i mainline pure feeling
inject it straight into my skull
through 9 mm neodymium drivers
it takes away the numb,
wave after wave of sound
manufacturers the absent
in gun metal black

father is a vacuum
that starves my heart
empty of oxygen

father is a singularity
that consumes my insides,
only they grow back at dawn

he’s a shadow in my night
unseen for a lack of light

a dead and gone dad
with no echo left
no matter how I strain
to catch his voice

strains of loss
filter down to me from above
voices raised in lament
seek a sliver of celebration
amid the black of absence;
lost father, lost friend, lost son,
lost husband, lost loved one
i am beneath the dead
i am beneath the living
what comfort can i offer
save the incense of words
lifted to the clouds
and beyond

It is the very real immanence of God that wards away sin from our lives…like a great and purifying wind blasts away a fetid smog so is the the presence of God.

When we fail, inevitably, day by day, hour by hour and moment by moment it is the transcendence of God that is grace upon which we must lean on as if our lives depended upon it…which they do in a way.

Rarely do we live with an awareness of either…somehow we spend our time outside of the scope of both…failing to sense God nearby and never realizing God’s overarching majesty that is above all of our own brokenness when we need to.

To understand the immanence of God and how it affects us we could compare it to how we behave when a loved one is with us. We care about what they think…we act in ways designed to earn their respect and in response to their love for us and our love for them. It is the same with God in the case of God’s immanence. 

Of course we do not “feel” God in the same way as a lover or family member. In this instance we must practice the presence of God as Brother Lawrence would say.People often complain about the invisibility of God as if to say that it would be easier to live in a way that would not offend if only you could see God with you. Interestingly we do not struggle as much in the same way when our loved ones are not with us…our behaviour manages to maintain itself in light of the influence of our relationship.

In this way each of us needs to cultivate a relationship with God not unlike the kind of special relationship we have in our lives that makes us want to be better…”she makes me want to be a better man” and so I would want it to be the same with God.

Creation starts with one word
– let –
let us breathe new ones
to bring about a living time,
a world of green rhythm,
a world of blue rhyme,
a cadenced place to dance
where the shadows are made of light
and we sing to each other at night
of the sweetness of what we birthed

rain on the rusty tin roof
taps a Morse Code reminder
of the rhythm that keeps us alive,
a beautiful grace falling
a wet embrace calling –
we belong beneath the lightning;
are we stars to clouds looking down?

he went nova
and shed himself to the stars
layer by blinding layer
until nothing of him was there
and all of him was everywhere

I ran head down and hard
away from who I was
forgetting to watch where I was going
forgetting to watch who I was becoming
til’ I fell to the waiting arms of the earth
to be reshaped with the clay

red rocks and the dry desert
are all that is needed for now
having left the crowds of Vegas
to journey along sunlit Lake Mead
to the empty welcome wilderness
laid out like a lost lover before me;
I love that I feel like the last man on earth
just the wind to whisper secrets to me
in self-imposed exile amid bleached bones
all is sand, sky and forgotten journeys
with signs of previous life etched into her walls
likemelikemelikemelikemelikeme
on and on til’ the canopy is bruised
and every star is a curious cloud;
the heavenlies are torn by the fallen,
bright, cat-claw trails bleeding light
while I drive out, past Nellis, to the strip,
cast back to the world where I belong…
it’s inevitable –
no one can live in the desert forever,
though they can die there well enough

woman is the word
that walked me along this life
that taught me the beautiful things
and held me close in the dark

woman is the strength
that fought hell for my frail breath
and sang with her heart to me
of secret names for my God

woman is mother, sister, lover, friend;
the centre of something like prayer
whispering sacred words in my ear
that life might be more than living…

 

(Written on the occasion of International Women’s Day)