Touch

I needed to be touched

When I found her waiting in the lobby of loneliness

After a long absence of feeling

My skin had forgotten

The sensation of fingertips

Her nakedness comforted my soul

While she told me stories with her eyes

As we danced in the shadows of time

I Will Miss You

I will miss you

Like an August night on a January morning

Or how I long for more words in a beautiful novel

After the last page has been read

I want to feel you like a poem

Written on my body

I want to photograph you

While the light of morning dances on your skin

Then press the poem and the light between us

To keep safe our story

When the night comes

To steal away our moments of time

A Better Story

"I waited patiently for the Lord.

He inclined and heard my cry.

He brought me up out of the pit

Out of the miry clay.

I will sing, sing a new song.

I will sing, sing a new song.

How long to sing this song?"

~ Psalm 40/U2

"If for this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied."

~ Paul, I Corinthians 15:9

"Human life...." (is) "....grounded in and constituted by the implicit or explicit stories which humans tell themselves and one another."

~ N.T. Wright, The New Testament and the People of God

Why do I believe Jesus is God?

Because...

He tells a better story about why we are here

He lived a better story so we can live better stories

Stories...

Real and tragic

Beautiful and hopeful

His story is our beginning

There is betrayal and anguish and death and tears

But no ending only an invitation ~ "Come..."

The grief we feel will turn to joy

The tears wiped away

He said...

"I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly."

In the beginning there was a story...

A garden

Humanity

Distortion

Exodus

Exile

Exodus

Embrace

Restoration

A new garden

Living waters

Resurrection

Forgiveness

Grace

Life

A love story for humanity

Making all things new

"The Spirit and the bride say, 'Come.'

And let everyone who hears say, 'Come.'

And let everyone who is thirsty come.

Let anyone who wishes take the water of life as a gift."

~ John, Revelation 22:17

 

I Search

I search...

For you

On deserted roads

On the blank pages of time

Where I write and expect you to appear

I search…

In the space between here and there

In the quiet corners of dimly lit cafes

In dreams during mid-afternoon naps

In Pubs while drinking beer and whiskey shots

In the melody of beautiful songs

In the words of a novel

In the cadence of a poem

In my bed between soft sheets

In my bruised heart

In the whispers of the wind

In the roar of a waterfall

In a strangers smile

In my empty arms

In waiting

I search...

 

Naked

It comes out of nowhere

An ache for epistemological mooring

The loneliness, ennui and isolation

Of the search

Solitary confinement of the soul

A longing for intellectual touch

To know and be known

Mingling minds in conversational intercourse

Ideas bared between sheets of thought

Vulnerable locutions in the night

Poetic memory wrapped in metaphor

Making the story with two endings

Searching the empirical forest of otherness

To encounter more than an abstraction

To touch, taste and feel the ineffable

If only for the briefest of moments

 

Requiem

I don't know what to say

When

There are no words in the night

When

Her clothes drop too quickly to the floor

When

Her lips move without speaking

When

I am lost

When

The radio plays a requiem of regret

This Train

Time for a little more Promised Land and a little less wilderness, time for a journey, time for glimpses of grace, time to burn down the buildings that hold in the fear, time to dismantle the institutions that kill the hope and dreams of humanity, time to re-imagine what is possible. Time for a peripatetic ecclesiology of healing encounters. Time to get on the Train of creative and inclusive community…

(Bruce Springsteen, Land of Hope and Dreams)

“This train...

Carries saints and sinners

This train…

Carries losers and winners

This train…

Carries whores and gamblers…

This train

Carries lost souls

I said this train…

Dreams will not be thwarted

This train…

Faith will be rewarded…”

~ Bruce Springsteen, Land of Hopes and Dreams

 

 

 

Lines

I once saw lines

On a shoulder above the clavicle

Bared to sunshine

Words etched in skin

To touch...to trace...

With fingertips

While eyes met listening

Lines of syllables

Written for hearts on rainy days

Connecting lines of time

Dark lines of a tattoo

Life bringing lines

Of words in a sentence

Exuding depth

And profoundness

And lush compassion

Deep

Deep

Deep

Deep

Lines of fluidity and becoming

Lines unencumbered

Liberating lines

Lines in the story of a journey

Poetic lines

Of meetings in coffee shops

Memories and hope

Drawn on a body

With imperishable ink

Rivendell

"Not all those who wander are lost..."

~ J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring

"In the days of the Third Age, after the fall of Gil-galad, Master Elrond abode in Imladris, and he gathered there many Elves, and other folk of wisdom and power from among all the kindreds of Middle-earth, and he preserved through many lives of men the memory of all that had been fair; and the house of Elrond was a refuge for the weary and the oppressed, and a treasury of good counsel and wise lore."
~ J.R.R. Tolkien, The Silmarillion

Healing

At times something inside of you shifts for no other reason than grace has broken through the stranglehold of pain. Spaces and places have profound influence, as do friends, and the stories they share. Healing comes slowly at times and is found in the moments of time which slip away and in which encounters of humanity occur. Our stories mingle and flow as grace weaves through them - the past is swallowed in the present as the future is aware of the past. This past weekend was an oasis for me as Rivendell was for Frodo on his journey after being wounded and needed to heal. I can't explain what happens when something shifts but when it does you know and life is different again.

(Healing Encounters: Music & Lyrics by Leonard Cohen, Come Healing)

 

Memorial Weekend

(Pearl Jam, Black)


In the morning
We were moving a rose bush
(With difficulty)
Tangled roots in the dirt
Rocks and red clay

In the afternoon
We were pricked by it's thorns
(The pain different for each)
The blood oozed into the ground
Our hearts turned black

Ed's

I still wanted to...

Sleep next to someone

Kiss someone

Feel someone

(Feel something other than numb)

The night

We drank at Ed's

The night

We kissed

The night

We fell asleep together

And you said you like the way I kissed

I held you

Your breast cupped in my hand

While we slept

While seconds ran away

I remember it all...

Tonight at Ed's

Again

Alone

 

Dalliance

"Someone I loved once gave me a box full of darkness.

It took me years to understand that this too, was a gift."

~ Mary Oliver

Lines bleed into lines

Time and tension between breaths

Rotating spheres with similar regrets

Interchangeable eyes

Posing questions of consequence

The music plays

The melody stays

The beat sustains

The lyrical change

A blind pirouette

Dalliance and doubt

Charades and musical chairs with vodka and gin

Whose bed are you in?

With eyes closed there is no sin

 

Amber & Brooke

Amber, I cannot believe you are graduating from college this week with degree in history.

(Time still continues to mystify me)

Brooke, I can't believe you are touching lives as an EMT and becoming a paramedic. 

You were both beautiful little girls yesterday and today you are beautiful, intelligent and confident 

women.

For some reason you have both gone down branches of the river of my passions, dreams and love.

You are both pursuing your interests brilliantly and amazingly. 

I am so proud of each of you and filled with joy when I think about how you are moving 

courageously through life. 

From your first breath

I have loved you

So know

If…

All the music ever stops

If…

All the words are ever spoken

And there is nothing left

Only…

“The stillness between two waves of the sea…”

In the silence of the night

When the light seems distant

I will always come to you

With my love

(U2 - Original Of The Species)

 

 

Fathers and Sons

 

"Fathers and sons...

They held the light

Yes they did

And it shined all night

Oh ~ all night

And they took the blows

Yes they did

Never letting go

Oh no ~ oh no ~ oh no

And so they came with perfect schemes

And precious dreams that made them one

One by one

Oh ~ look up and see the eagles fly

And fill the sky beneath the sun

Fathers and sons..."

~ Neil Diamond

(U2 ~ Sometimes You Can't Make It On Your Own)

 

Words I Found

I found something today on a blog I look at from time to time, Pursuing Happiness (http://thisnakedlunch.tumblr.com). There was no author attached to what was written but the words are amazing to me.

I know I am difficult and complicated to be around and my moods shift and I isolate and hide myself - even from those who are the closest to me. I believe the words I found today must be how those close to me feel. I have heard similar sentiments expressed to me or attempted to be expressed to me. The thing is I don't believe I can be different from who I am. It has taken me so long now to know who it is I am and to begin to be okay with myself. Many times I wish I were different but then I wouldn't be me and then I would be a lie.

Anyone close to me please try to understand it is not that I dislike you or not love you or not appreciate you. I assure you, I do. It is just me who has to escape and recharge and be distant at times. It must be very frustrating to watch me leave into myself. It frustrates me at times. Yet, it is what allows me to be me.

Here are the words I found today:

How to love your depressed lover?

Last night I thought I kissed the loneliness from out your belly button. I thought I did, but later you sat up, all bones and restless hands, and told me there is a knot in your body that I cannot undo. I never know what to say to these things. "It’s okay." "Come back to bed." "Please don’t go away again." Sometimes you are gone for days at a time and it is all I can do not to call the police, file a missing person’s report, even though you are right there, still sleeping next to me in bed. But your eyes are like an empty house in winter: lights left on to scare away intruders. Except in this case I am the intruder and you are already locked up so tight that no one could possibly jimmy their way in. Last night I thought I gave you a reason not to be so sad when I held your body like a high note and we both trembled from the effort.

Some people, though, are sad against all reason, all sensibility, all love. I know better now. I know what to say to the things you admit to me in the dark, all bones and restless hands. “It’s okay.” “You can stay in bed.” “Please come back to me again."

Maybe all these words I found today are saying is I need space to breath till I am okay to venture out of myself again.

 

Rock Lake

I saw Rock Lake today
It was covered with ice

I saw the island we touched on
It was covered with snow

Where did that summer go?
And all the ones since?

Excavator

I am an excavator of memories
Transforming them into words
To fill blank pages 

Writing

I like writing 
In dimly lit bars
Alone
To cleanse my soul
When it is raining
When the words come
In coffee shops with good hot coffee
In places of mystery and inspiration
In places of silence and solitude
When I am deep inside myself
When the sun comes out
Sitting by water
Making poetic memories
When I am at peace
I like writing 

Time

 

I believe
I am beginning

To grasp

What happened between us

Or 

What didn't happen

In the end 
Are the two not the same?