On Freindship

II.

To be honest here:

This isn’t my fault.

You listen too quickly,

And move on too fast.

You fail to realize that,

Your words link with each other and form a train

That speeds along  

Sidelining everything beyond it.

My words are pitifully slow.

I struggle to gather the right syllables

Searching across ideas and memories

With a one-pronged pitchfork, and a three-legged dog

I Race, I fail to keep up. 

This is hard, but it is love.

We still grow with our pains

Aside each other, despite each other

Choosing to see the others faults;

Deciding to be together despite them.

Matins

Dearest Lord, in deepest night

Our eyes are blinded

By the black veil drawn tight

Across our weakened eyes.

Now in this dark,

We remember how

You spoke into a darkness, the darkness

Of which a breathing world was created.

It obeyed your slightest will:

Thrashing rivers of chaos

Controlled by the slightest touch of your hand.

In this way you soothed

The pyroclastic fires beneath the earth

trembling pressures were relieved, making

Granite and obsidian, quartz and basalt.

The earth became still and knew your love.

The primordial wind which

Wandered its whipping way.

It you harnessed, collared, and hushed.

The wanderings of the storm-giants

You corralled by your command.

Rivers too massive to cross

With their abyss too deep to touch,

You Pruned and thinned with your love

Until the most useful,

The most balanced remained.

And the earth itself you sculpted:

Hill and mountains uplifted

By your squeezing hands

Gorge, and canyon were depressed

By water running through your fingers.

And to life you said:

“Be fruitful and multiply”

All your works O Lord were created

Out of darkness,

A darkness that existed before the light,

The darkness that expects it and

Does not strive against it—

Out of a darkness

That rejoices to be changed

You created all things.

Your dark material

You fused proton by proton

To create something:

Elements and molecules—

To form this complex colossus

That is Earth.

You created it all… all of this

Out of darkness, out of nothing.

And so we do not fear

It, but stand in its midst

Rejoicing with it,

Singing with it

In our own way.

Oh Stars on High

Oh Stars on high

Send this petition

From a travel-wearied child,

To your queen of Heaven:

Mary Immaculate.

That she may intercede for me

Amidst my calamities.

Oh my God,

I am dead in my life,

Filled with a monotony

of fleeting pleasures:

The flicker of the screen,

The over-sweet nothingness of

High-fructose corn syrup,

That false intimacy,

The selfishness of the atomized self.

Here:

I eat but don’t taste

I sleep but don’t rest.

My days pass by, busy, and far too empty

For they are often filled with myself alone—
Which is a thing too small indeed.

It is a comfortable but dead existence.

Call me to something more, oh Christ

Call me to the mountain of death: Golgotha

To be and become amidst the thorns cutting your feverish skin,

The rough-cut rips over your scourged back,

The scarring pain numbing your hands.

Let me know your sacrifice,

To climb down from the mountain different,

To see your love and be forever changed:

My face radiant with sunlight joy,

My heart aching to show love,

My soul bettered by a great humility.

Oh Christ, cause me to see truth,

To feast with body and soul

 On the true bread of heaven,

Bread small and brittle,

Full of a tiny beauty,

That parallels the chickadee,

With its minute steps, its many falls.

This bread breaks with the snap of bones,

And fills more than any feast.

In the Beginning

In the beginning,

Was the Word

And the Word was…

With God

And the Word…

Was God.

Through Him

All things were made.

In Him

Was life,

And the light

of all mankind:

A light that shines in the darkness

Which the darkness had not
and will not overcome.

The true light that gives light to everyone

Was coming into the world.

He came to that which

was his own,

But his own,

Did not receive him.

Yet to all who did receive him

He gave the right

To become children of God.

The Word became

Flesh

And made his dwelling among us.

We have seen his glory,

The glory of the one

And only son,

Who came

Full:

Of grace,

Of truth.

On Beginnings

This white page stands before me,

While the bleet of an summer-born faun enters the air.

I will probably never see her.

She will never see these lines.

But each exists just the same.

My professor opens class with a joke;

A callused pun, spongy and pitted,

It’s humor has eroded like last-year’s leaves,

Blowing in the snapping, hoar-frosted air,

Each aimless in its journey beyond death.

These leaves mix and mingle with the hay

In that wheezing, slanted barn, forgotten on the hill

Which once touched the grey-beaten sky.

Tired, and increasingly snow-laden each

Is ready to give up after years of use.

CHIRP! Zumm! TRILL! and flutter.

Countless Insects hatch, disappear, and mutate.

Without an announcement,

A tear-streaked obituary

Or even a story.

But still they come.

And here is the question of beginnings:

Where do they end?

Are they senseless?

Meaningful?

***

I go to mass on Sunday.

Tried and tired the liturgy takes place.

Motions are made and responses recited

With drooping hands, and mumbled lips.

Few changes become apparent.

Then again,

At the beginning,

Few changes are apparent.

The sower’s work takes but a moment.

A seed's work only finishes with death.

A Simple Invocation

Oh Triune God

Mystery of all mysteries

Three in one,

One despite three

Be with us today.

Today:

Some of us rejoice.

Some of us weep.

All of us fail.

And all of us stand

In need of your mercy.

Lord have mercy:

Comfort us broken.

Guide us lost.

Feed us hungry.

And let us grow in your death,

That we may love you more.

In the name of another mystery,

That of Jesus Christ,

Wholly God while Wholly Man,

We pray for these things

And your Will.

Amen.