the unbreathed Word
is stillborn in the world
empty whistling nonsense

the unspoken Word
is deaf to the agonizing cries
of Everyman (EveryWoman)

the unacted Word
is entirely invisible
an unholy ghost

the Word for word’s sake
is a snake consuming itself
a gluttony of self-satisfaction

the Word dreams of flesh
and bridging heaven’s shores
to earth’s pale shadow of self
naked invader born in straw and shit
never stopping to hear himself speak
but plunging heart-first into shadows
setting creation ablaze with the cry –

“I AM MAKING ALL THINGS NEW”

 

ATTN POETS & SHORT STORY WRITERS. In an effort to democratize the publishing of the written word www.flatlanderpoetry.com was created. I encourage you whether you are unpublished or a professional to submit and spread the word. It doesn’t matter what your age is. I also welcome feedback.

a walk
perhaps
a wander
to squeeze out the angst
to press with words
the disease
the dis-ease
so as to leave dark drops
like black blood
on the sidewalk behind
it is a letting of sorts
cold healing for a hot heart
with a bitter trail to follow
to be found
in the fresh white snow
as the fresh white snow

joy
in the moment
in the chaos
in the darkness

joy
in the dawn
in the clearing sky
in the light

joy
in the hungry
in the poor
in the sick

joy
in the wealthy
in the filled
in the strong

joy
in me
in you
in the moment

joy
from above
all around
in the up
in the down

I wrote the following as an editorial in today’s edition of The Voice (www.winklermordenvoice.ca) and thought I would republish it here.

—————————————

Christmas is coming and with it the ghosts of Bing Crosby, Ebenezer Scrooge and the Peanuts gang prepare to walk along side modern seasonal heroes such as Elf to point us, each in their unique way, to the reason people become so festive.

It is hard to believe that more than 2,000 years later we are so significantly impacted by the birth of a poor, Jewish carpenter (that alone should say something about the man) that people the world over regularly prepare for a holiday transformation of varying degrees.

Now I realize it is only Nov. 24 but frankly a season like Christmas needs a year’s worth of preparation (dare I say a lifetime) and so a month seems ok in light of the point of it all. The point? Well – few have summed it up better than the great theologian Linus van Pelt in A Charlie Brown Christmas when he steps into the midst of distracted, quarreling chaos, blanket in hand, to respond to a question from Charlie Brown who asks – “Isn’t there ANYONE who knows what Christmas is all about?!?!”

Linus responds – “Sure Charlie Brown, I can tell you what Christmas is all about. ‘And there were in the same country shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night. And, lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them, and the glory of the Lord shone round about them: and they were sore afraid. And the angel said unto them, ‘Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, which is Christ the Lord. And this shall be a sign unto you; Ye shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger.’ And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God, and saying, ‘Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men.’ You see, Charlie Brown—that’s what Christmas is all about.”

And of course those few verses Linus read from the Gospel of Luke in the Bible are exactly what Christmas is about. No matter who you are, what you believe or don’t believe, these verses reflect the root and vision of Christmas.

Can we, in a single month, bring glory, peace and goodwill? Perhaps not. But only cynicism prevents us from trying to, each in our own small way, bring these things into the lives of the people around us.

It is easy to become angry and bitter about the commercialization of Christmas and the vast disparity of wealth that it’s light reveals, but then it is easy to become angry and bitter about just about anything.

May I suggest that no matter who you are, whether you celebrate Christmas or not, you take a moment this season to be kind to someone and reflect on the possibilities of a world where one moment of light becomes many and many become all.

the poet is a gutter dweller
a pauper in the city of art
base born bastard
child of a drunken muse
laid low by human suffering and joy

she casts off her grief and lusty longings
as rotted rags upon her offspring
that they may carry her burdens
crazed prophets to a deaf world
running rampant and away
only to return to the everlasting teat
crying MORE!

Crow awoke
awoke
with a croak
which is to say –
he sang
sang for a new day
it was
his black-feathered way
to croak in the new day
to croak the sun
along its way

and to think –
he is a songbird

him

with raspy, salt-water tongue
bleak of eye
bleak of heart
yet he sings just the same
great guttural cries
that paint hope with a wire brush
tearing the tissue canvas
proclaiming bleeding beauty
is not the sole purview
of the soft-eyed warblers
there is another breed
that screams the sky awake
that howls heaven into the here
into the now
there is pain song that brings peace
there is an old voice
there is
there is crow

is it strange
that everything
beats?

that we move
to rhythmic pulsing
as sunlight travels in
wave upon wave upon wave
arcing and ebbing
like falling crests
beating upon the shore of the earth

we move to beats
fill our music with a tintinnabulation
a  marking of time
that moves our feet
that moves us forward
as if on strings

heart strings?

tied to a greatness
that keeps time
pounds it out like a blacksmith
hammering our lives
folding us in upon ourselves
that each blow may create
strength anew
that each strike rings
forever inside ourselves

till we dance to the echo
till we seek to recreate the beat
the beat that creates
till we seek one-another
seek to create in heated music
with the background beat
always the sound that measures time
time that was
time that is
time that will be
one

beat

at

a

time

One small act of kindness can dispel a world of evil.

Like a tiny, distant star gone supernova in the deep, dark, eternal blackness of space, kindness can light the night sky of a person’s life until it seems as if the sun has risen and day has come.

The brilliance of it all is that the light shines equally on the one acting and the one receiving.

To resist love, wherever you find it, is to resist God.

We find fragments of love everywhere in every corner of the world…even in the dark places and spaces and depending upon the package we can often find ourselves pushing it away, pretending its not there or defining it as something other than what it is.

Of course our efforts are futile in that love is not one to suffer being redefined.

Of course it begs the question – what is love to which the only response can be God. This is rarely satisfying to us because we would like to define it as a set of certain actions between certain types of people. This is because we are not satisfied with what we cannot define. If we cannot define it we cannot control it and if we cannot control it we are scared of it and would prefer to destroy it.

So love is God and God is love but this does not mean that the actions we would like to define love by are not affiliated in any way. These loving acts, feelings and responses owe their existence to this God, this well-spring, this source.

One is tempted to ask if love can exist without God. If God is love does this not mean that all love comes from God? I am human but this does not mean all humans come from me. But love is not a thing…not in the same sense that I am human. Love is an idea. Love is an idea that is worked out in the lives of those who comprehend it. Love acts upon.

God is love.

God is not merely lov-ing. God is not merely a lov-er. God is love.

Think about that for a moment and digest it. If God is love and love is an idea that acts than God is the very measure of love. One does not look at God and say God is not loving because (FILL IN THE BLANK) in the same way one does not look at a 12 inch ruler and say it is not a foot long because my feet are 11 inches.

I see much resistance to love in the world. I hear a lot of resistance that sounds a lot like someone complaining about the 12 inch ruler. A lot of defining love by our own standards rather than in comparison to and because of the very measure of love.

One says “that is not love because I am not fond of the package it is in” or “this is not love because it does not “feel” like love” or the worst of them all “my God would not call that love…”

Sentences that start with “my God” sound suspiciously like idol worship to me. My God. My God would not; my God could not; my God is; my God isn’t…

There is an old awareness among theologians that whenever we become too certain of who God is and what God looks like and acts like we notice that this God begins to look a lot like the one who is doing the describing. Hitler  did this. He defined the god of the Reich and this god had a whole lot in common with Hitler. People who define God typically do so for their own ends and those ends are never good. Any god we can create and define becomes a destroyer.

God is a lot of things but above all God is mysterious and God’s ways are not ours. God’s love is not ours although it seeks to save us because that is its nature.

All that to say when you see something that looks and sounds suspiciously like love (God) take a few minutes before you deny it and ask yourself what this love (God) could be up to lurking about in this place you do not expect. Ask yourself why it makes you uncomfortable and whether this might have more to do with you then with it.