When it works for us, poetry, like all art, brings us face to face with the stark nudity of meaning
Poem
No Mark for Cain After we have stoned the adulterers, beheaded the rebels, burned the heretics, drowned the witches, hanged the horse thieves, put the killers to the needle, we take time to thank our god. We thank you, god for being a god in our own image, a god who is Number One, a kick butt kind of god of power and might. We thank you for being not some pitiful god of pity, absolution and peace. Who could forgive a forgiving god? Some bleeding-heart god, creating out of love and loving creation? Give us you: a destroyer god. We hunger for a god like you, a god who wants sacrifice, not mercy. A god who accepts Abraham’s offered son, a Moloch who understands that we understand, who knows we know what we are doing, when we sacrifice the innocent and the guilty. Make us, O god, instruments of your retribution. Demand of us killing for killing, murder for murder. Give us a god we can fear, that fear may secure us, bind us together. We want a god who underwrites the righteous good in ourselves, expels the expendables. We long to serve a god of vengeance, who puts no mark of forbearance on Cain and the murdering sons of Cain. Death to Cain. Long live vengeance. Long live our god. River of Blood
It was the 1980s. With neither approval nor permission from We the People, our nation’s CIA hired mercenaries. Calling themselves Contras, they raided Nicaragua’s isolated villages, killed the workers for health, literacy and terrorized the rest. One of them tells his story: We found the teacher, laid him in a newly dug ditch. Following orders, I plunged my trench knife into him, till his screams and breathing stopped. Later, I went to the river to wash my hands and face. In a flash, the river turned to blood. That night, I slipped away, never to return. Imagine us taxpayers walking away from our Afghanistans, Iraqs, Vietnams and their rivers of blood. August 2017 Mystics we are We come from God. We return to God. In between, we become God. Easter Sunday April 16, 2017 Horrors Rare, flashing moments when we glimpse our heritage of holocausts: of Jews and Slaves, native peoples of the Americas zealous burnings of witches pious inquisitions, quixotic crusades, our civilized empires ’ massacres, prisons, torture chambers. Could there, nevertheless, be some dimension of reality, extension of being, where these deepest horrors are rescued from our tribal amnesias, and redeemed, in an eternity of transcendent meaning? April 9, 2017 Facts and Truths I pledge allegiance to the flag…and to the republic for which it stands. Our flag, its size, stars and stripes are facts. Our republic, for which it stands, is a truth if, and when we make it work. The bible, as just a book, its weight, cover and thickness are facts. The meanings we find there are truths - or not – depending on whether we live them out. Our bodies, heart, lungs, skin and skeleton are facts. We find their meanings, their truths in what we do with them. Facts just are. They sit there being what they be. Truths, like goodness, beauty and life itself dawn on us, impel us to look for and sometimes find, more. April 11, 2017 Facts and Truths I pledge allegiance to the flag…and to the republic for which it stands. Our flag, its size, stars and stripes are facts. Our republic, for which it stands, is a truth if, and when we make it work. The bible, as just a book, its weight, cover and thickness are facts. The meanings we find there are truths - or not – depending on whether we live them out. Our bodies, heart, lungs, skin and skeleton are facts. We find their meanings, their truths in what we do with them. Facts just are. They sit there being what they be. Truths, like goodness, beauty and life itself dawn on us, impel us to look for and sometimes find, more. April 11, 2017 Taking the Dare: On Engaging the Trump Mentality He dares us, this rabbi of old, of ever new. “Love your enemies. Pray for those who oppress you.” From the mire of anger, he ever-nagging urges for vengeance, We rise to inhale the fresh air of freedom. We feel the force where, “turn the other cheek,” Becomes a Judaic Judo, Letting the absolute impotence of those who hate Trip them up. We tap into our revolutionary roots At the wellspring waters in us all, These ever burning fires biding their time to clarify This befuddlement of who we are and what we can do. February 25, 2017 Creators Look, I am about to do something new. Now it begins to happen. Isaiah 43:19 Be a co-creator with me. Enter into kinship with our dirt-strewn earth, grow things nourishing and new, with babies, girls and boys, women and men make new their lives with gentle gestures of care, from whatever we happen upon birth yourself with me into what we are becoming, together, let us make new this world of ours. February 10, 2017 Horrors Rare, flashing moments when we glimpse our heritage of holocausts: of Jews and Slaves, native peoples of the Americas, zealous burnings of witches, pious inquisitions, quixotic crusades, our civilized empires’ massacres, prisons, torture chambers. Could there, nevertheless, be some dimension of reality, extension of being where these deepest horrors are rescued from our tribal amnesias, and redeemed, in an eternity of transcendent meaning? April 9, 2017 Bible Not a book but a library: legends from the Ancients, survival stories of escape from slavery, prophetic poetry, love songs, wisdom from elders, all from a people in search of the God who searches for them. So who are these preachers who shrink it to a book of rules? February 11, 2017 Over tacos and talk In our weekly communion over tacos and talk, we, each in our own way, discover and share how when our sole concern is just for our own safety, without a care for safety of others, our safety’s bedrock crumbles, for we are all connected such that one person’s loss of acceptance and belonging is also ours. No airy idea this but feet-on-the-ground fact. In brief silence, we pause, reflect and Larry says, “Enjoy your taco.” February 3, 2017 Imagine Imagine that we might actually have chosen the parents, relatives, and even the nation we have: for better and for worse, in sickness and in health, till not even death do we part. That we and they somehow share a co-responsibility for how we be and what we do. Nah! No way! December 2, 2016 Hope in despair Blessed are those who hunger for justice. Blessed? More like cursed. What am I, or even, we, in the moon-drawn tides of this controlling system? I, we, drown in the depths of despair where even help seems no help. Yet still I thirst for power and the hope it brings, for hope and the power it brings. Don’t offer me your words ringing hollow. If you would have me make real any powers possible, do me with deeds. Don’t tell me. Show me. September 23, 2016 How the poet lives in us July27, 2016 The girl finds herself playing with words and letters, how things new can be made out of old, how STOP spelled backwards is pots, how guns spelled backwards is snug. So she makes herself a poem: I’d rather be snug than shoot guns I’d rather bang pots than stop. Order out of disorder, meaning where meaning was not. Three rules for poets July 27, 2016 Don’t tell me you cried. Make me cry. Don’t say you laughed. Make me laugh. Don’t tell me what you mean. Show me how I can see what I mean. Dead kitten July 15, 2016 At first she seems asleep. Closer, we see the blood from her mouth. She crawled to the sidewalk from where the car hit her, nearer to home to breathe one last time. Now, from separate colonies, three streams of ants converge to crowd her face, flowing to and fro, taking what is left of life to nourish their nests, doing their cosmic part to make sure nothing ever goes to waste. Minutes of a meeting
(Pax Christi of San Antonio, July 19, 2008) We look for mottos to proclaim our purpose, words for T-shirts and banners to tell what we do: “War is expensive. Peace is priceless.” “Blessed are the peacemakers.” Ten of us, all roaming Catholics, nine parts women, five parts activist nuns, all seekers of justice that makes peace, truths that heal separations, courage that completes our unity, one ingredient of yeast fermenting to enliven the waiting dough of the world, a recipe for revolution. Poems from 1990's
Resurrecting in Little Bear Canyon Come Spring, when the loose ends of this life have been tied and trimmed, scatter my ashes in Little Bear Canyon. Scatter me, to nourish the caterpillars and butterflies that feed the robins and swallows that I may rise in their songs. Scatter me, to nourish the roots of locust and cliff rose to rise to their purple-pink petals and fill the air with their perfume. Scatter me, to run with the melted snow to the river, where steeples and cathedral walls tower against the turquoise New Mexico sky. Scatter me, to run with the river to oceans, to mix with the ashes of ancestors in the ash-seeded waters of the world. Then, read these words to anyone who wonders where I am. May 30, 1990 Agni: Hindu god of fire Zeus raged in lightning tantrums. Vulcan vomited lava and flame. Satan smiled and conjured nightmares. For Prometheus had stolen their fires and given it gratis to women for cooking, to children for warmth, and men for melting the metals of earth, for Cain's and Abel's offerings, for Moses to find in the desert, for Elijah's swooping chariot, for the Spirit's eruption at Pentecost, for Hiroshima's victims and victors. "They are becoming like gods," cried the gods, "and nothing, not even us, can be as we were." In drunken joy, the people grieved, "We are gods becoming. Who can save us now?" Fire, in its smoldering thoughts, ignited a hymn to itself and crackled. March 24, 1990 |
A man for others
We reduced him to our ideas of a god, just as we did with other heroes who dared dance with danger to bring back bounty to share. He left us no inked memoirs of his own, leaving us only his life for us to shape and warp to fit our yearnings. Still, his stark presence haunts us, lingers with vague tastes of: how he let himself touch and be touched in electromagnetic linkings of flesh and gut, how he scattered stories and healings to crowds to make of them what they will, how he hung out with friends and strangers at food-laden tables presenting himself as a crushed grape rising in wine for sipping, a ground up grain baking in bread for chewing. All in one shortened life that in the tides of time and meaning throbs to flesh itself again in us. Our Lady of the Streets
(Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God) Luke 6:20 Down graffiti graced streets, “Hey Zeus. Hey Zeus,” she calls her fatherless son. She scans the gang scrawlings for signs of a truce. Hungry for tomorrow, she picks through yesterday’s garbage. She finds a rose and puts it in the night deposit. As street cleaners hose down a people’s blood, she clutches the crucifix on the rosary round her neck. Dry weeds in sidewalk cracks anticipate her tears. “Hey Zeus. Hey Zeus.” Her cries echo down concrete canyons. Her son tarries in the state pen, but she forgets, and sees him in shadows and vanishing faces. Hope is the alley cat she feeds, for certain as sunrise her boy will come and take her to McDonald’s. They will invite her pals from the street and her friends she has yet to meet. They will toast each other and all with cold Coca Cola. September 20, 1995 Nativity Scene It haunts us still, that long ago oft told story. A woman, a man, far from home, their villages, their families. Just arrived in a town full of strangers. A birth at the edge of happening. The woman’s womb-waters already flushed, her rhythmic pangs quicken, no time to find a midwife. Between her deep gasps, the woman whispers: Help us. Thunderous thoughts race as lightning through the man: This is no work for men. Women’s blood forbidden. A forever shame to touch. Holy Mother Eve, who might midwife her, but Adam? Where was the taboo then? The woman tells him what to do. Tells him what she learned helping other mothers. The man kneels. He waits between her thighs, at last receives the baby. He washes its warm body, the woman, himself. Water from the animals’ trough. The woman takes from him the baby, puts it to her breast. Soon they sleep. The man steps from the shelter into crisp night air. He stands under stars to wonder. Easter Monday Meditation News item, San Antonio, Texas, April 8, 1985 A hundred cheering Sanctuary supporters at the Greyhound bus station welcomed convicted refugee worker Jack Elder as he arrived to begin a 150-day sentence at a half-way house. The well-wishers walked Elder to nearby St. Mary's Catholic Church, where pastor Bill Davis led a thanksgiving prayer service and hosted a breakfast for Elder and his supporters. Epiphany, Somewhere in the memory of the Sanctuary community, As the curved universe enfolds into itself, eventually this event forecasts, indeed, prophesies, the inevitable turning under, the incessant subversion. Laurita says it in her own way, "Listen to me, people!" Her tossing braid, long, dark, silver-stranded, is a clue to the revving of internal motors. "Now that the city elections are over we need to talk to some people about making San Antonio a sanctuary. And then we want to make some changes at the White House." Yes, Laurita, America as sanctuary. Imagine America: not as oppressor of the poor, not as number one arms seller, not as great grain merchant holding hungry bellies hostage, but the home of hearts whole enough not to fear our freedom, nor to turn away the stranger, so recently executed, of whom Father Bill spoke, in retelling the story of Emmaus. April 8, 1985 |
Nor with your camera rape my face. I will not meet your eyes, nor stain myself with your indifference. I have passed my Vulcan rage, transcended the compensating dignity of hate yet am crammed to bursting with the unspeakable. I need nothing of you, but only this: Find God Bring him to me that I may judge him. September 8, 1988 Count my energy in Let each and every quantum of kindness, all affirming handshakes, each embrace of the lonely, every smile of welcome, build to critical mass, a pool of intent whose cosmic gravity draws us home. August 27, 2016 Water Reverie
We stand in wonder at you, how when we raise you to our lips to flood dry mouth, thirst-ridden throat, you slide into veined aqueducts to moisten our being day after day. Then, at end of days, in cremating fires, our water logged flesh will rise as steam to float free in air, feeling our way with you into spring rains to wet this earth from whence we came. August 24, 2016 How I learned to be a man July29, 2016 (For Gust Keene and Fr. Gene Zimmers, S.J.)
The man with lunch bucket, cement flaked work clothes who, with his bricklayer craft, told me all. Another man, who put his vision into action and launched my ship for shores unexplored Both, not from any office, parent or priest, but from their magnetic wholeness laid out a mold for me to fill. Homeless June 23, 2016
We, with next to nothing, no place to sleep in safety no breakfast on waking find one thing that matters to others like us. Others who share the occasional bottle of wine to ward off the cold, to partner with for protection, to share in our common trust in survival for now. Out of our nothing we share to discover among ourselves the powers of compassion. So good we are together Sharing stories that make us stronger, face and body gestures inviting us to share secrets comrades letting us laugh with ourselves, earthy aroma of matters that matter, the moxie that moves us, comes with us when we part . July 22, 2016 Imagine
Imagine the calm of being the only man in a room of women, the only woman in a shop of men, the only straight in the GLBT bar, the only Anglo in the Mexican restaurant, the only progressive at the conservative rally. Imagine us all finding comfort in community, strength in identity. July 15, 2016 Christmas reflection: 2012
When truth strikes, goodness overwhelms, beauty stuns, what, we ask, do we do with these insidious invisibles? Consign them to airy abstractions to drift innocuous in flocks of clouds? Or embody them boldly in stories, studded with imaginings, flowing in music, incarnating them in hay-filled mangers, flights of angels, one guiding star where, as yeast in dough, they spread, bubble up into brains and hearts, to turn our lives upside-down, inside-out: a life worth dying for? Enemies How dare you even suggest we love our enemies? Terrorists. Barbarians. Aliens. Infidels. Refugees. Other races, classes, skins of other color. Others for us to fear and hate, others needed to bind us together against a common threat. To love such others is to betray us. Surely you know what happens to traitors. Potluck with Jesus
When he came into our village contentions, he asked the women to get up a potluck. Bakers brought breads, gardeners their goods, householders their steaming stews. We toasted and tasted ourselves with homemade wines. In his reach, we felt in one another his lighter than gravity, electromagnetic touch, finding us, binding us, freeing us. When he left, he stayed in our memories of how we beheld one another then and how he continues with us now in our potlucks. Letting Eucharist happen
Tonight, the weekly gathering of agitator-activists falls on Holy Thursday. Apollo, with no resort to apostolic consecration, or communal approbation, just instant inspiration, breaks bread into pieces, spreads them out on a plate, pours into a goblet blood-red wine, passes them around. Some take in silent thanks. Some politely decline. One says, “I don’t do blood of Christ stuff.” Another dips bread into wine saying, “Happy Resurrection. ” We riff raff We tax extorters and sex workers, we wage slaves and migrant strangers, we drunkards and beggars, we zealous fanatics and searchers, we puzzled and confused. He gathered us at his table to eat, drink, laugh, listen and confide together, close enough to behold, smell, feel one another and find in the roots of our being a contagious Oneness. We see at last (Peter muses: Luke 9: 28-43) On ascending, We sit in a circle. We see ourselves brilliant, a gazing into sun without going blind. Elijah, Moses, Jesus, John, James, me. Hard to tell us apart, Blurring, bleeding into one corona, where notions of each other make sense no more. On descending, we find the man, screaming blather, flailing futility, begging to burst his prison. Our common gut seized by a loathing, a panic to flee, to cast out. Then, as in a sudden dawn, he’s struck with calm. We see at last, from heady highs to feet-in-the-dirt hurt, the Healing Wholeness. Agni (The Hindu god of fire) Zeus raged in lightning tantrums. Vulcan vomited lava and flame. Satan smiled and conjured nightmares. For Prometheus had stolen their fires and given it gratis to women for cooking, to children for warmth, and men for melting the metals of earth, for Cain's and Abel's offerings, for Moses to find in the desert, for Elijah's swooping chariot, for the Spirit's eruption at Pentecost, for Hiroshima's victims and victors. "They are becoming like gods," cried the gods, "and nothing, not even us, can be as we were." In drunken joy, the people grieved, "We are gods becoming. Who can save us now?" Fire, in its smoldering thoughts, ignited a hymn to itself and crackled. March 24, 1990 Thy kingdom come
We are the world that has. This is how we dream: along everlasting assembly lines we put ourselves together suited to designs of fashion to fit intentions of entrepreneurs who follow leads of markets that care not to know what we do so long as doing gets done. We dream of machines that mold us to fit to become interchangeable parts till obsolescence or wear send us to recycling bins. We are the rest of the world. This is how we dream: Fitfully, amid babies’ cries. We harvest colonial garbage cans, ponder melting into mountains with machetes and guns. Poets, we celebrate our desperate hopes. Painters, we color our future and wake to a cold gray now. We are the tribe of dreamers. This is how we live: Becoming a people to make a people of all who dream. We wear on our faces the blueprints, store lumber, brick and mortar in the basements of our minds. Seeds, dormant in winter’s dirt, we wait for spring. Yeast set aside, we wait for the wheat and the fire. October 21, 1986 Eye of the fly
He traveled the country, jacking up awareness: solar power, cleaning up, animal rights. I asked, “What got you started?” “I was a bio-physicist, studying fruit flies – university research. “Peering into a microscope at the eye of a fly, I saw what I’d never seen before. “That year, I quit my job. I went out to change the world.” “What did you see?” “The eye of God.” February 1, 2009 Unity?
Is it really all one anyway? That up and down are somehow the same? Also, right and left, crazy and sane, evil and good? That in the end, and even now, the dualities dissolve back to Unity? Will murderers and their victims each understand self and other enough to embrace? Will war makers and peacemakers come to terms as illusions of otherness terminate, and the truths of being One begin? Is Adonai echad, the Lord our God is One, our first, last and ultimate prayer? Some Great Spirit within us that leaks truth, arouses love, inspires courage, that connects our separations, completes our accord with all that was, is now, and will become? Some Creator of all abiding in all creation? Some One Source from which we come, to Whom we all return? January 19, 2008 |
