Somethin' Sunday...Psalm 40

Psalm 40

i waited for God

not long enough

i didn’t know I was stuck in the mud

it was dirty mud

i’ve been pumping my feet

busy keeping busy

flat out deciding not to wait

but there I was not moving

in all my agenda

i stand in the congregation and sing not

they see this and ignore

and mystery is no more

subtracted by giving my self to no one

even God

the “sure thing” I still look for

in the fray

is always a step away

i stockpile the blessings

without gratitude

and consume

and name above all names

words that go lined

but not underlined by You

my heart neither is true

i do something

i bring something

i be something

that You didn’t ask for

and i am sore

i am not ready to come

i can’t handle truths

i won’t believe the party

what happened and where

and why this blank stare

i have nothing to preach

yet preach i do

about me

and self dependant i be

so now i stopped tapping Your shoulder

and my heart is giving out

not love

just giving out

with lots of doubt

gangs and mobs and sins and guilts

curl around me

a barrier reef

grief

“But all who are hunting for you-

     oh, let them sing and be happy.

Let those who know what you’re all about

     tell the world you’re great and not quitting.

And me!  I’m a mess.  I’m nothing and have nothing:

     make something of me.

You can do it; you’ve got what it takes-

     but God, don’t put it off.”

i waited for God

not long enough

Quote from Psalm 40:16,17 The Message

I Blog

I Blog therefore I am.

I think.

I find myself wondering what the heck

I am doing glued to this screen

now that I have found a writing

community.

You might be thinking

“Not again.”

I have loads of pieces

and words lined up.

Copy and paste.

Self doubt and an interrogated

motivation.

A competitive spirit

and a comparative ego

have pushed aside

writing life as I knew it.

First love sought.

Stories right under

my heart.

I took a day this

week of no screen.

I was tired and a bit

depressed.

But maybe I should

be more purposed 

about breaks like L. L. Barkat

wrote about.

Hollow Weenie

Someone dogged me with this

adjective.

They said the weather was

holloweenie.

I wondered how this word usage

could be packaged for market.

Oscar Meyer every October

should fest orange dogs.

It makes sense nutritionally.

Every tube steak we have thrown

into mac and cheese is devoid

of nutritional value

hence…hollow weenie.

Scary eh?

Shhhhh....For Talon

I have less to say,
But more desire to say it.
I'll walk on discarding words.
They tumble like rocks
in a brain tumbler.
Polish, buff, caress
a few gems.
In the beginning
was
a
word.

A New Day

A New Day

How many have written of a sunrise?

The darkness pealed slowly like an orange.

A dimmer switch pushed up by God.

Then light sweeps the horizon and

overflows its banks.

The silhouettes shed layer after layer.

Shadows stretch, yawn, and stick.

It dawns on me.

This day I will stand in the light

and watch the shadow turn around me.

The silhouette lays on the ground

as an evidence  that my

life is transient.

That transience casts a shadow

this new day.

The sun’s up and I won’t spend

this day chasing shadows.

I will walk in the light.

Somethin' Sunday

Half

This I raise, my half empty glass.

You raise your half full one.

So they are…half.

I tried changing glasses.

Half empty consistently.

“So, show me how you hold it.”

“Here, take it, wrap your whole hand

around it.

Wrap your whole heart

around it.

Now, raise it above life’s happenings.

See how the light filters through it?”

“Yes, I see it.”

From down here the glass was fuller.

As the light broke on it

it illumined something in me.

It was then I saw her lift her

half full glass to God…

to offer Him a drink like

the woman at the well.

It was half full because it was

for someone else.

She raised it high.

I raised it only enough

to see my own reflection in it.

Like Narcissus only seeing myself.

Like many a drunk seeing only

themselves as their glass drains.

Now hope fills the difference.

Now my half empty glass runneth over.

Take Off.....For theme thursday

Take off

and don’t look down

on yourself

reinvent your wheel

as the spokes so

fast they idle

and slowly reverse

dust lifts and is

blown where

you used to be

it lays asleep

in your field of dreams

Keep them turning

deny the illusion

and roll on the

trail

ruts as anchors

to your soul

serve you well

to move ahead

until the gravel

dissipates

into the field of dreams

Fifty five...no.....for 55

Fifty five…no

I read so much
No time to write
I wish I may
I wish I might

My heart is full
Of not my own
I threw a seed
That was not sown

So now I think
A thought afar
It slipped my grip
A shooting star

I’m glogged with blogs
With words so fine
But whose are they
They are not mine

This
    is
all
 I
   have
to
   whine

Belt.......for One Shot

Belt

I’m getting old.
Not trousers rolled old.
But wearing my belt
like the equator old.
It separates the northern
hemisphere from the southern,
And my gut hangs across
me like the Milky Way.
Just a leather line of distinction
separates
between who I am becoming
and who I thought I was.
The buckle, the only
closed gate damming
up the disproportions.
Visual evidence of
my incongruence.
I feel top heavy with
an umbilical stub
leading on.
Infancy and efficacy
bound with a body bracelet.

Buncha Bunk

As this house boat rocks I find myself
rolling into my wife’s back.
I realized out of all the bedrooms
we don’t have a bunk bed.
Our little dorm could use one.
I mean, it’s not fair that all those
kids get to have one!

What if…?

Would Barbara and I fight
for who gets the top?
Would we need a rail?
I think we wouldn’t get much sleep.
We would giggle at our flatuations.
The chit-chat of what happened that day would echo.
The staring at the ceiling thinking out loud would exhale.
We would cup our hands against the light
to paste animals on the wall.
We would laugh at the upside down
face from the top bunk singing
the national anthem.
Every time we would hear foot steps
we would quickly lay at attention
with the covers up to our chin.
We would tapity tap fake Morse code on the
bottom of the top bunk.
We would hear little Emily say though the wall,
“Go to sleep!”
We would drape a blanket, like a waterfall,
and lay together on the bottom
with flashlights shooting up
on our scariest faces.
We would hold hands until the dangling
arm develops sleep tingles.
We would ask those “night” questions
and sometimes find answers.
We would lay and wonder who will nod off first.

Why Knot?......for Theme Thursday

Why Knot.

Because I just clipped my nails

and I can’t get a 7 year old knot

out of a pair of sneakers.

Because 25 years ago I

tied one on.

It wasn’t a slip knot either.

We are tight.

Because a chord of 3 strands

is not easily broken…

especially when knotted.

You know…

Because it’s the end of the rope.

Because of anything that spins, sways,

and rolls.  A stomach knot is not

pleasant.

Because I really keep warm

with the crocheted blanket

my sister made me.

Because when I am out on the

open sea of life it is the knots

which measure the amount

of distance in time.

Because Don Knotts really

made the Andy Griffith show.

He had me in stitches, not knots.

Because Cub Scouts sure do

know their knots.

I was never a cub or a scout.

I don’t know my knots.

Tie these verses in a knot if you wish.

They might make more sense

twisted so much you can’t

figure out where to start

loose them. 

Why Knot?

Midnight Mouse........Monday Poem

With her door open she could see the fridge.

It was only fifteen feet away when her

stomach would start to snore so loud

she would wake.

An extreme hallway tunnel vision ensued.

I imagine her sitting up and turning

toward the safe full of leftovers.

Her very own midnight oasis,

and whatever dreams may come

this would be the feeder of those dreams.

So she would walk slow and steady

invoking the creaks that have been

in the hallway floor for years.

She, with one eye half open,

was like a foraging bear.

She didn’t need the glasses

which always left two pock marks

on the bridge of her nose.

This was a nightly walk of faith…

Of hopes of aged goulash and

Michigan small curd cottages…

Of a pickle or salmon from a can…

Of cold hamburg gravy.

In this midnight catatonic state,

I would imagine her parallel arms

stretched before her like a zombie.

She never wondered if the fridge

light was on inside that closed door.

All that mattered was the light

which cascaded down on the

ala cart, potpourri diversity

that was the fridge.

Her one eye was wide open now.

There she would hunch in the

glow while her backlit body

told all beneath her nitie.

Then the bobble head

Hawaiian, grass skirted, would

dance a little under its veneer

of grease and dust from a top

of the island fridge.

It was there the midnight

Mouse would twitch her nose,

whiskers brushing the

cool  air and nibble

her way back to bed.

(For my mother, her many quirks I do adore.)  

Silence....Somethin Sunday

Silence

I push through the brush to get

to the silence

There is a trail that I want to end

so I push until I can push no longer…

until the growth becomes a wall

No more folding back the forest floor

No more whipping twigs of green noise

A hemmed in silence as I stand like a bush

I am as silent as ivy

Standing, breathing out dioxide

Creations green

After light

After sea

After all

Before me

Come silence and contain

Solitary not lonely

A tributary to the bosom of heaven

Blog Picking

I am a bit overwhelmed with all that is out there.  Even in the High Callings network.  I can't see the forest through the blogs.  The honeymoon is coming to an end.  Oh, but now to settle into commitment and find my voice.  Is it possible to get laryngitis on a blog?  

So, the blog has to take its rightful place, no?  No more picking blogs out of my nose.  No more writing with the goal of counting comments.  Jr. High stuff.  I admit it.  Motivations need modifying. 

Just like a first love...for a girl, for Jesus, for writing, I must return to passion pure and simple.  I am not pointing any fingers.  On the contrary, I have read so many fantastic first love bloggings.  Creativity gone wild and set free and vulnerably laid out in cyberspace with no strings attached.   So many new friends and hearts of passion. 

Maybe I am being way too serious here.  Maybe I am PMSing.  Maybe I am being a normal introverted writer type.

If we were to set all the blogs end to end they would reach around the sun and back. 
If each word were a Lego block we could build all sort of cool stuff.
If every image were laid translucent on top of each other the beauty would electrocute us.

Maybe I should pour a cup of Billy Coffey
or learn how to tweet like Duane Scott
or triangulate Faith, Fiction, and Friends
or Jingle one of my friends
or wag a Prairie Tale
or stand outside under the SPLITTERGEWITTER fearless
or pull over to the Weighstation
or cup my hands and drink from the Wellspring
or try to forge bkm's Signature
or "fiddle" around on Steveroni's Blog
or get caught by a sharp Talon
or try Thinking With An Open Mouth
or water a Seedling in Stone

I am about to go peruse Glynn's weekend findings and wonder how many I have time to read this weekend.  One thing is for sure...I will not be dissapointed.

The Cafe' ........for Pleasantly Disturbed Thursdays

The Café

I’m reminded of when Barbara and I were dating.  We would walk a few blocks to this quaint little café on the corner.  Its ambiance was aesthetically warm and beautiful.  But when I was with her, beauty and aesthetics were not necessary.  Nevertheless the beauty of this place was afforded to us.  I would open the door and she would walk through and it was as if that café framed her beauty.  We would always look for an open place near the window.  We would wit at a small oval table skirted with earth toned embroidery.  I especially enjoyed going there in the early evening as the sun would crop her dark brown hair.  Then Placido Domingo would sing his way down from the ceiling and surround us.

Barbara would then gently place her forearm and hand on the table as an invitation for me to rest my hand on hers.  A glass of burgundy for her, and light chardonnay for me.  Her hands would play with the glass, circling its rim with her fingers, gliding its stem with her palm. 

We would talk for hours about everything and nothing and the spaces between.  I would stare at her as she talked on and on, although not at her eyes.  I would imagine her eyelashes as a set of brushes that would paint the air between us as on a canvas.  Then she would notice I wasn’t listening and she would stare back at me, our eyes transfixed on each other, staring, gazing, pupil to pupil, as if they were portals to our very souls.

Then Placido hit a high and clear note, beautiful that evolved into irritation.  It was a sound that sliced our moment in two and broke our trance.

It was then we realized as we turned to look, a mother dragging her child out of the play land and out the door.  The child screaming and pleading like nails on a chalkboard…”I don’t want to go!  I don’t want to go!”   Then Laura and Lissie squished up against us and Laura said, “Dad, you lost!  Mom won the staring contest!” 

Then Barbara peeled Vermont from her wine glass and asked, “Jerry, do we need this?”  And I tenderly replied, “No, honey, we already have 13 of them, but I’ll keep this one just in case.”  And so I plucked it out of her hand with my forefinger and thumb and slid it into my breast pocket.

She gave me a look as if to indicate it was time to go, so we raised our glasses and took one last sip of diet coke.  Sadness came over us as the sun was just a dimple on the horizon.  But bitter sweet it was, for we knew that we would return to this café once again to sit and drink once more and with hope to peel off Connecticut Avenue.  

Dropped

I stumbled across a dropped call today.

I picked it up and wondered what dangling conversation

hung on its edges.

Upon scanning the area along the side of Almena road

I saw hundreds of fallen voices laying there.

I had stepped all over them like so many worms

on a rain soaked day.

The flattened words lay dead,

some hoping for a resurrection,

and some wishing they had never been said.

Idled words.

Loving words with their passion subtracted.

Crouching down, I started picking them up

like loose change on car mats.

I began to pile them in my left palm.

They became a pyramid of nouns,

verbs, and adjectives grouted 

together by prepositions.

Oh for a refrigerator to throw

these on so I can order them like a shell game.

Maybe there a chance I can put the sentences back together.

Maybe there’s hope to text the best words

with the purist of intentions to the expecting phones.

Maybe I can stand in the gap where the cell towers

wandered too far away from each other.

I do hate to see words lying beside the road.

Brown Around...........For One Shot Wednesday

I don’t bring the bills

I bring the stuff

I huff puff huff

With your treadmill

I walk with a brisk

I don’t lump on a log

I play with your dog

And hand you a Zappo’s

I don’t mess around

I parcel on top

Stop after stop

And leave before you answer

I watch your kids grow

Every time I wave

Their smiles I save

And tap tap my horn

I bring your meds

For you I pray

Wish I could stay

Thanks for the cookie

I am out in it

Snow rain wind shine

Warm most of the time

Because my mom dressed me

        (I always say)

I turn the wheel

The wheels turn

And I yearn

To satisfy as I brown around

UPS is where I work and I don’t clown around (most of the time), I Brown around.

Leaves

Mission today: sweep leaves, blow leaves, rake leaves…
Make them take their leave.
The elephant truck came once with it’s leaf sucking trunk.
We have to bait it again with leaves like a pile of peanuts.
I wonder how many of these once partners
in photosynthesis lie lifeless out there?
Thousands, billions, trillions, bazillions…
It’s like trying to fathom the national debt.
Might God have a name for each of these little ones?
I mean, He has the hairs on our head numbered.
His thoughts toward us are more in
number than the grains of sand by the sea.
He has taken our sins and thrown them as
far as the east is from the west…how far is that?…Really.
He named every star…Hubble let us know
we can never get to the end of those.
So, if He did name the fallen did He get out the
book of names and start scanning?
Nick, Jill, Sam, Dillon, Charlie,
Jose’, Li, Bruno, Ski, Tan,
Fodder, Flake, Crunch, Ash.
If you’re thinking that I’m writing to
put off the task ahead, that is partially true.
I want to put a little depth in the pile that is to be.
Gathering leaves can be a transcending experience.
It’s not simply about finding one’s yard again unless
our imaginations have been blown out of the top
of our minds and lay to be raked up by duty and indifference.
So, Rejoice! We get to be in the midst of cyclical wonders
set up before we had hairs numbered on our head,
before our feet felt warm grains of sand,
before we caught on that west just keeps going on and on,
before we were overwhelmed by the density of the Milky Way…
Wow! I get to rake leaves today!

Our Fathers, Who Art in Heaven

Our Fathers, Who Art in Heaven.

     It was a few days ago now that I made the delivery.  New York was the return address.  It was a funeral home in New York.  I knocked and waited.  No answer.  My niece lived on my route and in a strange coincidence I thought I was delivering the urn which held her father’s ashes.  I really didn’t want to leave it there all alone and in a corner on the doorstep.  Yet, a few days earlier she explained to me why there was to be no funeral.  “He was a loner,” she said.  So, as I set down the package I thought “he will simply be alone until she returns. He will be in his element.”   It turned out that it was the last of his things from the funeral home, not the urn itself.    I e-mailed her to make sure she got it.   I expressed my sadness and she hers. 

     Then I visited Splittergewitter and she posted a beautiful tribute to her father.  An honor expressed with depth and clarity.  It emoted strong and soft like an exchange that would take place between a father and daughter.  When she slipped behind his eyes to the dance beyond time, it was a bitter sweet connection that hung in the air and she harvested a poem some time later. (As Luci Shaw would say)

    Last night at dinner with some friends, he explained to me his disconnect when his father passed away.   Three days before his father died my friend said he was invited to pray with his dad and grandfather.   The thing was that both of them were obstinate toward God and any idea of God.  So when the grandfather said that it couldn’t hurt, hands were held and a passionate prayer for new birth was ensued.  The prayer itself sounded like labor pains to me.  In the end his father made peace with the God who exists.   The disconnect came when days later he was the one appointed to collect the urn.  One day he was praying and talking to his father and then a box was pushed toward him.  He explained to me how he felt that this situation was not resolved.  I understood that it would have been so different if he had seen the body laying still and at peace.  There was no funeral.

     We talked a while about the “father factor” everyone experiences.   How we as fathers wanted to be more present in our children’s lives.  How we wanted to break any unhealthy strings that were attached with our relationships with our fathers.  It reminded me of an old e-mail I sent to my sister years ago.

Saturday June 3^rd 2000

Last weekend I realized I hadn’t been to see Dad’s marker since the graveside service.  So I called my three brothers and asked them to meet me there at sunrise on Memorial Day to remember Dad.  I got there early to have some time to reflect and lay some flowers down.  The funny thing was that it took me ten minutes to find his spot…to find him.  Then when I did tears came like a dike had just burst.  I hadn’t expected that.  “It was just like when he was alive…I had to go looking for him,” I whispered.  Then the translation to my spiritual life was more understandable.   Issues of my doubting God came to surface.  Lies were uttered, “You have to go looking for God all the time too.  He even tells you to do it like some cosmic game of hide and seek.  When does He ever come looking for you?  (Believe me, I’ve found some pretty good spots to hide.) It seems God’s still at the tree, arms crossed, counting to infinity as only He can.”  Then truth chimed in with Psalm 139 and other scant passages I stored for the Spirit to recall.  Not to mention the sun that was starting its daily journey.  The smell was fresh of the flowers and the colors that brushed my senses. Then my brothers showed up.  We talked, cried, and I read some journal entries from around the time of Dad’s death and then read “his” poem.  We prayed the Lord’s Prayer and then I thanked the boys for joining me in my therapy session.  

     There are some arms of Christendom today that are promoting a gender neutral Bible.  Technically God is gender neutral.  Maybe a better way of putting it is bi-gender.  God encompasses femininity and masculinity, He created us male and female after all and we are God’s image.   But for me personally, I need God to be my father.   I need to know that God can pursue and protect and be strong in a “man” way sometimes.  Forgive me please, ladies.  I need my Dad.  I need my Abba.   I figure I need a father maybe because of the absence of my own.  When I am in a swirl of dad deaths a father’s arm around my shoulder is what I long for. 

Visit Splittergewitter on my blog list(in profile) to read her poem White Spaces

           

Crucifixion Sunday thoughts

Crucifixion


Would I touch the open wounds of Jesus
if he were to stand in the lonely places
of my heart?
Would I dare thrust my hand into his
side like a spear?
Would I gently place my fingers
in the palms of his hands?
There are places where crucifixion
wasn’t fiction at all.
The suffering of the cross cascaded
down through history,
it being the pinnacle of paradox.
The place where love and hate intersect.
So now we sometimes use innocent
suffering and death as a crucible
of the non-fiction Christ.
We read history books to numb any
existential wandering in our own
back yard.
There are crucified hearts laying,
one by one, without a beat,
hoping loosely for a resurrecting
touch, look, hug.
Will I look at the whole worlds suffering
and lose their own soul?
I don’t want Your death to be in vain
when there are opportunities to
touch the open wounds of those
near by.

Emily

Three steps for one of mine

She pitters and patters around me.

She is and I see my insides…

A pit pat little kid.

She and I hope someone is watching.

The child inside us twinkles a little star.

I held her hand at the long end of my heart.

The inside child dances on a picnic table

with no fear of edges.

The catching arms are ready.

Oh, she is, because she knows we

are. Watching.
We are witnesses to her little life like God is to ours.

                        

We and Us for Friday Flash 55

Step down

on your way

look around

make a stay

power loss

come here

try a toss

sincere

you are

I am

far

gone

to play

a ring

a kiss

an

over nite

gray grey grae

I will step up

for you

on my way

I can pray

you and me

become us and we.

Purgatory (preturbatory) For pleasantly disturbed Thursdays

Author's Note: This does contain disturbing material unless you do laundry(like me)...then, you're good.



Purgatory(Perturbatory)

I have my doubts that purgatory exists. If it does, I have some suggestions to put into the box. How about making it full of rooms, each one with its unique drudgery. After all the idea of purgatory should not be a waiting room full of periodicals of heavenly homes, eternal vacation spots, and cruises with Saints of old.
I would start with a room for laundry offenders. Like all those who don’t bother to right side out their socks. It will be filled with mounds of turned out socks with an integrated smell of all the stinky feet ones nostrils have experienced in their lifetime. A ferocious, fungal, foul smell that sticks to the inside of one’s lung fibers like dry oatmeal. They would have to reach into each unique sock and pull out the toe with its dead skin cells falling like snow.
There are those who fail to separate their underwear from their jeans. So I propose a conveyor belt with jeans hung upright just above ones shoulders so they would have to reach over the top to pluck out the defunct unmentionable….oops, I wasn't suppose to mention that.
Now for those who think cleaning out the lint trap is a suggestion, I suggest a spinning wheel waiting to transform mountain upon mountain of lint into thread that is to be loomed into material to make accessories for the innumerable angels coursing the unlimited throws of heaven. Things like scarves, wing covers and tassels for their halos.
For those who let leftovers become a majority there would be a room full of refrigerators on a rotating belt like the one in the arrival terminal at O’Hare. For those who let the crisper become a biosphere. For those who don’t put things back in their place and assume “Monk” will come like a chess player and put all the pieces in their place. The fridges wait to be opened as they skate by. Sleeping Pandora’s ice boxes waiting to be ionized of hazardous material.
Then there’s a room for those who litter. In it you find the highway to heaven with its cold shoulders loaded with debris. McDonalds cups with monopoly stickers still attached, beer can plastic retainers looped over Queen Anne’s Lace, diapers lying like carcasses of spent fuel rods, and an infinite amount of cigarette butts scattered like wildflower seeds. There the offenders stand with their reflective orange vests and baby blue garbage bags with a look of despair.
What would become of those who fail to put their grocery carts back in the corral? There would be a room full of carts and a bazillion isles. Each cart squeals like a pig on death row. Each cart pulls slightly to the left. In each cart there are hundreds of pounds of groceries to be put back on the shelves.
Did I mention the two inches of ice slush on the floor of every isle.
How about those who don’t turn off lights. For them a room with no windows, no decorations, just white walls and ceiling and floor. In the center a cold metal folding chair and a 350 watt parking lot bulb twelve inches above their head so that both light and heat pour down on them like warm water. Next to them a rugged looking frauline asking, drilling one question to the accused over and over…”Did you, or did you not turn off the light?”
On and on the rooms would go with traffic stop nose pickers, with those who share salad bar goodies with everyone, with those who don’t put lids on tight, with those who go through the express lane with more than ten items, with those who stiff the waitress because of the food not tasting right. Jay walkers.
Ham hockers. Lip smackers. Toe tappers. Forget to flushers. Bug crushers. Elevators flatuators. Conversation interrupters. Paper wad throwers…and on and on they go, rooms with thumb twiddling possibilities. Simply thinking about this could be a purgatory in itself.