Under the jejeune moon’s wide-eyed stare, idol me not but love, past the sell-by date monogamously magnanimous revolutionizing best-selling hedonism for a kiss that goes on for a lifetime, valentine.
Before the watery wall I stand, a pane of glass between me and flashy schools of myriad fish like sins parading when a hammerhead impales my gaze.
I remember that one, the one I should go to the gallows for, before it pivots from the glass, as if content to bide its time till the apocalypse.
Say, for an instant the earth quakes, the glass cracks and another deluge follows, the shark like avenging justice would seek me out, for all my sins, for each mortal sin,
each like piranhas eating at my soul and one long shark bite to crown the whole, an entrée in the overtaking flood. Would I call to that fool Noah to let me in
to his ark of gopherwood which we laughed to see him build, four by fours, and two by twos, the men and women kneeling to pray, now before a Lamb slain, innocent blood, the promised Son?
The light dims around me, and for a moment, the watery screen is empty, a gray shield, a blank page to write my own fate sans God, sans judgment, sans arks and crosses.
Maybe the fish were being fed on the other side, a reprieve for me, “for my sins,” I laugh and turn, when the hammerhead shoots out of the murky depths and steals my bubbly grin away.
The tea kettle whistles A moth flutters and dies Your mask shatters to pieces A madman explodes the moon A butterfly flaunts a human face You dream of a lion’s rest Birds in-choir in a priest’s robe You fire a revolver on the run
The key to the riddle — Masquerading as fun To the gibbering wags Deaf to the last gong’s sound — Hides like a promise In your broken heart
For image credit please click hereon Carrie’s Sunday Muse #245; Shay’s Word Garden Word List using three of twenty words; and Sammi’s Weekend Writing Prompt #297 using “key” in prose or poem of 71 words.
I walked this life – lonely – Aware of shame – only – Chiding Your apathy – to me – I saw myself – painfully – alone.
In Your light I see – suddenly – Always You are – with me – Walking me home – lonely – Never having left me – painfully – alone.
Psalm 35:4-9 (NIV): Your steadfast love, O LORD, extends to the heavens, your faithfulness to the clouds. Your righteousness is like the mountains of God; your judgments are like the great deep; man and beast you save, O LORD. How precious is your steadfast love, O God! The children of mankind take refuge in the shadow of your wings. They feast on the abundance of your house, and you give them drink from the river of your delights. For with you is the fountain of life; in your light do we see light.
I had two grannies (Not everyone does, you know). One tall and spindly like a soothsayer’s runes And another short and dwarfish like a hoarder of rubies.
If they could have peeled the flesh off me They would have when I was four And grafted their skin on me with their Surgery knives of fleshy steel called tongues.
I remember them: their eyes, and now I wish — I wish I didn’t. Except in those messy fairy tales where Witches get pushed into ovens And children find their own way home.
But they don’t.
Just as an addendum: I never saw my grandmothers again after the age of six when we moved and they diedat a much later date. My dim memories of them are few.
When I walk down the street with you it seems an avenue for the parvenu who glitter and mime like bees round a cru flush with cash, flush with dash, flush with boppity-boo.
I lean in, you lean out, you lean in, I lean out, a flamenco we do, even a samba no doubt while the white picket fences they shimmer and shout “Oh look who! Oh look who!” like old aunties with gout.
And I’m so gorgeous and you’re larger than life and if you’re honest, you’ll make me your wife; but this world is so public and with catastrophes rife its cerulean sky could change into a razor-sharp knife.
Would you stay with me, forever and a day when the zinnias of summer turn a wintry gray? When we walk beneath cottonwoods, will you turn and say, “I’m glad you and I chose to go another way”?
Photo by Adam BirdContinue reading “A Walk With You”→
When, in a word, I write my Contentment as a city Founded by His Spirit Whose boast is the cross
Whose streets are the Lord’s Whose enterprises are the Lord’s Whose possessions are the Lord’s Whose provisions are the Lord’s
A city in which all is quieted in the Lord All concerns are submitted to the Lord All desires are centered in the Lord All hopes are in the faithfulness of the Lord All joy is found in the love of the Lord All trust abounds in the goodness of the Lord
Then my soul glories in God my Savior alone As enemies rail futilely against its walls Fail to supplant the reign of the Lord Every extremity under His sovereign control Every lack a gain in grace upon grace Every worry cast aside for the security of His promises Every treasure in heaven stored from moth and rust and thieves
Then I am free to be satisfied in the Lord Free to be satisfied with myself Free to be part of the mystery That is, Christ in me, the hope of glory.
It’s just this way, she agonized, and I won’t end where I’ve begun. It’s the dream I’m waking up to.
I wonder, he antagonized, what if today becomes your cannibal past tomorrow, feeding on today’s life, keeping itself alive, demanding its pound of flesh?
She knew his aim. It was to lead her in circles, to origins, not beginnings.
But each cross-road meant progress, a royal one, or common as a pilgrim on a well-worn track, peculiar as a dream
singular as a vision, a glaring blaze of glory, immense as a grain of sand sparkling in the New Jerusalem.
A three-prompt medley is the tune I'm playing off with Rochelle's Friday Fictioneers photo prompt & 100-word challenge, dVerse's Poetics: Visionary Poetry, and GirlieOnEdge Six Sentence Story ("lead"). Join us!
A little fun combining three prompts: from dverse where I chose to use all the podcast titlesto compose a poem (Articles of Interest: American Ivy, I Was Never There, Legacy of Speed, Not Lost, Pivot, Reveal: After Ayotzinapa, Rumble Strip, Serial, This American Life, Ghost in the Burbs); Rochelle’s Friday Fictioneers (100 words or less using the photo prompt below); and GirlieonEdge’s Six Sentence Story (prompt word: VISA). Does the story poem succeed? Well, you be the judge!
O LORD, sheer joy with you, Israel, in exile Homeward bound From among a people of strange tongue Gone forth in sheer joy
Shouting Hallelujah! Out of Egypt have I gone forth with you, True and Faithful by name In sheer Joy!
How heavy the moment Is with eternity, Lord Jesus, Yet each flows after the other Like water escaping The hand that captures The eyes that see The thoughts that would knot Them into a jeweled chain To be adorned not as memory But as presence
Cradled birth, my life in your hands: Tenderly kept as shepherd with lamb Hurrying at angelic proclamations of peace Heavens ringing hallelujahs Your delight brooding over the waters Breaking over this new life, moments Spirit-born
When come the magi bearing each — On a camel fresh out of the box Of ornaments and sweet scents Frankincense and myrrh unpacked — Mystery like knots unraveling sheer
Joy, O Lord! You give each new Moment flowing rapidly bringing you Nearer, sheer joy as I await the Long-awaited coming in sheer joy!
I wept and You heard me I cried out and You helped me I knew no rest, only loss; to You O LORD, I stretched my hands:
“I have no words No pleas to offer The wind is strong My breath is gone
There is the desert Where there’s no succor Here is the sea Where I will drown
Unless You come To deliver The world will take The life you own.”
So I cried and in love You answered You came down from Heaven’s splendor Down, down, down as it was written, Born of virgin, clothed in flesh.
From cords of death You unbound me Shedding Your blood to release me Nailed to a cross my guilt You bore for me From the grave rising my life You saved.
Now I stand on solid ground Upon the Rock You set me on All the darkness flees before me As with Your light I abound.
Like a deer upon Your holy mountain New heights of glory I can see Though rising waters still pursue me Lord, my eyes are set on Thee.
Come, then, Jesus, as once before You came Your children to deliver Now return and never leave us On that Day when all floods cease.
Staggering in boot wise Through a warm doorway Enormous and puny with grace I measure myself By snowflakes, heavenly stars On Christmas mittens Now red with tears
Image credit: Madison Inouye (Pexels); linked to dVerse MTB:zen poetry)
of reindeer snow of red-nosed glow from snowball throw
aimed happy crazy on mouth soft and saucy and your eyes that melt me
gleam a Southern summertime of delicious crime as time spins on a dime.
A recipe for Peanut Butter Snowballs (pictured above) is here.Of course the earliest reference to peanut butter can be traced back to the Aztecs who would not have been acquainted with snow. Written for dVerse’s Quadrille (44 words, “candy”).
Jyoti Sahi (1944–), Holding the Flame of Fire, 2005. Kolkata, India.
Being found by You, I find everything: the sky a brighter blue, the leaves a happier hue of glistening green, the river’s melodious
sounds rising high and low, bandying mountain notes to valley tunes, and sun-washed strands of ocean shores joining moon-drawn tides of marshalled harmony.
Being known by You, I know everything: Love stronger than Death, darkness overcome by Light, Peace past understanding, Hope unbounded, Joy unspeakable,
Faith that Hell’s gates will assail in prayer, Strength of soul, Patience through trials, Your Life eternal flowing through me, Your Blood that washed every stain of sin.
Being loved by You, no other love compares: not love of man or woman or child; not the charms of all the world’s delights, not health nor fortune, not lands
nor houses, neither knowledge of every secret on earth or above it, nor wisdom to confound and bring to their knees every earthly might and power.
There’s nothing on earth for me if not for You: there’s nothing in heaven if You be not there: Mary’s little baby boy would be just another child
if he had not been You come down to earth, taking on our flesh, suffering on earth the plight that is ours, to give to us, Your children, by faith the glory that is Yours.
The nurses flocked, they flocked to me like jackdaws thirsting And me without a jaw left behind in the mouth of a Kamchatka brown bear Airlifted and onto trolleys, recomposing surgeries discomposed, composing (Is my jaw now compost? Half my face for gruel) their reinvention with chalk lines drawn And I with hymns and old prayers, half-remembered in dragon’s mist, tamping Down hysteria, breathing, breathing, wondering at my new name, Even-given, transfigured By suffering into medka, call me medka, half- human, half-bear, Conflated by misunderstanding, or was it evil, this force of Nature’s kiss Which bit off more than it could chew at one sitting, to make of an anthropologist A believer in transfiguration, to wish for the Other when left to the mercy of human hands.
N.B. This poem is solely my personal interpretation based on what I’ve read in reviews of a recent book by Nastassja Martin, an anthropologist studying the indigenous Even people of Siberia, in which she recounts her experiences after a Kamchatka bear “went off with a chunk of my jaw clenched in his own.”
This long November day unravels, filaments of self unthreaded spin in disarray seek a coalescing glance from Thee, my soul’s desire.
This long November night defeats, malingers yesterdays that moon in shallow doorways guilt-shadowed, hammering refrains that only Thy voice can silence.
Hasten to send Thou, Oh Lord, Thy Word, Thy Light by day, by night, my sight unblind, my thought overspread, unroll yard by yard Thy seeded spring in frozen heart by Thy Spirit’s warmth.
And then shall November night become as day, November day as night unfurled in Thy blanketing love, and like a traveler who spies a bridge o’er torrents harsh, I’ll race to cross encircling time, and so abide in Thee.
Dreams from a Pilgrimage 