Study Hall Poetry

While thinking about how to see God in my work, I wrote this today during the seventh grade study hall. I think it's about coming to face my frustrations.

THE STAIN

The question is endlessly insistent
upon entrance to this hall without decoration.
A bland, blue wall necessitates conversation
that pushes blushes into unshaven faces,
but prevents worse fears, though the worst will come.

The eyes of my quiet desperation, endlessly pacing,
posing the question, then erasing and rolling on
in frustration. Persistent in lacking participation,
a stubborn generation must want to be taught,
as my beard is pulled, though short, young, but wrought.

Shabby t-shirts and jeans, endlessly worn.
More faithful, more remembered than friends they hold
in bonds bound with laughable things, for deeper
connections may move in maturity, which is fear...
for it is thoughtful and loyal, silent and sincere.

And seeking isolation in noise that is endlessly slinging
the stain of entertainment against pure walls,
and standing on the line, for boredom is banished
by the exciting threat of my terse attention
and life that is richer when wrapped up in tension.


The end. Don't we all remember fondly the seventh grade? I just endlessly wonder: what does the Spirit of God look like to a thirteen year old?

Two Poems

Today I take a Sabbath to reflect on what God is working on in me. So as I try to fight with my wife and dog for some silence, let me present You with a poem I just wrote after experiencing a Lent service at an Episcopal church. After that is a poem I wrote in the waiting room of a doctor's office while waiting to get my routine kidney check. Thanks Lord, for the beauty of the language that You've given me, for the creativity that you routinely display about the world that strikes me as gorgeous, the thoughts that You inspire me to that I find simply beautiful.

POEM I:
THE BEAUTY OF TENSION

Off wooden beam ceilings bounce readings
nervously holy with rolling meaning.
A tightening in the beauty of tension,
between the yes and the yes,
between bowing and relaxation,
of strained continuation till
we’re drawn to the space where the Lord,
the Lord God is one.

And thus being undone,
being like a shamed man flung
in all disgrace between the One
who holds the justice of life and death,
the same One who with every breath
hopes to graciously harbor fear.
The promise of heaven drawn near
despite the reverence from always offending,
of rending ourselves from the unending
wonder in Your balance sincere.

God of covenantal reality,
the God in the paradox, in actuality
the unity. The completeness of all things,
the restoration Your blessing brings
rings in praise and penance, knees bowed,
heads down and hands peacefully high.
The God of the sky, the ashes, the earth,
guarding the grave, giving forth birth.
Both hearing and acting, present now
and afar, in the sound of pews creaking
and the orphans bleak cry,
in organs ascending and the circles beneath
the bare widow’s eyes, empty relief,
on my coldest hands or all hardened hearts.
A beckoning cracking and bounding within
liturgical groans, a Lent filled with sin,
but never escaping the stained glass of men
and forever coming despite separation,
forever longing to lead in salvation.

POEM II:
IN THE WAITING ROOM

Your chatter, loose and enormous,
numerous depths, wondrous heights,
and weight. The chatter of wanderers,
chairs and walls, crammed with aesthetics
competing for the glory of the eye,
while all too softly falls the weight.
While we wait, we grow old,
for our wait if heavy with worry,
and that won't add what nothing can,
yet I know that lest Your hand
be cover we would all kneel, then
all but disappear as we
spill upon each other in breaths of fear.
Here is plenty of explaining and
unexplaining, hands wrung and deals done
and muttered prayers offered lightly.
For pretty pictures, black and white
and unevenly spaced, bring not peace,
but instead the forceful image of it.
Under all such lie the opposite.
Under silent talk lies louder chatter
of many a more weighty matter,
And benaeth this haunting sticky film;
this airy fear of death belies
a still heavier fear of life.

With Her Head on My Shoulder

While I am trying to get control of the fact that God is all around me, providing for all the times of simplicity in which I miss Him, I was hit very hard last night with an appreciation of the silent times where I get to hold my wife. We sat together, reading and resting, in our big easy chair by our front window. I just listened...

WITH HER HEAD ON MY SHOULDER:

Splitting the living air, this silence that grows;
The rumbled breath of the plow through the snow,
The rustling breeze of the cars and their beams,
The name of the Lord on your lips as you sleep.

Speak out of the space that surrounds my time,
As salvation and righteousness mingle inside,
The movements of spirit are grounded in place,
Those high and holy and those low and base.