Category: Prayers & Liturgy
November – A Poem a Day Challenge (4, Day 9)
Day 9 –
Lament – A Psalm About Faces
O Lord, God of faces, where now is your face?
And why have you hidden from us your gaze?
Where once we walked together,
now we thrash and reel and hack.
Darkness has become our only ally;
and hopelessness our truest friend.
For those of insolence and hatred rule over us;
the ruthless and ragged become our destroyer.
Therefore, falsehood and lies bind us;
and the absence of truth shackles us.
We have become party with wolves and savages,
those without conscience or care for the poor.
They lash out from behind empty eyes
to oppress the widow and orphan,
the immigrant and the voiceless.
All that is good, pleasing, and right is set aside;
truth and love are traded for lies and hate,
victim to the victimizers.
And through their shame have we become a byword,
a cause for mockery among the nations.
We hear them cry out in the streets,
and moan among the people of injustice against them.
But it is they who are unjust,
with lies have they clothed themselves.
How long, O Lord? How long must we watch our children caged,
and our future torn apart?
How much more treachery must we endure at their hands?
Save us, O God, from their filth;
release us from their grotesque machinations.
Turn your eyes toward us for we are weary and broken;
tearful and confused.
Find a place again among us where all that was good
can again be good; where the darkness again is dark.
Rise up, once more, gracious Lord, and be our protector;
the light behind our eyes,
the light behind our faces;
the face behind all faces.
For we are your people,
and you are our God.
Prayer
We press the world between pointed palms,
where the weary stretch for heaven’s notice.
Our best vision, through closed eyes – steps
weightless
on scabbed knees, waiting.
Wine-soaked, bread-fed words squeeze
themselves through parched lips to
arrange with dancing in mind. But first,
they must learn the art of walking naked, blindfolded
through haunted alleys,
danger-gripped, clammy with doubt.
We stretch out long necks, seeking only glimpses, emancipation.
But, the lecherous bully of shame spends all his time
butchering the still,
small voices of light that sneak
in through backdoors where hope still keeps
windows open.
Tragic, is it not, how shades pull tight against wayward shards
of sun, the down-payment for our breath?
Like running in snow, our legs just get heavier –
too much weight tossed about over time.
A leering fatigue replaces what’s left of inadequate strength –
thickness filling muscles too weak to move past their own demise.
Still, hope is what came, long after our tight-
cinched belt of faith lost its grip
and hungry shame gave way to
garden surrender.
Only then does our Amen make sense.
As you tell me
As you tell me
the woes of the world,
of all that is wrong and out of place,
the injustices, the unfair dues of your space
carved out of a world you help build;
as you tell me
how the air is now
too thin
to breathe,
the ground,
too heavy
to dig,
the people,
too deaf
to hear your valid cries,
too blind
to support
your team’s placards, your tribe’s war-paint,
those with the correct branding on your
well-vetted t-shirts;
as you tell me
of apocalypse and my need to
wake up, and see Jesus in your message
of #allthismatters and #allthatmatters and
#fuckyourmatters because #onlyImatter;
as you tell me
about all we’re losing
if that guys wins, or this guy wins,
or some guy wins, or we all win
if my guy wins; so, get on board
the happy train your bunch
is driving, with the right conductor
on the right track, going the right way,
for the right reasons, to make things right,
again, the way they were;
as you tell me
the world is going to hell-in-a-handbasket,
my neighbour hasn’t heard your news,
she cradles a dying child.
Viral Dailies, Day 13
We’re already at day 13 in our daily postings for National Poetry Month! Time passes quickly when one’s mind isn’t just on its passing.
Here are three more fridge magnet poems by good friend and fellow poet, extraordinaire, Lesley-Anne Evans. You can also follow her on Instagram.
This installment is titled, “Small Prayers.”
Enjoy!
Viral Dailies, Easter…
Easter morning. A triptych of Easter poems I’ve composed over the years, “Morning, breath”, “After the tomb”, and “Death’s death.”
Most of us have heard the story. Now, we must learn again how to breath…
_________________________________
Morning, breath
As morning reaches where only night had been,
dew once more settles on the brittle earth
and breath returns to one,
so all can breathe again.
After the tomb
When blood, still damp, soaked through
the sleeves of shrug-shoulder’d men,
did you cry for their laughter?
Were your accusers held in sleep
when Mary’s shaking hands
held fast your plundered feet?
How long before bewildered men
and doting women find again
their reasons for remonstrance?
Will a miracle suffice
to fill the gaps in minds too young
not to lust for proof?
Were the angels surprised
to find their silenced songs
reignited for their fittest subject?
Did you know these walls would
only remind you of this one, unending breath?
This one effortless act for one so bored of death?
Death’s death
Live! Live! Not one minute
more to solemnize the squaring truths
of the dark, exasperating. Exsanguinating.
The probing luminant, juggernaut
of dawn brought down as a quickening
shade of brilliance over the tar-black,
songless night – now gasping out
its own greying reminiscence.
Kicking against the goads, a denouement
of despair, decay’s quietus comes to mock.
But its voice is too dry now for anything more
than the androgynous whisper of a skeleton.
The bones rattle and try in vain to spark, to scare,
to survive the day, already here.
Death, this needy after-thought, this choking
wheeze of duskish, tight-lipp’d groaning –
it can no longer hunt, its legs are
broken, a dislocated shoulder no longer
suited to hefting hopelessness.
Spring! Spring! O antediluvian Spring! How
many are your salted children, lined up
outside your garden wall. Someone
has unchink’d the tangled gate and trodden new
footprints – fresh, ancient and deep – in the Virgin soil.
We come too, having hid ourselves in
the wisp of your blood-colour’d sleeves.
Droughted, now, a tomb and the perfect surprise:
breaths in lungs once shut, re-sighted eyes,
and in the first of all new hours,
Someone has made light work of death.
Viral Dailies, Day 10
Good Friday.
Well, not so good for someone. Especially so for the rest of us. This day in history, God absorbed all the hatred, shame, pain, violence, discrimination, sin, and division into himself. Jesus became the great black hole out of which could escape nothing other than love, redemption, hope, and all things new.
As we lean, by faith, into this cosmic narrative, what once was dark can become light again. What once promised fear and undoing, now has potential to unlock a billion answered prayers.
This poem isn’t specifically a Good Friday poem. It is however, in the context of night and sleep, a promise therefrom.
____________________________________________
nighttime songs our fears erase
a story lived, now story told
we, early young, now later, old
see stranger things than daytime held
but not without our sorrows quelled
____________________________________
we fluff and tuck and yawn and brush
pray God remove all sinning blush
the air now cool in silver glow
what dreams may come we do not know
_____________________________________
divested now of time and chance
we bid adieu and leave the dance
till thricely woven round with grace
the nighttime songs our fears erase
(c)Robert Alan Rife, 2013
What’s so different?
What’s so different,
now that one bundle of thirty,
arbitrary and detached, passes,
barely noticed, from one to another?
We have a time.
What’s so different,
as we look out from inside the same
rooms with their corners, known but
unobserved, safe but stultifying?
We have a place.
What’s so different,
the streamers fallen, wine now flat
in decanters of promise, jokes all told,
recognized, congratulated?
We have another.
What’s so different,
these moments of grey ineptitude
encased in more moments, equally
lacking in certitude?
We have ourselves.
What’s so different,
promises made, unkept from the year before,
through wine-stained teeth, and
blurry, careless shrug?
We have a hope.
What’s so different –
she still can’t remember your good things;
he still doesn’t recognize your worth;
they still haven’t apologized
from last year’s infraction?
We have more time.
What’s so different?
We’re alive to ask the question.
I could say that
I could say that this hour
is set apart for prayer, the obligations of my station.
My expected obedience.
A fitting praise.
A suitable gratitude.
A reasonable confession.
An obvious adoration.
A humble intercession made in proper posture.
I could say that.
I could say that this hour
is ours to do the business of heaven,
The diary of eternity.
The stuff of paradise,
changing sheets and fluffing pillows
for the angelic choir.
Making coffee for saints.
Cleaning up after holy gatherings
of those whose leisure time fills the eons.
I could say that.
I could say that this hour
is to learn the language of God.
Syntax of saints.
Songs of millennia of songs sung
and sung again.
Singing still.
Poets poeting.
Writers wording.
Artists arting.
Lovers longing.
So many people still laughing at old jokes,
funnier with each telling, always new.
Always the first time.
Constant punch line surprise.
I could say that.
I could say that this hour
is an exercise in self-discipline.
The prowess of patience.
the wages of praxis,
paid in full with each Doxology.
Invocations only please.
There is no need for Benedictions
to forever stories.
You don’t preach any sermons.
You are the sermon.
I am your words.
I could say that.
I could say that this hour
is the first of many just like it.
A rehearsal in minutes for what will
soon become lifetimes.
Epochs.
Never less.
Always more.
Without the constant threat of boredom,
the language of loneliness,
all sentences run on.
It doesn’t matter, if they all matter.
There’s no hurry for anyone
to make their point.
I could say that.
I could say that this hour
is mine alone.
These shoulders carrying
no burdens, since I never need to
look over them to see another.
A solid silence,
never morose.
No longitude of self-abasement.
No latitude for self-praise –
coordinates of old religion in the checkmate of grace.
I could say that.
I think I will.
In The Busy-ness Of Life
Today’s beautifully arresting poem comes from the hand of our Celtic soul friend, Tadhg. Drink deeply friends.
It’s Eastertide, and for some it’s a long weekend holiday, a time to ‘recharge’ those ‘batteries’, to relax and enjoy the first blooms of Spring, as temperatures rise.
Here’s a poem, a prayer, a blessing just for you – because I care, and welcome you as you faithfully read my blog. And so, the following words are penned so that you and yours might enjoy this Spring season, this time of new life, hope and renewal
In the busy-ness of life,
may you find the quiet repose of the Source of All,
and be blessed.May the love of Life itself
fill your soul
with the energy of a thousand flowing streams.May the love of Mary, the archetypal Mother,
pervade every gentle activity
of yours today.May the Sun’s smile
reside in your heart, the hearth of your being
to seal you as one of His own.And, may…
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