poetry

~ kwyatt1247 ~ Leave a comment

two dollars & fifty cents.

Before today I thought that I could write this
and tie some loose ends to emotionally connect me with a Syrian.
But yesterday, as I read through the stories of eighteen humans
who have been blown out of their homes,
I found myself taking breaks on Pinterest
looking at ‘53 Ways to Decorate the Modern Home for Christmas’
because my heart couldn’t handle the photos of shrapnel embroidered children
for an extended period of time.

But that’s the new skin
their mothers kiss
goodnight.

And I’m disgusted at my ignorance
that I thought I could ever relate to a family of seven
living in a junkyard camp,
the taste of iron thick in their mouth,
as if they’re constantly bleeding out
because I’m a “wanderer” too wandering through
my days until graduation
wondering where I’ll be working
in the land of opportunity…
as a white woman…
with an education…
broke, but with more money than two dollars and fifty cents.

I watch their faces as they share their stories and I see bodies
that are slowly returning to God.
Eyes wanting;
spirits burning;
haunted hearts left floating
in the body bag
that transported them across the sea.
I heard the stories of people who have wandered for years in their modern day exodus.
A Syrian man told me he smelled like he was running out of time,
and I thought that was something I could relate with, but listening to his story,
I realized the stench didn’t stick to my clothes the way it stuck to his,
like a little child pulling on your coat, asking “are we there yet?
Daddy, are we there yet?”

God, are we there yet?

No, son, because
home is the barrel of a gun;
home is the mouth of a shark;
home is a friend to whom we write, “Don’t forget me because you’re the one who has changed.”

I heard the story of a woman who watched a man fall from a roof because he couldn’t stand upright any longer.
It hit me in the same way bodies hit pavement; we all wrestle with God.
Knees knocking, I have stood with that man on that roof
because hopelessness doesn’t discriminate.
And I know that somewhere in your twenty something years, you have stood with him too.

Living days wanting to die are days that will reappear in the history of mankind
until death is defeated once and for all.
Until then we wait.
And we wrestle with God,
trying to pull our future from the same hands we feel like sometimes we’re falling through.

And I want you to understand- trust me; I want to understand better too-
that this is why it’s important.
This is why it is our fight too
because it has never been a war against flesh and blood,
but against fear and hopelessness.
And if I’m being honest,
I can’t always see twenty million refugees fitting in the palms of God’s hands.
It’s easy for me to believe that he has forgotten them;
that he blinked and he missed them.
I want to yell at him, beating my fists in the hollows of his chest,
crying out “where are you in the midst of this?”

Emmanuel; God with us, in the midst of this.
God with the milk tea skinned orphans.
God with the widow in her sorrow filled mourning.
God with the man, wringing his hands, choking on the dust of his country.

God with them.

Jehovah Shammah; God is there.
He is there, in the tomorrows the Middle East will raise its weary head to see. He has gone before and only He knows how to get there.

And so where are we?

If we can’t see Him working in this—are we really in their midst?

And that’s the question I’m left with these days. This is the question that I wrestle with and I ask God, where do I belong in this. I personally believe that He is there in the Middle East, working & bringing people to him by his glorious power, and it’s up to us to meet him there (literally or figuratively) and join him. 

~ kwyatt1247 ~ Leave a comment

Welcome Home

The curse of the Gardens’ labor pains manifest themselves
in the face of this creaky house
I’ve been building since the age of six-
hands unskilled in working with the weight of wooden glory;
this is where His labor has me,
hoping against hope
one day this place can sustain life
because right now, I’m not so sure…

Walking through the front door,
the air exhales the same stench of lusting
and taking,
the same heavy breathing,
that filled the Garden after the Fall.
The room is quiet with swallowed “no thank you’s”
and I can feel the treads in the carpet
of large footprints
in and out the front door
under my naked feet.
No one lives here because no one stays
this is just the place to come and play
since the first day when the devil said
“little girl, let’s play.”
Game on-
I won
an itch for sexual satisfaction
that became immune to my hands scratching
so I invited him in to help me reach it
and then a new him
and then a new him
and then a new him.
Humming a hymn lamenting the lost
of my skin
under the devil’s fingernails
scratching my back
that forever itched.

I walk on glass into a kitchen
scrubbed clean and empty,
a picture perfect catalog
haunted with moans of the dying.
There’s a table set seating my groaning hunger’s company:
headaches and fatigue;
for old time’s sake we get together to
throw good food away and
rearrange the remnants on my plate.
Ana, the starving baker, feeds those who come,
but lets her stomach feed on herself.
She hides her decomposing sanity well,
oh, I hid it well.
One and the same, Ana and I
and if we keep this up,
together we will die.

In my bedroom
at the end of the hall
the darkness sings to me
songs of the sirens
in Homer’s Odyssey
and I dance to them
right into the arms of my lover,
Depression.
He pulls me under the sheets only to suffocate me
stuffing my mouth with the rags
I use to wipe my self-induced scars with.
I know somewhere love is waiting for me to reach out
but in my madness,
I can’t see Him reaching out for me

—-

One day, a Carpenter walked by this
condemned house
of no use to Him and
saw a home to dwell in.
By grace this is a story of anomalies:
because He bought this desolate place anyway.
My God,
He bought me-
paying more than the price of His own life,
He paid with a promise to restore it.
and He works diligently with the same
blood, sweat, and tears, it took Him to walk up Calvary
the same hill this God forsake-me-not house rests on
hands skilled in working with the weight of wooden glory.
He built a foundation of faith and courage to believe that
for the rest of my life,
I can confidently sing
“take me home”
and be welcomed with open arms
through the door of hope.

~ kwyatt1247 ~ Leave a comment

(I ask; I’ll receive: a resolution)

I asked Him to build me with honesty, the same honesty that led Him from the Garden of Gethsemane and nailed Him up on that God forsaken tree. Because I’m tired of being what I believe is a portrayed image of me- mistress folly, mystery isn’t sexy- it’s holy, it’s set apart because it’s something you can’t smell taste hear touch or see unlike you- because I see right through you. You’re as sick as your secrets and you just can’t see it because you’re knocking back drinks hoping you’ll find a more bearable reality. But this is it- so embrace this current state of things because it breaks my heart that you’re only honest when you have the freedom to wake up not remembering the truth.

I asked Him to paint me the different hues of purples and blues,  the color of a bruise, with freckles of yellow and green. The kind of bruise you get from pressing your knees into the floor so deep whenever you’re crying out at heaven waiting for a response. The kind of bruise that you keep touching just to see how much it hurts. One that you can be proud of because you know you’ve earned it. I want to be a color that indicates I’m growing and being made more new and whole than I was before.

I asked Him to take my poetry through healing, I want it to go from hurting to hopeful because to me- regardless of what anyone thinks- it’s too lovely to keep suffering internally. Wrap me in empathy, courage, gentleness, and creativity. Name me hope. Name me authenticity.

I asked Him to give me new feet. I want a dancer’s feet with blisters that know the friction of moving across a bare floor with repetition, repetition, repetition. I want to be content with the mundane because repetition, repetition, repetition doesn’t invalidate the movement of the human body. I want an explorer’s feet rough from walking day after day over whatever lots they are cast, having the faith to believe that they will hold me up, with the weight of a nail, rising and falling as they inevitably will, taking me home.

~ kwyatt1247 ~ 1 Comment

Closed Doors

My flesh feels left behind, body outside of mind. “In between” the pull of my finger on the trigger; the thumb of God and His finger; the walk from door to door.

My spirit fights a cough in my throat to sing- say “ahhhh.” I cough. When doors are closed, I want to dance to eucharisteo. But this paralysis is like this- this infection of excuses spreading throughout my body, the beep beep beep of the machine flat lining “lay down and rest, it’s so easy” despondency overcomes me. Pain paints the walls of my funeral home, over the lines remembering the days I would stand up straight and let Dad measure me, “beloved, you’re growing!” and I forget it’s even possible. I forget anything is possible with G- I cough.

Dear body, don’t listen to mind. Dear body, be free. Dear body, be somebody.

Dear God, I just want to be somebody.

Instead I cough; I sleep.

I dream of home sweet Jesus Christ made of windows.

I write my prayers on my skin so on nights like this, their light burning in the darkness keeps me awake instead of this-I cough. A scripted story of my scars meeting His.

When doors close your ears hear them sing or whisper or scream, but it all comes down to hearing His breath in the hinges. And I do- I hear it in the distance like my mother’s voice when it was time to come in.

Dear God, let me in.

I take another step in the between. I cough.

Dear God, let remember how to breathe.

All I want to do is sing sel-I cough. Sing sel- I cough… SING SELAH! I fight to sing because I fight to breathe and there isn’t a breath that doesn’t sing syllables of his name. I’ll keep singing because I will keep breathing until I die or I will die.

I hear him knocking. From behind a door a few fronts down the street.

~ kwyatt1247 ~ Leave a comment

Renovate

Somewhere along the way, we’ve placed this “FOR SALE” sign around our neck and we make people believe that we are so notably remarkable that they should pay to look at our exquisite detailed trim when actually the light fixtures have never worked and the sink stopped

Drip

Drip

Dripp

ing

Because the well ran dry quite some time ago.

But if you advertise that it’s new, they will believe it’s new and we will too (I’m new). But I wonder how many regretful tenants it will take for us to realize that we need to change the sign to “UNDERGOING RENNOVATIONS” and let Surrender welcome the hands of another to help.

Yes my dear, these fixtures are nothing to be ashamed of

~ kwyatt1247 ~ Leave a comment

Eucharisteo

Hiding amidst my own somber company
Loss echoes off the cavern walls:
Security dressed in the camo coveralls my father wore when I saw him leave an early November morning,
only to return in an 8X10 Christmas card reimbursing me for my loss with a $25 check.
The movie of love dressed in his button down making her husband breakfast on a Sunday morning
Twirling around the kitchen while he watches her over the brim of his coffee cup;
Yeah, that movie was lost in the move from Barbie’s dream house to Thumbelina’s thimble.
My ID card that I kept in my velcro wallet fell out when I went to the drug store to buy chocolate bars and was swept into a dust pan, falling among the trash into the bin with last month’s edition of Vogue.
“Remember whens” with familiar faces went missing in the pages of “once upon a times” that celebrated protagonists too magnificent to belong in my stories anymore.
His voice when he replied “I love you too” through the foggy car window before driving away.

This loss sat in my lap and hugged on my neck,
A pleasant memory to visit with
Until its grip grew tighter and it shoved its way into my throat

A gentleman drunk with nostalgia
“What good is this to you?” I choked out
“To give only to take away”

Like a dictator standing on bare skeletons
God was that distant father in the camo coveralls
And I couldn’t believe that His reimbursement check
Worth raindrops on eyelashes and warm chocolate chip cookies;
Soft flower petals and blades of emerald grass tickling toes;
Wind decorating the air with the smell of fresh laundry;
Conversation with a loved one over a Tuesday brunch;
The welcome of Light’s kiss on the horizon at dawn
When I first wake up under the comfort of hundreds of stitches
Could possibly be any better than-
What was that mournful echo I once heard?

For my ears are only flooded with the grandeur of thousands of trumpets as I waltz into the throne room
Adorned with eucharisteo I toss jewels down at my Abba’s feet,
That will never pay Him back the price He paid
For me to see His goodness.

~ kwyatt1247 ~ Leave a comment

Found God Crying
I found God crying in the middle of the night
And I asked Him what was wrong
He said “I’m mourning the loss of one of My sheep; a cherished one who once sung My song.
She’s shed off her wool coat
And has cloaked herself in gold
A wild mane to rule the kingdom in
Disregarding her own home

But I can hear her calling out for rest
Desperate for peace for a place to lay her head
But she won’t easily find Me
Until she opens her heart to bleed.”

I knew I was that sheep
When He turned to me and said
“My sweet treasured sheep, when will you come out of the lion’s den?”

~ kwyatt1247 ~ Leave a comment

The Shift

Cozy and comfortable I find unbearable
But they seduce me with promises of rest and recovery
When in the end, I’m left with complacency

My God, how did we get here in this big ol’ easy chair
That has chained down my wrists
And left me with cold, purple limbs?

I’ve become a part of this place,
I’ve melted into its perfect cookie cutter frame.
Mmm, a cookie? I’ll have one, maybe two…twenty?

And as I stuff my face, consumed with gluttony,
The hurting cry out around me
“God, where are we?

Where are you?
As your followers around us
Are lustfully consumed with all that glitters but will soon rust”
Because you see my church, we’re soon to bust

We’re shoving creations down our throat
Leaving room for only us,
Even God himself is being pushed and shoved into corners
As we muffle our own cries,

Fearful of what?
Having hearts of flesh instead of an empty treasure chest?

God, I pray you rip open my chest and make me less
I pray I see myself as yours
Instead of a copy of a copy of a copy
Of what this earth bore

Take this heart of stone and these old wretched bones
And make them new
God, let me see only you

~ kwyatt1247 ~ Leave a comment

Selma, AL

I am a reporter

Trying to find the words

To depict with blood stained lips

The modern day

Garden of Gethsemane before me

Hundreds of little Christ’s who are

Singing this little light of mine

Kneeling before white men

Let it shine

For a crown of thorns

Let it shine

Immanuel, the first in line

Let it shine.

I am a protester

Belief begetting belief

I press on

Like the woman who was bleeding for twelve years

this war has gone on far too long.

Among saints

my feet tire

yet my soul rests.

Jehovah Shammah, He goes before

In the gospel hymns we sing

in the offerings we lay at His feet:

security, prosperity, normalcy.

But that’s a hard truth to cling to

When my enemies

who I’m commanded to love,

Beat me to bleeding

abandon me to suffering

demean me to nothing.

Anger awakes

but hope fights tosing it to sleep

And I confess to the Great Almighty,

This-

This battle of my flesh and spirit

is the one killing me.

Because I want my hands to be bloody

but not from catching my fall on the street

And I make myself believe

that I’d rather sleep in a cell

than my own sheets

But instead this shield of faith goes before me

protecting me from my adversaries

But more importantly

protecting me from myself.

So I press on

behind Jehovah Shammah

Afflicted, but not crushed

perplexed but not driven to despair

persecuted but not forsaken

Struck down but not destroyed

on Christ the Solid Rock I stand

His life, death, and resurrection.

I am a white girl

My lament fifty years late

I don’t have the right to mourn

with the ache of fresh budding grief

For what does any of this mean to me?

For I have never felt the unceasing burn of my skin’s betrayal,

covering the internal body that makes me equal

with those who slay me

I’ve never been afraid of what a policeman’s hands could do to me

with their white man authority

And I only watch war through the safety of a screen

Remembering the taste of red iron from once upon a time

When I fell and broke my nose as a child

an injury fit for adolescence

unlike those I watched in black and white:

casualties of hate

branded on the skin of fellow Americans-

Hell, forget Americans,

Fellow HUMANS

From inhuman hands that must have been starved of holding.

But were they?

For I know they were raised by people like you and me

Mothers and fathers who went to church every Sunday

Gave their tithe,

Dressed their best,

So what was the difference?

I can’t help but feel sorry for them

Because they must not understand

That pivotal moment in the Garden of Eden

When Adam first opened his eyes,

Seeing his reflection in the ocean of living water,

Man made in His image,

Imago Dei.

I can’t help but feel sorry for them

Because the when they look down

They can only see skeletons,

Walking in the valley of the shadow of death

Their souls hardened

To the abundance of life found amidst creation.

I don’t know if I’ll ever comprehend it,

But I beg God,

By the grace of His spirit

To let me never fall into it-

That valley of bones my ancestors called home-

And by the grace of God,

I will never smell the stench of it.

~ kwyatt1247 ~ Leave a comment

Threads

I feel like I’m sitting on the edge of a mountain,
And I could fall off at any moment,
But my sweater is caught in a branch.
These measly threads that seem to somehow
Be a metaphor for my life
Come together in some roundabout way
Divinely intertwined
To provide the strength it takes
To hold me up.