What’s the difference between a missionary and a lover?
I feel like a fool
For planning a trip to the Grand Canyon
And dreaming of Christmas
In North Carolina mountains
When I answered the phone
With a choked hello
My heart already knew you had called to say
You weren’t coming home
(to me)
a simple snippet about change.
The years have bought grace and wisdom
And with them comes the realization
That I don’t know as much
As I would like to believe
But I know better than to think
change will ever be over
for the unchanging character
of the creator
gives him the freedom
to create change
but he is a good father,
so this change brings grace.
My soul feels like a canyon
And I don’t know if I should attempt to fill it up, (with what? I’m not sure.)
Or keep digging and hope I hit fire.
(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.
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.
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
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.
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?”
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
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.
Rae of Poeima 