A Certain Prayer

Shrouded, in the fog of war, in billows of fumes and debris,

Are those alive still -- ear bones numbed in the daily blasts.

Here, spotless lambs are imprinted with this hateful carnage.

Our Father, which art in heaven, 

Hallowed be thy Name.

Bodies with gaping wounds and spirits pray a dying hommage,

As creeds of fellowship again give way to the ancient castes,

Disdaining God's image in kith and kin, in hubris and decree. 

Thy Kingdom come. 

Thy will be done in earth, 

As it is in heaven. 

These horseman of ours, war, pestilence, famine, and death,

Each angel, demon, sapien-kindred souls, blasphemers all,

In baleful visions of gory, starve, disease, injure, and kill.

Give us this day our daily bread. 

To the cry "give us a king" -- submits to a despotic will,

Tramping o'er bloody sod, it's mass grave under a pall,

The fallen erased, their stories without living breath.

And forgive us our trespasses, 

As we forgive them that trespass against us. 

And lead us not into temptation, 

Groaning to the hills,  mine eyes water at the horizon,

These are my people. The murderers. And the murdered.

The cost of our idolatry binds each of us in it's chains.

But deliver us from evil. 

Though body and spirit are old, I await renewing rains,

To find grace in these killing fields feels patently absurd,

Unfit for the Eucharist, where God Loves each denizen.

For thine is the kingdom, 

The power, and the glory, 

For ever and ever. 

Amen.

Bonds

My beloved,

My love,

Ten years since whispered promises became spoken vows,

In dovetail step, our path, with grass trodded into the turf,

Morning rites and evening rites -- day and night on earth,

Shape our communion below sky or wooden boughs,

This sweet sacrament of the ordinary,

A diamond forged from common coal,

Love, love, love in our common places,

Now beloved, arise, do not tarry.

My beloved, 

My love,

Many a morn, your eyes open to my dawning gaze,

Like any morn, as the choirs of first light mustered,

Somnolent eyes, equivocate beneath their luster,

That we might abide in rest, and in sharing our days.

This sweet sacrament of presence,

I -- inwardly, outwardly stirred,

Love, love, love, in our quiet spaces,

Now beloved, abide with me.

My beloved,

My love,

In sundry ways, all the woes of all the wide world,

Settle in our bones and spirits; the body keeps score,

Of heartbreak, bloodshed, and sorrow, now, evermore.

 Afar God's country pilgrims we, with flag unfurled,

This bitter sacrament of pain,

Met with eyes of burning coal,

Love, love, love, in broken places,

Now beloved, endure with me.

My beloved,

My love,

On this anniversary, joy overtakes this troubled heart,

Where our commonplace foretells the beatific vision,

As our paths transfigured from earthen to elysian,

With seraphs, in awe. The most beautiful lover imparts.

This rich sacrament of marriage,

A communion envisioned by poets,

Love, love, love, that leavens the whole,

Now beloved, in grace, heal with me.

The cup, the bread.

The blood, the body,

Alive in God,

In love with you.

The Curtain

 

As day hours lengthen, seasons sway back and forth,

In this alchemy of time, the world pitches equinox,

Morning air crisply fragrant with buds and thaws,

Tranquil.

Between now and forevermore, a pregnant pause,

Epiphanies sweet symphony, God's verba and vox,

In luminous transfiguration -- creation shows its worth.

Thankful.

Upon a certain path by a mirrored tranquil pond,

The water translates the skies in beatific vision,

Elysian synesthesia, words and senses so moved,

Ecstatic.

A form of heaven and earth, in the pond infused,

Colours burn with more substance, and precision,

The curtain drawn reveals what is beneath and beyond,

Hypostatic.

Clouds, birds, trees, but also cars, homes, and neighbours,

Each most actual in the pond's echo of their ethereal forms,

Might we all exist as shades of what is real, what is beautiful,

Transfigure.

This passing glance avows these days are sallow -- merely liminal,

Yet also bespeaks that higher and farther, an embrace transforms,

Such that every breath partakes of love, an exhales in a prayer.

Linger.

Bruised Reed: Palestinian Easter

 

Lo my Jesus, bloodied, bruised, and battered.

When Caesar and Pilate, when Priest and Elder,

Confound kingdoms - Mars preens Messianic.

The least of these, hearts and bones shattered,

As wails and prayer anguish.

He will bring justice to the nations.

He will not shout or cry out,

    or raise his voice in the streets.

Lo my kin, bloodied, bruised, and battered,

When powers collude. -- political, ecclesial.

Wolves in Lambskin prowl, canines bared,

While wee broken lambs, unseen, unheard,

Die mid wails of anguish.

A bruised reed he will not break,

    and a smoldering wick he will not snuff out.

Lo the weight of the bloody, bruised and battered,

This cloud of witnesses, Saints, angels, martyrs, 

Bear witness to this deafening, soulless silence,

Millstones of the apathy of those thus hardened,

Plumb the faithless in anguish.

In faithfulness he will bring forth justice;

     he will not falter or be discouraged

till he establishes justice on earth.

Lo my Jesus, bloodied, bruised, and battered.

Brother to survivors of holocaust and Nakba,

Saviour to the broken and the brokenhearted,

Redeemer to all the mighty coldly scattered. 

Hear these prayers of wails of anguish.

Open eyes that are blind,

    free captives from prison

    and release from the dungeon those who sit in darkness.