P o e t r y

Spoken Word - dedicated to Michael Lawson

okay...i think that one's been done, although I can see you're having fun with the dog and the bone...you gotta figure out how to scream the rhymes of a son redeemed from the filth and shit that holds you to what you can't forget...you're a new thing, with a new song, so write it down so we can all sing along and gleen hope from whom we cannot see....so we can all be what we were meant to be oh, but not what, it's who according to Merton who taught us how to see that the self we think we know is false; it's all wrong, so I'll add to your song a rhythm that comes from a heavenly sound....the dancing drums of angels all around - so dance my brother from a different mother; but the same Father who has love for the Son who bled till his skin weathered like an old woman's back side...oh can't go there, it's too wild, so I'll stop with the rhyme before I run into old Father Time and get my head chopped off for talking about his Old Lady

5 frantic minutes

     Been called Tuesday in the winter of my mind, in the hectic slush of it all left behind and lacking, or just to the right of good obscurity.     In that place less than seen where we all stand kicking, or, maybe, screaming for some words to come and form within us, but our minds have just left town on the last bus. . . on the next train to anywhere but here and my tracks are slowly dying. . . slowly dying to unwind, to bar the door, to break my fall, to call me homeward, upward. . . bound to tumble, born to fall, but hearing voices, hearing calls and heeding visions of some tree transfixed upon my mind.     I'm less than humble, less than nimble, less than all the bad I bring and more than hope fills me. . . overwhelms me really, to the brim, to the brink of mere humanity and I venture forth into utter chaos, into foaming, frothing chaos. . . and this too is good.

A poem by Wendell Berry

The Hidden Singer

The gods are less for their love of praise. Above and below them all is a spirit that needs nothing but its own wholeness, its health and ours. It has made all things by dividing itself. It will be whole again. To its joy we come together -- the seer and the seen, the eater and the eaten, the lover and the loved. In our joining it knows itself. It is with us then, not as the gods whose names crest in unearthly fire, but as a little bird hidden in the leaves who sings quietly and waits, and sings. Wendell Berry

Untitled

You are not a thing nor a concept.
What I have imagined and learned to this point
is only a self pleasing, tangible shade
I have created for my own security.

Yet I am held in you,
though who I am is neither thing nor concept;
I am not an object to be bought or used
nor built upon like an old, decaying house.

Who you are elides when I attempt
to construct you into some thing that is pleasant
and comforting, some thing I can hold
in the palm of my hands.

You are beyond what I can see or fathom,
and I have found that I do not know
what you are, for you are not what
but Who, not tangible thing, but God.

KINGDOMTIDE: Creation Healed

KINGDOMTIDE: Creation Healed
(a spoken word poem and would be benediction)

It’s that sound
In the ground
When the seed becomes found
And the world gather’s round
Can you hear it?

It’s the ease
In the breeze
From the healing in the leaves
Clapping hands of the trees
Do you see it?

It’s the feast
In the yeast
When the great feed the least
War and strife cease for peace
Will you taste it?

It’s the care
In the air
When the rich start to share
Fragrant skies perfuming prayer
Won’t you smell it?

It’s the sand
In his hand
As he writes on the land
Cross revealing contraband
Will you touch it?

Go now and be
Broken healers of creation
Joyful bearers of salvation
Crucified saints of a cruciform nation
Are you Ready?

John David Walt, Jr.
October 20, 2005

Work in progress...

I wasn't aware that you were there,
plainly invisible view
viewed through light's soft falling showers.

You surprise me with whispered word -
what's with the meaning of it all?
All for naught and none for hope,

man lives life unknown to self

Fragmented

Come into the house and raise your hands,
hearts and voices to the Lord.
Feel good in that sweet, narcotic presence
while into the afterlife go 6000 more.
Drink deeply of living water,
hand cupped in surrender to your God;
drinking deep in voluntary ignorance,
never considering that 42,000 deaths are odd.
So your heart and head are married,
walking together hand in hand?
What if your feet never move toward the lonely poor,
who'll be the goats being damned?

"Lord, Lord we worshipped in artistic perfection.
Away from me! Your feet never moved in the right direction."

Introduction

Greetings,

This is an open letter to everyone that drops by this page from time to time.  If you're reading this then I'm going to ask you to also respond, in fact I'm making it mandatory (not sure how I'll enforce that but I'll find a way).  Responding isn't tough, you just click on the "comments" link beneath this post and leave any information you'd like.  I'm not saying you need to leave more than your name even, because I'm just trying to get a read of who comes here (or if it is just me, JR and Dan).  If you'd like to leave more information that would be great; anything really, like, suggestions on how to improve this site or the general state of poets, your own greetings, prayers, shout-outs, your own poem (if you're not already cleared to post your own, whatever.  JD asked me to take something of a leadership role with this site, and, while I've been a little slow in resonding to that task, consider this my first effort.  Heck I'll even leave the first comment.

yours,
Kasey Martin

OPUS MAGNUM

Ben Witherington III, professor of new testament, continues to churn out some thought filled rhyme. Here's his latest.

Weary, worn, welts on hand
Work has whittled down the man
To the bare necessities
Of what he is, and what he’ll be
Was this then his destiny?

Defined, refined by what we do,
The toilsome tasks are never through
Thorn and thistle, dirt and dust
Sweeping clean, removing rust
All to earn his upper crust?

Sweat of brow, and carried weight
Rose too early, slept too late
Slaving, striving dawn to dusk
Til the shell is barely husk
Staunch the stench with smell of musk?

But work is not the curse or cure
By which we’re healed, or will endure
It will not save us in the end,
It is no foe, but rather friend
But while it molds us will we mend?

Task Master making all things new
Who makes the most of what we do,
Let our work an offering be
A timely gift from those set free
From earning our eternity.

When work is mission on the move
By those whose efforts serve to prove
That nothing’s wasted in God’s hands
When we respond to his commands
Then we shall hear him say “well done”
To those who worked under the Son.

Foolish September

Foolish September rises and falls.  Life is before me now though hidden over hills too far to see.  My world is here and there. . . and fear builds every minute.  I lay awake with eyes open wide and stare into the back-lit morning.  Life's too foolish to carry on, but I'm to much the fool to care.  Here and there; lost and found; home but on the bus still waiting for a stop.  Foolish September bleeds the hope right from me.  Still. . . dawns come every morning with their music and perfumes.  Set outside of glory sleepy morning breaks in on me, and foolish September dies out the sunset window; drowning as the deep Pacific boils to take it in.