Showing posts with label pray. Show all posts
Showing posts with label pray. Show all posts

Monday, July 27, 2020

Ask the Sky Why


To lie
on your back
defeated
and speak your pieces
vehemently
as rain
at the ever listening sky

You know
this broad shoulder
of horizon
can take more
than your loaded gun
and spinning
chambers
as if a game
of Russian Roulette
would elicit a thunderous
STOP!

Threats empty
as a cloudless sapphire
catching light
and glaring
in its reflection
of you.

Life at this angle
in this volume
comes back
to us
in the same way
we know
every word has been heard
before you opened your mouth
and took
it all
in
as unnoticed
breath.



Painting by Francis Job Short (1857-1945), 'Sea and Sky at Seaford' in Public domain.



Saturday, January 25, 2020

Shifts


Today
I will
write
paint, read and make marks
in space
empty of purpose.

Tonight
I may
Sleep
In trust
A soul
Is given another wake.

Painting by Rogier van der Weyden [Public domain], 'Saint Luke drawing the Virgin',  c. 1435 in Public Domain. 

Thursday, October 17, 2019

Wait lifter


Where I have sometimes
pled with pronounced pain,
head nestled in a pillow,

I find myself
Now
heaving
and overcome-
weeping with joy
at the alignment,

at how far
these things travel
and come back around.

And I levitate
the world-

at least it feels this way

in the middle.



Image of art installation Title: Levitated Mass by artist Michael Heizer at Los Angeles County Museum of Art in California [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Monday, April 29, 2019

Pray, Prey


"Praying is asking; meditation is listening"

At what point-if any-does saintly
become so sacrificial
that death is its ultimate end?

When, if ever, does the heart of an angel,
hit with its own dart,
concede this too
must be divine?

Whence and why does Spirit
move energy so intensely
it reverberates into the material
realm?

Maybe the middle is maddening
to mock me
for the time
I put into making such massive
messes.

I have studied for this test.
All of the questions cannot be known
before-
I have learned
only enough to get by
and yet I try
anyway
I can
to pass-
to move on
to the next question.


Painting by Margaritis Georgios, 'Sappho praying to Aphrodite' before 1843 [Public domain].



Sunday, September 2, 2018

20/20 Solution


Coincidence is a convenient
excuse in lieu
of exactitude, like revenge,
directed.
Which explains the
all too common
aversion to poetry,
making many believe
in God,
or a guiding hand
like muse and magic,
where attributions are
misplaced in
disappearing ink and through alchemy.

Ultimately, it seems we see
what we want
based on capacity, like neck rotation,
like breath and lung,
blinking and humidity,
following instructions, under certain conditions
these operate smoothly
without our requisite participation-

Yet when an event occurs
unfathomable and unforeseen,
scaring one's vision deep into the optic
down to the spinal column,
making it more important
to look away,
than move
on
without directions
that is when we say
we knew it, we caused it, we planned it,
it was meant
for the best.


Painting by Aleksander Grodzicki [Public domain] 1893, via Wikimedia Commons. 

Saturday, November 5, 2016

Lay me down


A head on pillow
hits the bed
again
and I confess it is useless
that I pray without membership
all men taste like forbidden fruit
so some nights I try just a little lullaby 
words work as stuffing say, softer,
consoling, comforting to tuck in tight,
granting the priceless gift of deep sleep
and hibernating potential 
in the conversation of dreams
possibly something snuggled 
warm with want
lays a head. 



Artwork by Jules Pascin [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

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