
With robust assurances his heart gives him leave, and he chooses where to put up fence posts. A random job at best, like cliff jogging in fog, he dons a belt of desire with the tools of need. Soon, even the smallest creature will set its mind to the task of destroying what little is planted – turnips, sour, or lettuce, damp – sustenance an after thought to the insistent impracticalities of spice and garnish, sweet.
II
He hums a happy tune, just loud enough to drown out his wiser, elder self – safe but jejune, unlike the dashing rarities of a ripe and unpitted longing. It helps to take the edge off catacombed thoughts, still damp and painted brightly in drooping caves of swelling light.
III
He watches how her tongue dances from lips to teeth, teeth to palette and back again – mesmerized like too much moon behind too little cloud. He matches word for word, glance for glance and what started as picket fence has become an encampment. And his bludgeoned fingers bleed and weep only slightly less than his forehead, sweat-bedewed in the ritual of dalliance.
IV
The stumps go down, first one, then another, haphazard arrangement built to harbor dreams, not capture dreamers. Nails leap from hammer in wood soft and easy, like feet in wet clay. And soon, the world watches in the laissez faire of bored repetition. Not even an eyebrow raised, curious about a man backing into his own battlements, a penned bird, stuck in a cage he built while looking the other way.
A candle flame, unsteady, dances to an uncertain future.
Within it, secrets caked in want, wax-tomb-embedded
lay a still brighter flame to the still darker day.
Be still,
listen to how the dying light of Persephone’s
summer, brings the long wait of Demeter’s winter.
In the cold years of months when time drags her feet
and the wick is snuffed
to light a fuse – there hides a promise –
more wick, and an ember-lit flame.
___________
Picture found here
My RobsLitBits year in review!
Here’s an excerpt:
A San Francisco cable car holds 60 people. This blog was viewed about 2,900 times in 2015. If it were a cable car, it would take about 48 trips to carry that many people.
Sometimes he gets stuck in the dictionary so
long that his brain becomes alphabet soup.
He wears his skin tattooed with another’s thoughts.
And he waits.
No, he frets – and sour apprehensions
swim atop a slowly scumming pond
of wilted words, reeking of lost sleep.
And, if reflections in the coffee shop window
are meant to serve as metaphor,
they only spur on the edict
of secondary pictures mirrored from
another’s doubting face.
Come then, if you must,
shadows from a cold mist to
rattle and rustle the bones.
Come, take up residence beside
one with a plasticine pencil,
pliable to cautious hands –
worthless in sweaty palms,
squeezing desperately against
the inevitable.
In this reverie to a ghost –
vestibule in an empty house,
birthing only the vestige of coffee-stained
intentions, a writer paces –
penning wordlessness.
The day renders well her light to cast,
comes, with hopeful glance, her tidings bring –
haunting dark, like some unholy past
soon yields his woe to this better thing.
Alone, but for his pale, waning grin,
he staggers backward in view of her;
never have his shaking knees remained
full upright. Now they buckle, unsure.
A formal respite, east is yearning,
stolen glances, her scent is bringing
laughter for those whose wild discerning
feeds upon this freshness glad, singing
songs, and dancers too are gathering,
all but mirth and cheerfulness disdains.
Soon, the fretful past’s unprompted sadd’ning,
forced to flee, and only light remains.
As daylight parts dark mystery’s curtain,
there, with courage, we must take our stand;
e’er the burden of mis’ry certain,
comes to pummel, firm, our heart’s command.
Still, with faith, our prayerful souls blazing,
God shall come to squelch what brings our fall;
must flee the night, our spirits’ hazing,
departed, then goodness we recall.
Now, cacophonous voice, full deafened,
silenced is the darkly strident pull
of that which, lying, steals our heaven –
God, his faithfulness, our promise, full.
If we are made in God’s image and God sings, then we should be singing, too.
Ancient Wisdom for Modern Seekers
Spiritual Direction for Integrated Living
From liquid courage to Sober Courage
an anamcara exploring those close encounters of the liminal kind
Collaborating with the Muses to inspire, create, and illuminate
...in such kind ways...
"That I may publish with the voice of thanksgiving, and tell of all thy wondrous works." Psalm 26:7
Blog for poet and singer-songwriter Malcolm Guite
…in the thick of things
REFLECTIONS & REVIEWS
Seeking that which is life giving.
… hope is oxygen
Homepage of Seymour Jacklin: Writer - Narrator - Facilitator
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