The Cost

 

The ancient castes sustain and nurse the hatred,

Of brother, of sister, of many a nearby neighbor,

Of tribe, tongue, or piety, as each the other abhor, 

Covering the coveting that tramples o'er the sacred,

Of I

Of Thou.

Grace is far more affordable,

Grace is vastly more costly,

As prayers whispered softly,

As pangs and groans inaudible,

Flow.

Collateral crumbles, breaks, bleeds, and weeps,

Barely a line in the ledger of malicious magnates,

Avarice budget death to dollars -- naught will sate,

The human, the devil, whose gluttony never sleeps.

O'er I

O'er Thou.

Grace is far more affordable,

Grace is vastly more costly,

As prayers whispered softly,

As pangs and groans inaudible,

Fail.

Grace is affordable,

Grace is costly.

Look, he is coming with the clouds,

    and “every eye will see him,

even those who pierced him”;

    and all peoples on earth “will mourn because of him.

So shall it be! Amen.

(Rev 1:7)

Imago Diaboli

 

Crafted from earthen genes and the dust of stars, 

Simian seraphim sibling, steps of magnificence, 

Beloved within a bestiary of bounty and beauty,

Worship a liturgy of work in love in innocence, 

Tethered to terrestrial times, scripting traditions, 

A garden eucharist, the touch of transcendence.

Imago terrae,

Imago Dei.

The myths remember the hubris of our forebears,

Humus folk, arrogating in promethean insolence,

Cain, Icarus, Gilgamesh, Goliath, each a narcissus,

So all of us, each other moment, in lost innocence,

Fermenting in bitterness 'til avarice sips bloodlust, 

Our souls plummet luceferian in pandemic virulence.

Imago terrae,

Imago Dei,

Imago Diaboli.

Lord, have mercy upon us; Christ, have mercy upon us; Lord, have mercy upon us.

Humpback Song

 

Wondering wandering below the star pocked dome,

'Ere night bleeds into day and as deep calls to deep,

Marveling as evening creatures call and respond,

Whence this complexity, how this terrible beauty?

My soul, why is it so?

In the dark deep, tapered behemoth, bumpy beings,

Giant cetacean nomads glide, baleen gulping krill.

Receiving this marine manna --a gift, a divine keep,

Once sated, joy-breaching the brine to an airy biome.

Whale, why are you so?

Slowing my gait, my tired eyes close lids in reverence,

'Ere night sky pales in morn's mauves and magentas.

My spirit's imaginary lilts in resonance with the song,

Modulations of tone and timbre, phrase and themes.

My spirit, why are you so moved?

Songs elegiac and elysian vibrate depths and shallows,

Passed on, generation to generation, world without end.

Gracing seas to sky-hopping, intelligence without agenda,

Summoned from God's bestiary in mystical beneficence.

Humpback, why do you sing?

As Sol's first piercing beams prod my mind to remember,

Finding raspy voice to poorly mimic the humpback hymn,

In a sad longing to be one with the spirit of the humpback--

Guardian of weaker ocean kin, oft seen coming to the aid.

Creature, from whence this courage?

Helping seals, penguins, dolphins, even stray humankind,

Facing down sharks or orca to save fellow ocean dwellers,

For some hapless ocean prey, unbidden marine seraphim,

Thus risking fin, fluke, and life in choosing to be defender.

Humpback teach me your song.

That we may love and guard the other,

Teach us your song.

(Photo of a seal riding a humpback whale as it helps the seal avoid Orcas).

Stare Into the Whirlwind

 

Aging eyes, veneered in thin cataracts, water in the twilight,

Warm tears summoned by wind, weariness, grief, and shame,

Anguished fragility, furies at the powers, divine or diabolic,

Hoarse throated from imprecations--prayers, uttered vitriolic, 

As Job, rending spirit, resigned --yet raging, broken, and lame,

Yet into the wind, the bloody whirlwind, not averting his sight.

Stare into the whirlwind,

In the solidarity of chagrin,

In audacity raise your chin,

Steel-nerves, harden your skin.

In these days, body and spirit, dissipate as clouds in thermals,

A witness to the mass murdered in a land of distracted deniers,

Anguished fragility, wailing in turn at the altar or in the square,

From matins to vespers, in wordless sounds of groaning prayer.

This Mass of broken bodies, seas of blood need answer either,

To the iron straw superman or to the grace of the supernatural.

Stare into the whirlwind,

In the solidarity of chagrin,

Let the Spirit quell the din,

'Til the day, of new wineskins.

Stare into the whirlwind.

And breathe it in,

Breathe it in,

Sifting Beloved

 

The juggernauts continue their rapacious consumption,

Cooly reducing neighborhoods to shattered enclaves,

An aftermath of a normalcy of murder and mayhem,

Yonder, violent land theft pogroms accelerate grimly.

In Gaza's rubble, days of shelterless surviving or dying.

Western powers play at outrage, none act to condemn.

This merciless avarice bulldozing miles of mass grave.

Erasing homes and holy sites in a zionist subsumption, 

Of their place on earth.

Sifting beloved,

Sifting beloved,

Sifting.

Bereaved Mahmoud Hammad,

Beloved wife, Naama Alaa Al-Din,

Was soon to birth beautiful daughter, Haifa, 

Consumed by thermal munitions.

Burned alive into ash as well,

Son Ismail, named for the faith that God will hear,

Son Mohammed, named for the prophet, 

Son Ghaith, the rain that brings mercy,

Daughter, Jana, God's gift to Mahmoud and Naama. *

Mahmoud our brother, bearing this unfathomable grief,

While fat-boy politicians drool over this holy ground,

Where blood stains and human and concrete ashes settle,

For this honorable one, an archeology of desperate quiet,

Cherishing his lost loves, displacing fathoms of rubble.

With what Allah gave him,  hands, back, and firm mettle,

Shovel, sieve, and sorrow, searching soil for his unfound,

Fragments of family, bone and dust and persistent belief,

In their sacred worth.

Sifting beloved,

Sifting beloved,

Sifting.

"Strengthen the feeble hands,

    steady the knees that give way;

 say to those with fearful hearts,

    “Be strong, do not fear;

your God will come,

    he will come with vengeance;

with divine retribution

    he will come to save you.” (Is. 35)

* I looked up the meaning of Mahmoud's family member names in Arabic. Mahmoud's name itself refers to honor and worth, which I use in the next stanza.

Innocence

 

Somewhere behind tinted soft gelatinous windows,

Somewhere past vibrating ossicles and membrane,

A complex inweaving of synapses and chemistry,

A living soul hewn from grey matter and mystery,

Sights, sounds, taste, touch, love, and every pain,

A sifting of I and thou, as angels, as devils winnow,

The human.

Innocence, 

Incense,

Soul.

Some ones bear the weight of a race devolving,

Ancient myth and memory in prose and in poetry,

Succumb, as a binary matrix dulls in monochrome --

A petulant power ravages each soul in every biome,

'Til all is mourning and a communion of poverty,

And faith and faithfulness corroded, dissolving, 

Spirit.

Innocence,

Bereft,

Child.

One man, this man, numb, as the numbing drumming,

As devils -- of flesh or fire -- smith guns from ploughs,

Crush and crucify the imago dei --innocence executed,

Kin of other tone or tongue -- these powerless, uprooted,

While  lost clerics and pilgrims, proclaim and espouse,

The love of their own power, a gospel so unbecoming,

of Emmanuel.

Innocence,

Bruised, 

Smolders.

A few of our suffering kin...

Palestine

Ukraine

Ghana

Sierra Leone

Afghanistan

Honduras

Sierra Leone

Myanmar

Nigeria

Sudan

Yemen

Orphans

Widows

Migrants

Innocence

Lost.

Shattered

 

How painfully innocence dies in cherubic brown faces,

Some unbroken still gambol in the phosphorous rubble,

These within a mother's or kindred's tethering gaze, 

Allah's silent through munition blasts or murmured prayer.

Shattered,

Faith,

Hope,

Love.

Ammad, beautiful boy sheltering in dangerous places,

Hellfire bursts over, under, around, his tender frame,

Despondent dad gently cups Ammad's sallow cheeks, 

Asunder his gory remains. Pleas ending in blank stares.

Shattered.

Son.

Heart.

Love.

Amna, kind girl, bravely offering kin simple graces,

Fetching water when water is marked by munitions,

Remnant relatives ever mourn in her empty spaces, 

In this place of pain and nations n'er giving a care.

Shattered.

Daughter.

Despair.

Love.

Sidra, from Gaza to Rafah found no safe places,

"Gospel" guided bombs erased her shrinking world,

Died she of the blast or the shredding of her frame,

Feet frayed, spiked to a wall, hanging in mid-air,

Shattered.

Shattered.

Shattered.

Love.

Ammad Al-Najjar

Amna al-Mufti

Sidra Hassouna