Then the end

Pangs got me reeling

Cries keening like bells pealing

Reckoning with the feeling 

That it’s all ending

Too much spending 

Overdrawing the account of lives and blood 

Breath and wings

And soft dying things

Blood let out 

Without a shout 

///

Why are we waiting for death (exasperating, anxiously horrifying, gripping and stunting, stealing and snuffing [out]). 

Death I don’t want to wait for you

I’d rather meet you, head on

Face to face 

And die 

I’d rather kill you 

Than watch my sons die

My brothers bleed out

My father wheeze away

Oh death, your sting permeates

Oh grave, you’re winning. 

///

“And you will hear of wars and rumors of wars. See that you are not alarmed, for this must take place, but the end is not yet. For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom, and there will be famines and earthquakes in various places. All these are but the beginning of the birth pains.”

Matthew 24:6-8

Noticing is prayer

Noticing is part of prayer.  It’s being attentive to His working in and around us.  Being attentive is part of the conversation of prayer.  Prayer is conversation – a dialogue between Creator and creature. And all of this – noticing, being attentive, being in dialogue with Him throughout the day, with more noticing and conversation – is all part of abiding.  It’s living life WITH God. 
-Claudia W

Materials for a broken heart

Glass, preferable brown and broken into shards. Green is also acceptable, but not clear.

Yarn, dyed black, red, brown or white. 

Roots, tangled and dried.

Red Wine in a Tabasco bottle. 

Clay, dirt, but no sand. Pebbles but no rocks. Stones of white, or gray, but not tan.

Tears in glass jars, as many as you can fill.

Oil of olives ‏من جدتك from last season. 

Sinews, no bone.

Knotted shoelaces.

Jax, metal not plastic.

Aluminum bottle caps.

Ashes. 

Wakefulness and ache, grief borne of desire unmuted and lasting benevolence. 

The war of hope

The "laws of war" 

what a inexplicable phrase

for how is war governed by law?

How is genocide justified?

For the "safety" of the other?

Here, the broken-hearted have hearts that are re-broken daily 

Unmended, unrested, unseen

Outcasts across the world, no where, now where, to go?

Where to hope, now?

Unceasingly until a ceasefire 

Unwaveringly until the dehumanized are reimagined 

No more as the “other;” no longer savages, animals, or barbarians but as fellow humans.

Unstoppable hope, arise, 

on wings, alight, 

above the ground to soar,

to see unwearied, 

to fight for freedom, without fainting

To name the cause of love as the highest call, 

to keep hoping 

in spite of it all. 

How can you

How can you still fly?

You’ve got a log on your eye

You’ve got a root of bitterness hanging on your back, it’s tendril roots dangling from your stomach. 

How can you still fly?

With the heavy weight inside

The body count, the soilders out 

Each name named.

How can you still fly?

Isn’t there a shadow over your mind

It’s darkness, not shade 

It’s obscuring your way.

How can you still fly?

Aren’t you tired now, exhausted

Why don’t you just curse god and die 

Cease your pitiless flight.

Why you still fly?

Because

I was made

For the sky.

The messenger between us

I’m weary of confiding each night to her of my longing 

She glows with patience, radiating understanding, like she has heard such griefs before 

La luna, in your hiddenness you mirror my ache, in your fullness you shine my bright passion 

Send him this message, that I’m still waiting to embrace beneath your halo, together under the same sky. 

Comfort me

Comfort me with your body
Comfort me with your warmth
Comfort me so I will not feel
Swallowed by the void
The chaos outside, the travail
The weeping and gnashing of teeth under the veil

Comfort me with your arms
Comfort me with your smell
Comfort me so I can hear
And remember times of love without fear 

Comfort me with your kisses
Comfort me with your touch
Comfort me with your presence
When nothings making sense

Comfort me with a caress
Comfort me with your desire
Comfort me with your will to live
And not give up in the fire
A choice for life in the midst of strife 

To love when everything is shaking,

To forgive when everything is breaking 

To wait and work for the awakening 

Bodily comfort your bride 

Your love will not be denied 

Harkening the end of the age, Bridegroom of the harvest, come.

Cried

 Scared
scarred, sacred,
    cried.

 

 

Carrying bundles

 When 

Birds of flight

Carry bundles of stones 

Far from our coast 

The collapse is unnoticed

At first but over time 

Waves reach every shoreline 

The echoes are un-erasable 

Knowing upheaval and fear

Because of where you’ve placed your stake

Is costly

And worthy

Simply Enough

If the only prayer you said was thank you, that would be enough. ― Meister Eckhart

Play

To captivate, enchanting a filament of stone into a breathing note 

To culminate, fulfillment of dervish whirling into ecstasy 

To connect, in seismic waves cascading warmly as lava, fullness echoing beyond velvet fountains 

Fearless trembling toward play 

Lavish and urgent, she stills 

Herald of the moment, incomplete as it is,

It’s enough for the day.

Raw laments

Rumbles

Buildings shaking, 

A stutter, 

a shuttering tremble 

Oh God

Protect; provide

It sounds like thunder/It sounds like fireworks 

It sounds like fear/It sounds like revenge

Alert; sirens

An unstopping ping of 'Tzofer' notifications

The external/internal alarm sounds 

Resounding

Where can I go?

To where can we run?

It is terror without and within,

Unrelenting.

Your face, Adonai, do I seek.

Your heart, El, do I long to know.

Who sees the fearful sheep with mercy

I'm so sad, I'm so sorry.

I'm lamenting we're in this position of futility

The rupture of humanity at enmity.

Do I want you, or do I want peace?

In my body and mind, one breath at a time.

In the end I will not regret 

One moment I've spent with you.

It's not that panic doesn't come

It's that the body can cycle and resolve back into safety.

All we want is resolution

Re/solve me 

In one night, everything changes. We laughed, breaking bread

Today we are stricken, afflicted by fear. But do we really change?

In between the psalms of sirens (Cycling Psalms 27, 33, 69, 91)

I do laundry.

So confused how "they" are so indignant 

Rallying prayer "we are under attack" 

Did you not invite this attack with your assaults, oppression, harassment? 

With the blood of their sons in "your" streets? 

No one deserves to live in fear;

The child in Gaza is also afraid.

Am I too the enemy? 

Yes, I am/against this. 

When I wept with the slaughtered; Gaza, Nablus, Jenin, 

When I've feared with the settlers, the IDF, the Oleem. 

Lord have mercy, we all like sheep have gone astray.

How much (coma hesed/במה חסד) grace [do you have]? 

Endless; 

Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. 

72 days

Today I walk through museum halls                      
Y no estabas tú 
I made dinner and drank wine by candlelight
Y no estabas tú 
The calendar tells me it’s 72 days 
Until my tears can stop falling 
So I’ll keep waiting 
hasta que estés conmigo

Until then, my heart yearns 
Sometimes overwhelmed by longing so
I gasp for new mercies like needing air  
In my weakness my God is with me teaching me patience 
And in His presence 
No estoy solo

Held secure

Folded in hug  

Like You cradled Moses in the cleft of the rock 

You are so much bigger than me

You are safe to hold me 

With all his doubts and all my fears 

You comfort me 

I can be small 

Your love holds me secure  

Dwell

9/7/23 Dwell

Your presence 

Abide and belong 

Snugly home 

*a new series inspired by NY times Wordles

Await

9/3/23

Await

A wait so 

long the weight was an 

appendage 

Await

Anticipating 

To arrival: decades of

Longing;  fulfillment  

*New series: haikus inspired by New York Times Wordles  

Re-align

The margins have switched sides 

What else will be realigned?

(Right to left, left to right)

Walking into the sunrise

Never arriving at a vantage, you must go further, further East 

I, however, found a school garden 

Bees rambling amongst the English lavender, wormwood, clary sage, flamevine, oregano, weeds

And untended compost bins breeding flies 

Summer neglect; school is starting this week 

“The traffic will be crazy” they say, with kids back riding the bus, and all the parents chauffeuring 

It’s a rhythm each year, navigating the beginnings, the anticipation knotting in your stomach 

Grief succoring in my waking darkness 

To long for something deeply 

Must mean something; a growing attachment, blossoming with hope,

I tell the drifting bee of my West-ward longing

What is life but darkness before chasing the rising.

River’s ache

You indulged my river hungry body
Extended arms along the park bench 
in symmetry 

Unwrapping regalos, 
Small expressions to commemorate us; 
What’s burgeoning  

Parting lips, 
Softest wisps sinking  
Warmth flushing 

With gentleness
Through my reluctant, fearful tension
Into spacious tenderness 

Patient and safe, 
Steady and fierce;
The longing deepens 

Embedded, permeating 
Under streetlights 
Denying impending flights 

Entering a fleeting 
Moment, so new and fluid and 
Glowing  

Ash leaves tinged with yellow 
Summer turning fallow 
This severing 

Or rather, elongating, of our connection,
May it lead to the fullness we’re 
Aching for.

No more distance

I love you,

And I’m going to keep loving you,

Until I can’t stand the separation anymore.

Then in fullness of days I’ll bring us together face to face. No more distance, full romance, an open door.

This vaporous life, 

this misty moment of strife 

For you, death is gain.

In the flickering of an eye, it will all be changed 

And all your wilted longings and weak attempts rearranged 

Made perfect and complete 

At my feet. 

And you’ll fully know me, even as you’ve been known

Forever, my very own.

Weaving stories

I can’t reciprocate, I don’t have a depth to disclose in the same way

But I hope I can hold your story with honor and reverence, acceptance and compassion 

I have a simple story, as the older prodigal I was invited to the party and by grace came in around 19. I found the party was for me, too, and have been trying to learn how to dance ever since, 

It’s been decades of lonely traveling, writing poems, painting dreams, pasting photos in albums, binding sketchbooks and capping bottles of tears 

And I hope you’ll let me share them with you, maybe not in a five hour coffee-turns-to-dinner-date, but slowly, day by day, weaving our lives together, a tapestry of lavish beauty and praise.

Unresolvable

What a job description, the crooning mantra,
"I must save him to save myself."

The false face of God.
The absence of a protector and provider.

The vacuum of orphan-hood.
The bitter angry tap root, 

Core so rotten
hope nullified,

Sad and tormented, the cloudless sky; the waterless mist,
here for awhile before vanishing.

Shaded spectacle, deflated,
procrastinating passivity purloining promises 

Worthless seeds
from a dead tree

All this anger, it's a shell of protection,
coated and fossilized

Never forgotten weights hanging off my eyes,
owed and sour gray skies. 

This is resolving the unresolvable
Some stories don't find redemption until the end.

Someday
I will see it worked for good.

On being human(e)

This inter-generational trauma;
Mother Mary, Father Joseph, you know, all parents do their best with varying degrees of drama.

Help me, Holy Spirit, I surrender.
Show me how to myself be tender.

Regression; like a child, but not my child.
A grown man with tantrums wild.

He was supposed to be the one playing father in family scenes,
but our roles collide and I'm throwing away shitty jeans. 

His addiction, it's pain relief.
I bring down the gavel in judgment and condescending belief. 

He just wants solace.
Even if it comes broken and lawless. 

If he's good,
I can be understood. 

How's that co-depency going?
It's suffocating, she says, sowing 

Thorns of self-contempt, strangling the seed.
How do we go from tormented humanity to being freed?

 

HT: Gabor Mate, in the Realm of Hungry Ghosts.

Plunge

It’s like I’m asking you to breathe underwater with me 

Nevermind our terrestrial boundaries 

While we sink beneath the surface and try to love a new way 

Practice to be

I practice dreams for my poetry 

I practice poetry for my dreams

All the digging has left a dreamless cavern and all the green is a wordless wasteland. The departure into the abundance of beauty silenced my yearning

Until the rain came and 

My fears broke down in

The hardened soul, pummeled by hours of thunder. I softened into the mud as a seed

To be born again, here.

I am not the same seed as when I left.

I am new.

But rootless and unbound I was blown between houses and homes and expectations and money. Who dreams for money? 

Am I a now a soulless Dreamer, bereft of poetry, dying because I’m buying bread. 

This won’t suffice.

Adjust the dream, clip your wings so you can be a safe well fed land bird. And write your poetry from the land.

Spend nothing but love.

Learn new languages to prove God is not for one nation. 

That towers crumble, always.

Poets May forget their dreams and dreamers may loose their poetry 

But remembrance and finding are found in un-bought bread. 

I take and eat.