BIBLE STUDY

BIBLE STUDY

The people were tired 

of being held down,

tired of the collusion 

between the occupying power

and the religious power 

too prudent—or too timid—

to stand with them and declare

enough is enough.

 

They’d heard him bless 

the poor, the hungry,

the mourners, the persecuted.

They’d heard him curse 

the rich, the sated,

the scoffers, the praised.

So when he rode into town 

on a borrowed donkey,

the common people–

the ordinary people–called out

Blessing and Peace and Glory! and

Save us, please. Save us!

 

The powers were alarmed

and tried to silence the people.

And what did he reply?

Turn then, if you would,

to Luke 19: 40-41

and read what he said.

And read what happened next.

 

 

YOUR TURN

YOUR TURN

You locked the door,

put your hand over our mouth,

ground against us.

 

Now we have many doors,

and they are all open.

We have a voice

 

and we are not ashamed.

You thought to grind us small

but together we are bigger

 

than you can imagine.

Truth does not need bluster and shout.

It is your turn to be afraid.

Winter Prompt #26: Ripped Paper

RIPPED PAPER

In memory of Ursula K. Le Guin

Winter Prompt #26

Tear it all up—

old bills and tax returns, bank

statements, stock certificates,

manuals and guarantees.

            But don’t stop

there. Tear up all the useless

books: archaic sciences, outdated

histories, smug theologies,

the whole thick body

of masculine pronoun,

life as battle,

possession as the highest good.

CLOSETS

CLOSETS

. . . open every closet in the future and evict

all the mind’s ghosts. . .

~Hafiz, trans. Daniel Ladinsky

Some closets are full

of sentimental things that mattered once:

toys and photographs, letters, old poems.

The ghosts tiptoe around the dusty boxes;

their bony toes rattle on the floor.

The ghosts moon over a ragged doll,

caress a tattered book.

Other closets are stuffed with

things of the mind, things of the heart:

things I might have done,

things I might have made,

people I might have loved.

The ghosts shake their powdery heads.

Ah, they whisper, your precious past.,

so sad, so sweet, so—passing.

 

The ghosts are not so easy to evict.

They cajole, they whine,

touch all my soft spots.

They look like my mother,

my dead sister,

the men who came so close.

They say they remember

all the stories I have to tell,

so how can I send them away?

When I look fierce at them,

they weep.

 

You are future ghosts!  I scream,

You are not the past,

you are not even memory, 

but fear of memory and its distortion.

You are not keepsakes, but anticipation of loss.

You are anxieties of times to come, 

you cover my pasts with corruption,

you haunt my futures with regret.

Be gone!

 

The ghosts whimper, they cringe.

I stamp my feet, wave my broom.

They diminish.

They flutter away like ragged moths.

The future becomes nothing but itself

and all my things, nothing but things.

O: The Magnificat Antiphons, part IV

O: The Magnificat Antiphons, part IV

 

4. O Clavis David

O Key of David and sceptre of the House of Israel;

you open and no one can shut;

you shut and no one can open:

Come and lead the prisoners from the prison house,

those who dwell in darkness and the shadow of death.

Enough keys.

We have a ringful on our belts.

They rattle when we walk.

They weigh us down as we proceed

once again down the long hallway

past the doors.

A few have opened.

It took years

to find the right combination

of twist and force,

to learn the Magic Words.

We’re tired.

Our feet hurt.

And still they make barricades

on the other sides.

Set bars.

Change the locks.

We have so many heavy keys,

skeleton keys.

Put flesh on them.

Put your shoulder to the doors.

Beat them down.

Nobody answers when you knock.

ANSWERING

ANSWERING

 

If someone says

You didn’t see that,

say But I did. 

And I heard it, too.

 

If someone says

Surely that’s not

what you think, say

That’s what you think.

 

If they say  

You shouldn’t feel

that way,

say Ha!

should has nothing 

to do with it.

 

If they say

You shouldn’t say

things like that,

say Just listen.

The Mary Poems, Part Four

THE MARY POEM: PART FOUR

FISHERWOMAN

The wife of Zebedee mends the nets–

her hands as rough as a fisherman’s hands.

My husband is too old, she says,

to go in the boat alone.

It is a wondrous thing, she says,

to go in a boat at night.

My sons will not return, she says,

and cuts a cord with her yellow teeth.

Our sons will not return.

But then she laughs and ties her knots:

They’ve promised me a golden crown.

AFTER SUPPER

My firstborn took my bread in his hands,

blessed it and tore it and gave it his name.

My bread, in my mouth, the flesh of my child.

And we sang, and the men went out.

After they had gone, we washed the plates and bowls and swept the room.

When there was nothing left in there,  I came out here to watch the moon.

She is empty.

A white hole in the sky.

I am a hole in earth.

Once I held the waters–oceans, rivers, the fountains and wells, every drop of dew–

Now I am empty.

Now I have done.

CRUCIFIXION

Forgive?

My son.

Fruit of my womb.

They condemned, betrayed and nailed–

my son,

my firstborn son.

Forgive?  Forgive?

Rebels gasp on their crosses,

soldiers kneel in the dust

tossing dice for the tunic–

can their mothers

forgive?

My son hangs

and promises paradise

to innocents duped by power,

and

here I stand.

You, Herod.

You, Pilate.

You, Chief Priest and Council,

all timid and zealous for your laws–

I curse

your laws.

I curse your power.

You.

By all the blood that women bleed,

by all the screams,

by all the fear and bruising,

by water and fire and stone,

by Adam’s skull,

this ground filling and filling

with blood–

The heavens are silent.

His Father in heaven

is silent.

Or he is dead.

It is all the same.

But I have spoken.

I thirst, but not for wine,

hunger, but not for bread.

Once I magnified eternity,

now nothing

but ravage and wrong.

My son.

Our body, broken.

All the wine is sour.

All the water, salt.

NIGHT

So many nights I have watched with the moon;

so many times, alone.

The moon is too silver, too bright.

Earth

should not be so beautiful.

The olive blossoms

should not smell so sweet.

The wind should not

touch my face so softly,

so softly.

LEAVEN

In my dark house

I am making bread.

We shall go to the tomb

when the cock crows in the garden,

when the sun has pushed aside the stone.

TURNING A BATTLESHIP

TURNING A BATTLESHIP

They say it’s like turning a battleship.

They say they’re making progress:

the vast bulk of iron against the swell

that rises and rises and against the wind

that never, ever, for a moment, lets up.

All hands are doing what sailors do–

–turning cranks, watching dials,

running to and fro.  It was more obvious

when the ships were under sail,

when it had to do with lowering and raising,

with ropes and anchors and chains.

Like turning a battleship, they say.

Something that big, pounding along in a fixed direction,

thousands of tons afloat

inflexible, ungraceful, lumbering, loud,

not like, say, whales,

who turn their enormity

graceful and swiftly, who breach and sing and whisper and fly–

and porpoises–

and kayaks, currochs, dugouts,

sailboards and surfboards

skimming and slipping the surface–

and leaves in autumn–

russet from the ash trees, red from the maple,

brown from the oak–

and golden birch leaves–

how they blow light and high, following

every whisp

of wind–

and ravens somersaulting–and hawks–

and little birds

flipping so easy above the corn–

and snowflakes and snowboarders and

children on swings and monkey-bars–

and ballerinas, gymnasts,

contra-dancers,

parachutists, politicians,   bass guitarists–

and all those World Cup footballers

turning on a dime.

I wrote this in 2006. An experiement, since wordpress doesn’t let me use my own formats. Here’s a screenshot of the poem–the words aren’t too legible, I think, but this shows the shape of it.

NON-DISPARAGEMENT AGREEMENT

~after David Weinstock

If you won’t tell how I cried,
I won’t tell how you left.
You won’t tell my raging, either,
how I blamed you for everything:
my sister’s dying, the terrorists,
war, cancer and pain, blindness,
stupidity.

So you won’t tell
how I slammed doors, broke goblets,
made a fool of myself every time
I remembered. And I won’t tell how
quiet you were, how you wouldn’t
turn back when I called.

I won’t tell
of the blank, the emptiness
of the faceless winter sky
with its perfect stillness of stars,
the hollowness of the laughter
at feasts, the blandness of Rilke
and Bach.
You mocked me
with happinesses, with sunrises
and hymns, but I won’t tell.
You won’t tell how I tried,
and later, how I stopped trying,
believing as fervently in your absence,
and I won’t tell

how it amazes me
that people still fall in love,
that somebody in that shabby
brown house practices Beethoven’s
piano sonatas with all the windows open,
that strangers dig through the rubble
with bare hands, over and over,
trying to pull strangers back to life.
And especially I won’t tell

how you returned,
how the stories went on,
how the grass grew
green again and again after the snows,
the days lengthened, the chicks hatched
and the moon rose in a thin
white shard.

PERSONA

I have a cheerful one,
a placid one, unremarkable,
with small pink lips but Kali

of the bloody tongue,
Kali festooned with screaming skulls
trembles here, behind this matron’s mask.

Any moment her blueblack arms
might emerge from my polyester shirt
and throttle that man sipping his tea.  She

may jump onto the counter
and fling saucers and cups, split through
my skin, bite heads and crunch down bones,
break the door, smash the steps,
dance her pounding dance
down the crackling road.  Meantime,

I drink coffee
through my small polite mouth hole,
hold my cup
in one beige hand.

Some days the coffee
tastes like blood.

Our shriek
could shatter
all the glasses in this town.