A Psalm for Cloud-chasers

How long will this cloud be with us,

day and night, without end?

casting god-sized shadows on sun and moon alike,

here impatient wills tap feet anxiously,

persistently since the First Crossing.

When the cloud lifts, we're supposed to follow?

Why does this following seem like a game of chase?

“Israel, a nation of cloud-chasers,”

other nations will mock in unison

their voices rising high over the earth,

“Israel drags an empty balloon

before us, behind us,

a vacuous balloon

waiting to be inflated by their god's presence.”

What reply is there to give? And if already here,

then when may we give it?

We are stalling, desperate all the time

for the balloon to soar against desert sky

and remind us that we're not impotent magicians,

unable to conjure life in the wilderness, instead

that we're promise-laden sons and daughters

waiting for his coming.

In that hour, his hour and ours with YHWH,

the nations will tremble

for one moment beneath the cloud

produces the crushing weight of annihilation

or ecstatic joy of triumph

not ours alone, but his with us.

Raise the banner of your involvement, O YHWH,

we shout aloud before these settled nations,

become to us the one who acts on our behalf

may this cloud become a substantial sign

upon which we may build our present hope

and future satisfaction. 

Strangers to hope

We did not always have these words:

ways to be like him and unlike the world

ways to find him and ourselves

ways to become ourselves in the world

God was not always here with us.

Long stretches of centuries,

filled by the strivings of ignorant, contented living

changeless, endless centuries

projected like corridors without beginning and end

all through which we traveled and travailed,

until disrupted by a host of great acts

uprooting the world's foundations

and our foundations in the world.

We were now faced with such an offer:

God's claim to be with us and over us

created out of the sterile ruins of wilderness,

the possibility of abundant life:

life-after-desert.

We were strangers to this hope.

Strangers to:

covenant dealings

divine showings

but we were never strangers to

human longings

facing uncounted weary

days and nights

that is, before now—until now.

Teach us to count the days,

to number in our memories

in the stories we tell our children

to re-mark with our telling

be re-made in our hearing

the dusk of your nearing

the nights of our waiting

the dawn of our hoping

the days of your appearing

Remind us to recount your words,

to memorialize in our minds

and mark with our bodies

the deep through which you've brought us

—pain and joy a thousand years overwhelming—

the height to which you'll bring us

and the promise to be filled out that

all strangers to hope will find home with you.

Prayer of Today

Brothers and sisters

wait and watch

life unfolds in the retelling,

whose story comes to us?

They are man and woman, like us:

naivete and desire led to our rupture,

what is it now?

Today, what maintains this rupture,

Today, what rebuilds?

Lord, teach us, today,

Today, reveal what is an alternative:

two ways are set before us

life and death, blessing and cursing,

a world devouring, a world renewing

we are caught like deers in the headlights

between two worlds

Today, we would heal this rupture,

Today, turn toward life,

Lord, keep us, today,

Today, walk with us

and set our feet upon life's way.   

Weary Year

During a weary year

our own lives washed away,

worn down on the sanded sea bank

like polished whale bone

or the filmy salt lines residing

between the dead shore and living sea.

We came upon a new day,

like a freshwater current overpowering

a salt-struck river

in that day we drank deep,

injected life into this year's veins

put meat onto bones

and life into meat

and our own lives restored,

like energized whales

departing into deep waters.  

Night Vigil (to YHWH)

We keep the night for you.

On the plains of Goshen

you kept vigil one dreaded night

in death-thick darkness

you stayed alert, awake on our behalf

though you'd been sleeping four hundred years.

Now we'll keep vigil for you

beyond all millenniums,

if only to say thank you perpetually,

even if we've lost sight

of how our vigil still awaits you

—even now, especially now.

Knowing Twilight (formerly Plato's Twilight)

We meet our condition at twilight,

like a weary mother going out to meet her son

who's stayed out all day without reason, without word,

and whose return puts the world back together.

Who could have imagined that this hour

so close to darkness

could become the situation for such joy.  

doubt

cast your conviction to the winds

your nightly dictations, fall

on deaf ears, framed

by downy pillows who muffle

all sound beneath their undulating subtleties,

too smooth for rough skin, clad

with age lines, glistening

like canyons newly drowned

your words carry no iteration, emptied

of form, contentless words, floating

along the current of whim toward unknowable places

nothing hinges our conversation

no worth-waiting-for-content suspected to emerge

all that's left, massive wake-that-is,

are the intimations of departure, fragmented hints

flowing onward and beyond-wards, destinations without destinies  

Possibility

Fall into the world, out of failed attempts to hold to the threads of a broken rope

propelled forward into the world, you will land

so many directions, it's a matter of trust cast into the air

there won't be much landing for a while, not for a long while

prepare for the indeterminate length that know no normal boundaries

sky and earth, here in the world, yet to be what it will be 

Virtuoso

teacher, master

you learned me virtues

every helping I wanted

I begged you to stop.

Stop.

Before I'm too full of virtue

there won't be no room for nothing else;

after days of virtue-pushing

you ask me late into the evening:

what else is there?

Do you ask as teacher or master?

Will you demand what you ask, when

will you demand, I can't seem to count costs now

convoluted arithmetics, obscured counting

between infinite objects and numbers,

no equitable treatment of my equation

no object named and scope limited

no purpose qualified or content quantified

just the endless filling, feeling endless—

is virtue really as unlimited as you say

as you exercise day over day

upon my malleable relation with you?

I want and don't want. Simultaneous hold,

body fixed at once in two locations

want and unwant, can't take back

what's come before is already always coming

will be, will be, will be coming, still

to imagine differently, indiscreet it may be

but enough posturing, embracing this bi-located

body-state-of-being, here I am, send me

to carry banners transfixed with light in these temporary corridors

betwixt and between, between

hoping and turning, turning and hoping

here I am, I can be nowhere else

but the two places I'm already coming from

and going to

will there be an end to this seems-infinite play?

Who, who, who can say? I will not know, not today,

nor any day soon, nor any day soon. 

appetite of the eyes

critical distance that permits me;
subtle demise
etched on pupils
by another force of light, many forces
of light;
subtle convergences,
obscure cousins of insight, nearly
unrecognized and living in the front yard
always at work sowing salt
in the garden.

our land?

Why can't we use this land to build another world?
Imagine a soil without ownership,
to speak another word than
onerous-transaction-reducing-all-to-economics-of-loss-prevention
who said it was yours to begin with?
Who taught you to hold so tightly?
Easier for the dispossessed, landless ones
come to terms with it—
exchange of worlds
measuring fistfuls of soil at a time;
we had little to begin with
little to lose at day's end
everything to gain
everything to gain

Insight

flash flood of God's memory
I am an enveloped vessel
aflame with light
fire cascading forward from fingertips
breath crescendo out from lips
burdened and unburdened
at once wholly myself, Wholly Other
never cause of Noah's weeping
nor equal cause of his rejoicing
but present nonetheless
flash flood of God's memory
I am an opened instrument
impelled with technique
mechanisms for glory
trained deep to the bones' memories [melody]
I can. I can do. I will do.
Set-body tasked with praise
flash flood of God's memory
I am.

Weary Bones

here where oceans blanket up a failing sun
weary bones set to the cold song of the seas
agitated saltwater cuts through exposed skins
naked rejection replays the freezing notes
whose penetrating resonance throbs with risks too great
like waves of ice crushing into the skin
naked fragility turns brittle in the night water
issue forth the elongated moan, death-whisper
against the crescendo of a sea of failures
washing over all, washing over all
unseen currents draw life away, particle by particle
toward the cloudy mess of undistinguished sea
and courses through glassy mirrors of an earth's surfaces

Triumph

creation is an empire
whose life evokes joy, shout and dance
whose decay only leaks from the fringes
seeps out from gutters in our ghettos
there's always more to an empire, always
more than marbled pillars, totems thrust
to glory in the sun, always
more than tended gardens, vines outstretched
to produce delight, always
the darker corners, shadow-kept crevices
who encroach and wait at the edges
between an empire's ecstasy and decay, [ecstasy vs. height]
Nietzsche's décadence misconceived, is nearby
days from now, late or soon
will force an empire's hand, attempt a
coup d'etat, and counter all prior claims of victory,
to encounter the reigning victor as defeated,
to supplant this empire's life-dance
and suspend its reigning ignorance [an ignorance long since pervading]
and enthrone in its place the inevitable,
the cold, the uncompromised and calculated,
the words to rehabilitate the world:
creation, no longer empire, but system
creation, no longer joy, but decay
a system is moving toward its ruins
soon or late, this system will fail;
any tenacious joy remaining
seeps from these reversely marked fringes
and is slipping toward decay, it's slipping,
slipping toward decay.

Improvisation

First, a proviso:
keep your eyes out
for the unexpected
stranger
wearing no persona
no masquerades to embellish
or weave a partial face
nor charades to caricature,
keep-eyes-open is the word
prepared at every season's turning
to show and be
welcoming,
everything hinges on
this show-your-cards event
signaling and alluding to
your first and final words
body-marked and gestured
which here invite a stranger
to enter into her welcome.

Last, a proviso:
keep your eyes out
faithful to follow the first,
faithfully conclude all improvisation
by repeating all welcomes, event-after-event [maybe event-upon-event?]
until all are no-longer-strangers
but end this play as friends-at-rest.