Perfect flood casts out fear

We fear grief as a wave that sweeps
Everything
And lays bare the bones of ourselves
Aching and open
Unclothed of the busyness we've stitched to cover up
Our nakedness

And it comes with a depth and weight
A flood that surpasses
Overwhelms
Submerges our most valiant efforts
Our grimmest clingings
And with them
The fragile fake skyscrapers
That excused our unused wings
And let us reach heaven
With unhallowed feet. 

On Waiting for a House

 How I wish that that parched sands of waiting
Were elsewhere than the path pulling at my feet
If it could only rain, that I could slog through the mud of blessings
Or be swept away in landslides
A chance to rest my feet
To catch my breathe
And remain uncaught by step
After heart-heavy step
Into the unknown

They say faith is a leap
Then what is gravity
But crushing inevitability
That once you leave earth
The only way back is down

If I had four walls I'd wrap me in them like a cloak
And huddle
Anything but this endless middle
This endless muddle
In between myself
And the story my heart longs to say

And yet
Sometimes wilderness calls us
Because only in the gentle crunch
Endlessly eating at the future
Can fill your belly with need
With expectation

They say faith is a leap
But faith is really a pregnant belly
That you carry through heavy months
And when you put it down
You find in your arms 
More than you'd ever have words to hold anyway.

Same thing.

I would reinvent
My

Self

A thousand thousand times
In as many moments
As I can't

Stand

I would shake
My

Self

Biting with the teeth
Of my dilemma
And just shake this rat

Understanding

Violence yielding
Soft redemption
Tearing out new wholeness

Or
I would just reinvent
The

Wheel

God.

God is not a solution to your problems
He does not dissolve
He clings to the sides of each cup that he fills
And overflows onto your clean hands


God is not a gas
To fill every last space
God will contain himself
And won't push your walls without permission

God is not a liquid
He takes his own shape
Inside of every vessel
And invites you to join him
In the pool

God is not a solid
But his sharpness is unchanging
And his corners slice deeply
When you hold him with a violent heart

God does not fold you
Cleanly, crisply
Like an origami swan
Or crumple you for the wastebin
He turns you against yourself
Along unexpected lines
Without pinching the creases
He contains your uncontainedness
Your filled-but-empty space
Your drowning overflow
Your hardened resistance
And gives them grace to grow.

Take your breath
But do not keep it
Give it back
To Beyond
Where home
Belongs

You won't find happiness
Buried like bones in the deep earth
Of your pain
But perhaps in some idle
Unlooked-for corner
A bud unfurls
And finds your eyes instead.

Musings on Upheaved Markets and Downheaved Monies

When I watch the numbers fall
In my own wallet
And taste poorer air I'd sworn I put behind me
With each regular paycheck push

When I realised that savings
Are more noun than verb
And I dangle fretfully

A spider on a single silky thread

I see that in the balance

The world I hold is my own fragile creation

Dangling in the fickle breeze of entropy
Until at last my slippered grip falters
I fall upon gravity's sword
Only to find it a ploughshare

It isn't so much the distance
That divides us
But the distance
Within us
That holds on with trembling fingers
To the tiger
We daren't dismount