THERE I will be

I miss that house
Its backporch view
The double-car garage
The patio cookouts too

I wish I was there

The winter nights we went
without any gas
We slept in one small heated room
while Oklahoma Natural Gas #&%@ed us in the...

I wish I was there
Oh I wish I was there

And it’s been prayed for me by a dear friend who knows these things
That I feel lost because maybe I am
And that it is G-d that finds us on our way
We need not look

And I wonder what this recovery will look like
What will be these ramifications
What will be those repercussions

Will I be walking at Colfax and Grant
    when a wayward used Hemingway book knocks me on the head?
Because it happens
Ow
But what if that’s what it is?
What if that’s exactly what it is?
When G-d finds me
    I do not want it to result in any significant brain trauma

I just want to be there when it happens

    I don’t need for my life to change that much
    or yours either

I just need to be there when it happens

Just really wanna be there when it happens

Spades

No
It’s important to name injustice where you find it
No
It’s essential to point out its damages

We grow dull should we stand too idle

No
It’s important to stand by
No
It’s important to feel the ground you walk
    to heed the rhythm and flow

Even if you seem to be in the midst of a time-lapsed video
The traffic lights swirling around you
The moon completing a perfect 180° arc before you can get only a few feet along

Yes
Call a spade a spade
Yes
Call me out where I have wronged you

    But do forgive me

    But do give me the benefit
        of the doubt
        of the confusion
        of the suspicion
        of the dis-ease
        of the question

    But do let me help you to look for other tools to dig our way out

    before soon all we see are spades
    they’re not all spades

I don’t want for all you to see are spades.

Junkyard goats and a one-eyed cat were our hosts...

    ...myself and the Sledge

    but there was Terry too.

“Would you be trying to fuck me...?”
    he recounted to me his conversation with the internet service
    that wanted, for a small continuous fee, to list his automotive repair shop
    in an online local business directory

Local being Eads, CO
And had the Sledge and I counted on her Isuzu breaking down on a Sunday afternoon pilgrimage
    to the remote plains
    where Col. Chivington had once proven himself to be
    a madman, an idiot, and a murderous sonofabitch forevermore
We would not have been graced by this robust slice of Americana

Journeying city pilgrims can only find such
        riding in style
            atop an on-call tote truck
        into a village closed for the day

But the goats
    the eerie
            eerie
    goats
with their junkyard habitat

so content to stare at us
all the while instinctively maintaining pace with us as we moved casually

    the grace
        the choreography on their part

    safe to say we were one with the goats in that moment

“We don’t get many visitors out this way,”
    I was convinced I heard one of them say in our language
        (because make no mistake: they had their own)

    but it might have been the cat
    who was well-cared for save the fact that one of its eyes was
                gone
    and only recently
    Never mind how we could tell how recently
        nor how we knew that it wasn’t much longer for this world
        despite its personable demeanor
        and apparently insatiable wish to just touch us
            (which sadly was quite unacceptable to us)

As I called home to warn that I would be home neither for church nor the Lost series finale
The former Col. Sledge did her best to accommodate and confirm Terry’s UFO concerns

This slice of Americana was
    in the end
        quite good to us
    as we of the city all imagine and hope in such situations

    trading in the same currency as us
        the fiscal kind and
        the humanity kind
    But that they took an out of town check was especially appreciated

Repairs completed, we gave our thanks and made our way
The Sledge urging me to make some last minute covert photography
    as if we would ever forget
but just so we would be believed
and so we would too

The distance we made
    did not diminish the weighty stare of junkyard goats

Awkward white prayer in an awkward awkward place

God be with me

in the nervous pounding of my heart
in the shortness of breath

which I don’t really mind so much--
    courage is a cardiopulmonary exercise after all

God be with me

in the difficult conversation ahead
in the admission I must make
    that injustice is still a very nerve-wracking matter
    no matter how much you talk about it
    but my complicity within it
    is a terrifying one

God be with me

Let me speak nothing but the truth
For I don’t think my brother from the margin is very interested in hearing about things I don’t really know about
    and other speculations prompted by my ethnic guilt
He grants me audience that I’m not sure I deserve

Thank you God
    that there is still
    he and I
    both of us who we are
    where we are
    and all that makes us

    still
    after all that
    somehow able to speak to one another

God be with me now in the hearing

Cacophony

We were trapped
    caught in that horrific purgatory for night owls
    captivated before paid programming
        That guy that once sang for that marginally successful band
        and that woman that...
            appeared to have some connection with what they were talking about
        convincing us that the power rock ballads of the 70s and 80s
        were the absolute apex of human creativity

            more and more so with each successive loop

            (Whitesnake and Night Ranger in the same collection you say?)

Transfixed
    and Dazzled
    by the nostalgia of a youth that...
    wasn’t...really ours...ever
But nonetheless titillated
    and tantalized
        they mean the same thing
    by the rolling credits
    by a series of endless promotional clips from yesteryear
        unearthed for this
        sewn together in a rock-ous montage
        of hair
            light headbanging
            emphatic fist-pumping
                and a meticulously edited orchestration
                of cacophonic climax

Yes, we could pay the $119.96 for all 9 discs in the collection
That would be better than the infomercial how...?

(For Kit)

Sandstorm

There is an old myth I got into my head a long time ago
    About how a sandstorm whipped into West Texas
        on the day I was born

I don’t really know how true it is
If my mom is to believed
    the storm was not that remarkable
but as she was preoccupied in a delivery room
    for more than a few hours that day
I tend to take her interpretation with a grain
    (it couldn’t be that giving birth for the third time
    made a sandstorm pale by comparison)

What better credibility can one’s own genesis get
    than being heralded in by the wind and the earth?
Maybe this is why I feel so at home with severe weather
Maybe this is why I want to be outside in the springtime
    when the air gets thick with a lukewarm stillness
        clouds mount

        sky turns peach
        sky turns green
        sky turns the alarming color of a deep bruise

But for better or worse, I’m not alarmed
And I have to fight a mighty urge to go out and greet it
Because maybe I brought it here
Like a pilgrimage of remembrance
    it makes its way back to me

Don’t misunderstand:
I don’t think I’m the center of any universe
But perhaps this storm and I are old friends
    and maybe it heralded in a few others in its time
    and it now has lots of friends it’s come to see

I could wonder why a storm would have any such attachments to people
But I can well imagine that storms aren’t as choosey about their friends as I am
One Creature is as interesting to it as another

Maybe the storm’s a complete asshole
Bent on nothing but wreaking havoc on our churches, our airports,
our trailer parks   
    but I doubt it
Were it one to process and respond to complaints
    it might point out that it received none
    not ‘til we started covering the ground
        (and I mean covering)
            with all our shit

Maybe it just comes back to check in occasionally
Bringing with it whatever elements it meets along the way
Just to remind me
    You were part of this from the start
    And you still are

    To this you all return

Abraham: Close Call - (response for Easter 2011 liturgy)

When the boy asked me
    “Where is the lamb?”
I almost felt like chuckling
    because there was a punchline here
    so morbidly profound
    so unbelievable

and I knew it would turn out how...?

I didn’t know.
I doubted.
I doubted as I cut the wood.
I doubted on the first day
I doubted on the second day.
As I looked up to the mountain, I doubted.

The entire distance we set out...?
    Yep--doubted.
    Every excruciating inch of every torturous mile.
    I doubted.

Do you suppose that it was easy to worship with the boy?
Do you imagine that it was easy loading the wood on the boy’s back?

“God himself will provide...” I said to him--as his parent
     but I didn’t know.
Then I realized we still had yet more of a walk ahead of us
    and so much more doubting to be my companion.
And I think it might have occurred to the boy somewhere along the way that this was actually a trail trodden in our time
    by many firstborns before him
From which they usually don’t return.

Most gods we find ourselves worshipping require such things.
Most gods we worship don’t bat an eye when the blood of innocents is offered
    and they certainly never stop once you’ve offered just one.

But then most gods aren’t much for the outlandish promise
    of a child to a couple in their old age
Most gods wouldn’t bother allowing me to negotiate and haggle
    how many righteous people among the wicked it would take
    to demonstrate an all-consuming redemptive grace
    for a people so seemingly and completely lost
In fact, whenever most gods are asked to establish a precedent for their justice
    I’m pretty sure the answer does come in the way of
    the shedding of more blood

Wouldn’t we all prefer silence in that case?

And so, because I had some intimate clue about this god
    that this god might somehow be different than the others
        the ones that don’t take as kindly to things like ‘doubting’
    this is why I even bothered doubting at all.

But I didn’t know.

And I doubted to the very moment that I reached out my hand
    to take the knife
    and the angel told me to stop.

To this time
    I don’t know which one of us was testing the other more.