Like
question marks
with bobbing
heads . . .
raise
their flat feet
and let them
sink.
Press
the algae
and answers
down
until
they are safely
buried and
hid.
Beaks
find algae,
fly away
fed . . .
the
answers stay
hidden in
hope.
-
We will be disquieted…
Stationary…
As time rolls us along in a chair diminished of all within our care.
Time will take our pocket knifes, our car keys, phones and money, our pets, our homes, our clothes and, finally, our precious dignity.
The losses will compile. The creeping cunning will hide an advancing daily shuffle, an encroaching daily slide.
Time!
Please take your time taking our time!
All sinning, all suffering, all pain leaves us with no earthly role, leaves us with joy or fear, our untethered soul with only one more thing to get or loose—the great all or all done.
There is so much time in eternity, all we ask is a few more minutes of mortality!
Sorry, the take won’t wait.
Oh yes! Oh no! Oh I don’t know! What to where? To grave? To end? To heaven? Or just the end?
Oh time beyond, time outside of time, grant us a sure sense — approaching death cures us of indifference—to beg the question, blessed to now confess our helplessness.
Before the take, grant us all one last dance, one fleeting chance to finally know your neglected name, to cast our needless wills in flame…
and we will have lived long enough.
— Justin the Agnostic
-
Six geese flew by in a clear azure sky, one gave a honk like a passing “Goodbye” . . .
As I sat back in my black folding chair, it spoke to my soul, to my heart’s inner ear:
“You saw me this once with five of my friends, up and away, where it starts and it ends.
Like much of your life we are mere observation, just lost in your memory with no revelation.”
What should I take from theses signs of creation? Only a smile and a wink, just my imagination?
Most of the time that is all that they are, locked into nature behind earthly bars,
Perhaps this flash of wild feathers and sound was meant to remind me to live above ground
To soar on occasion, to follow in flight — lifted to heaven by God’s holy sight.
-
Carry not a candle
Set your lantern down
Step into the darkness
Step onto holy ground —
The shadows fall in front
Call deep into the night
Not like cosmic guiding stars
They take away our sight —
Like sun without its rays
Black swallowing the sky
Like fish who live in caves
Born without their eyes —
The kindling of our hearts
Poised hoping for the fire
Whatever match we strike
Seems not to reach that far —
Blue void is beneath us
We sink and cannot swim
We cry out in pain for truth
We bow and turn to Him —
We bring our darkness with us
Hold it in prayerful hands
It slips between our fingers
Like blood into the sand —
The night we so constructed
Consumed us with a lie
Then came the holy whisper
“Let dying embers die” —
Carry not a candle
Walk joyful through the night
You will not fear the darkness
When you become the light.
-
What appears on far horizon
may be sought, may never be found —
like trying to hold the ring of a bell
past the midnight toll of sound.
Why a pelican never looks beyond
the next fish to be caught and had —
wind never judges which way is which
rain waters the good and the bad . . .
The boundary we see above the sea
becomes like hope, so it seems —
As our hearts unblind to truth and light
We die to yesterday’s dreams.
Someday they say when lapping waves still
at rest inside a new dawn —
old land and sea will no longer be
the horizon line will be gone . . .
-
the door is open —
is not.
the window closed —
yet open.
and the cat keeps the goldfish on edge —
all night long . . .
-
Illustration by Denis Naylor The ear of my heart
is where I hear
the sound of your say
outside my fear.
Yours is the voice
in silence here
I know your call
so close and clear.
-
NEW GODS of technology
you make no apology.
INNOCENT PLASTIC shiny metal
we created you to be
a harmless tool with grand potential
blind to a fault we failed to see.
BELOW IN COOL deception
hunger fed a baser need
seized by novel attraction
awakened so our social greed.
WILL THE GOOD ever equal
your vain and clever evil?
YOU ARE LIKE those ancient idols
ruling above their hapless makers
carved and cast in gold,
you in texts and tweets and videos.
EAR BUDS ENTOMB in sound
casting silence all around
eyeballs stuck on slick distractions
always blindly aiming down.
YOU DUMB and deaden
numb and leaden.
EYE-CANDIED games of chance and choice
bring relished death and violent voice,
altering reality in a realm so thrilling
with wave after wave of habitual killing.
LOST IN VISIONS of empty power,
hour after hour after hour after hour,
once promised to bring us cheer
now threaten compulsive fear.
AND SO, the endless needing
held in desperate waiting
for life-sustaining friending
what if it doesn’t come?
IT DOESN’T come
doesn’t come.
AND EVEN WHEN IT DOES,
we hurry to count our friends
wallowing in the never-satisfying sum.
WORSHIPING while walking
obediently bowing.
HOLDING us in captive hands
cuffed to starving souls,
following new gods with new demands,
listening to whispered commands,
going blank and blanker,
whenever wherever forever.
THESE NEW IDOLS like the old
cost a deadly price,
what came from human handiwork
calls for human sacrifice.
SO MANY RICHES we so wished
to end now so impoverished.
-
Death Unmasked 2020
Life suddenly hushed
Death uncovered on each face
Our masks now obvious
Where can we go?
We see and fear the end.
Both free and bound
Between gravity and flight
Called beyond earth and sun.
Virus and vitriol
Break out and break down
To kill and be killed
Unleashing raw power.
Truth wrestled over
Captured by culture’s force
Cowed and crowded
By the loudest voice.
If we could heal ourselves
We would.
Instead, we pay dearly
Choosing isolation.
One unsuspected feeling
Leads to the next
Like desperate and delightful
Winds coming and going.
We are more than
Mere planet walkers,
Beast lords,
Our souls cry out.
Help! Our masks reveal
To live is to risk each breath
Closer to the test
To face the one who loves and faces
Everyone.
-
Imagine a black spot
Floating on a borderless page
That stretches into infinity.
Consider, if you will,
That speck is absolutely all
You will ever possibly know.
The boundless space outside is what
You will never, ever know.
Standing now in knowing not
Rest within the wanting dot.
-
It took a stumbling dark search
Before I realized I could never see true light
Without looking through real eyes.
It required me to see beyond the false light,
Past the dark light posing as my light.
Free to see what is simply true —
And never what is simply true for me.
Corn Crib 