Black Spot

I used to see beauty
until it there
the dark black spot
began hovering,
a ghost
in my vision’s
periphery.

It was then –
It haunting me –
I wondered
how they could keep
talking about things,
conversing merrily,
when the dark black spot
hovered there.

I wondered how it was
my heart thrilled once
at trees and wind,
a sunset sky,
the heartbreaking honesty
of thunder –
how was it before
the black spot?

Intellect was wont to hold me,
the rivet of thought,
the clear precise overtures
of Lady Philosophy
teaching me love;
but now I am held
by a black spot.

You can do something,
they said,
about it;
but every time
I tried to catch
it darting by,
it slipped through;
experts in the matter
say it can only be
remedied
by determining
its nature
printed neatly on the labelled
underbelly;

All you need to do is catch it and look
they say –
words I cannot hear
for the tired fascination
of a shapeless
dark stub.

Room

“There was no room.”
This was the refrain that followed Him
as the crowds pressed to hear Him,
speaking from plain and boat,
telling it on the mountain
how the poor would have heaven,
the mourning be comforted,
the hungry eat;
nearly trampling, suffocating Him,
they had to lower the sick man through the roof.
But there was no room.
All sick in Israel were not healed –
not all those who hunger were filled –
the lame could leap, the blind could see –
but only some.

Bleeding, she dared touch Him,
but how many didn’t
whose broken souls hung back,
lest broken bodies defile Him,
lest the miracle should be mistakenly directed
at someone like me.

There was no room.
One hundred and twenty crammed
in the little upstairs,
praying with theotokos,
Mother of God,
for who knew what
except what he had promised –
ample grounds for prayer –
the cosmosphere shuddered, suddenly opened;
tongues of flame,
impassioned flagrant kisses,
seared the polite veneer,
and suddenly:
“Do you hear him!”
the Spirit of God ripping through creation
as once he o’erhovered water –
“In our own tongues too!” –
fire never burned hotter;
from Jerusalem to Rome,
life sizzled.

But then in the cities sometimes
it was heard again
“There is no room.”
The cramped quarters sometimes
hid enough of the old man
waiting his chance
to cringe back,
always creeping,
that old zombie Adam
wishing resurrection on his own terms.

Then when the clouds of hunger and yearning
hung thick on the city,
then, by Providence,
“To the desert – room in the desert!”
And so they were born
who saw no room for His brothers, sisters, Christ’s,
In the civil city –
but in the desert
a highway,
a tabernacle for hearts:

“So there are enemies?”
Where there are enemies,
he furnishes for us
a table
in their presence.

And now it is come here,
where there is no room;
where the bell tolls in the world
for all but them – and me –
who envy even proper death.
“There is no room!” The cry,
sometimes a fever pitch,
sometimes a whisper;
“There is no room
for entertaining angels unawares.”
But then a vision:

My heart, my soul, my body:
desert.
But in desert there is room.
“There is no room,” I hear again;
but I know it only the jackels laughing,
my enemies in the desert
guaranteeing me God has prepared
a table in their presence
where “world without end”
remains no more
mere pious trope:
Oh, taste and see;
Today we feast!

Drowning

Drowning is simply a matter
of not knowing how to shout,
when, where, why, how, and to whom;
it is the mouth and lungs
filling with tarlike despair;
what smothers unkindly
in the terror of wakeful
eyeball crazy
death.

“If there’s anything we can do to help…”
you can’t hold it against them
who want to help;
what else can they do?
The question hangs heavy in air
absurd;
answers come less often
when one is gasping;
strangulation makes thought a little more brief.

“It is a known problem with drowning,”
we want to explain;
“If we could breathe enough to speak,
it would mean we could breathe,
and breath itself is the problem.”
But gulping silent at air,
we yearn for something less awkward
than Procrustes’ choice:
drown a public spectacle
or alone.

“But when you speak of drowning, surely you mean something else,” you say.
Perhaps – does the difference matter?
If so, think for your sake
I speak merely of drowning
and feel me safe:
lives who is drowned in a desert?

Depression

Out of the darkness
I speak
in a voice my own
and not my own.

Out of the darkness –
but too incredible
to imagine
a world
out
beyond
impenetrable
inside.

Out of the darkness –
to whom?
I speak
as to someone;
knock, knock…
who’s there
Out of the darkness?

Out of the darkness
I wish I was;
out of the darkness,
somewhere they call light;
out of the darkness.

Out of the darkness
I reckoned you taking me;
but you chose
to wrestle me through the night;
out of the darkness
I yearned for translation;
but then I wonder:
Can they be wounded by your intimacy
who cannot limp?

And would I know your body
beating mine
were we met
under the sun?

My right hand betray me
if I forget
how you kissed me
and made me love
out of the darkness.

A Poetic Ignatian Contemplation: Matthew 8:1-4

When Jesus had come down from the mountain, great crowds followed him; and there was a leper who came to him and knelt before him, saying, “Lord, if you choose, you can make me clean.” He stretched out his hand and touched him, saying, “I do choose. Be made clean!” Immediately his leprosy was cleansed. Then Jesus said to him, “See that you say nothing to anyone; but go, show yourself to the priest, and offer the gift that Moses commanded, as a testimony to them.”

Leper, I envy you;
after all the words he said
ramping up the very law that meant
you could not touch
or be touched,
after he made it so clear
not one jot would die,
after it seemed so certain
the fences were going up tenfold,
you heard his words nonetheless
amidst,
the treasure in a field of standards
sharp as briars,
that made you sell all your capital,
those years of training in
how not to touch
how not to love
how not to hope.

You heard, “Give whom asks,”
and “Lend who wants,”
and rather than assuming
the disease robbing you of touch
– of love –
was all you had to give,
you asked
and once again
offered gifts
in the temple.

But I envy you, leper,
for you could ask;
but I have seen all my loves
turn to smoking ruin
at my touch;
and the call to serve beyond –
I cannot even serve simply –
I, hanging on edges
longing for Him,
too afraid to speak His name
and break the spell –
afraid he will dare touch me
where I most fear
spreading contagion.

I envy you…
and wonder if I dare…
and wonder too if it is naught but subtle pride
imagining foolishly
to quarantine Him
from my affection –
pride and only pretended humility
keeping my heart aloof,
but intuiting too well
in fact I fear
His touch
restoring me to the temple
with a limp:
for Jacob and his sons
are always
the first glad beggars
to leap at – Beautiful! –
the temple gates.

Hope Deferred

Let Lord my love grow soft again,
Now when the lights are low;
Rapture was too ungentle;
My heart could not allow

The pain the molten spit provides –
But I knew rocks don’t break
Or burn; I love anesthetised
As often as I woke

There in my heart to see me steeled,
To see me seeing blind,
To feel me feeling nothing, Lord;
I want to feel the wind

Once as I felt it anciently,
Once when the lights were low;
I wait, but wanting hearts grow sick,
Softly, Love, come now.

The Beloved’s Complaint: A Litany

Pray too for those of us
who can only fail quietly,
who cannot muster the drama necessary,
but must simply stay at the edge
wondering after the point
if there is one
and envying the ones who are able
to die with drama.

Pray for us as long as the mystery sustains us,
keeping our baffled lives somehow suspended
and too lazy to cut the rope;
pray for us in the endless hours of indecision,
when what is done and what is left undone
melt hapless into grey.

Pray for us in the envy we would feel
if we had feelings,
in the sins we would commit were we not so weak.
Pray for us plastic
In the dudgeon of reality,
the turgidity of what we wish
had not been.

Pray for us who, even praying for ourselves,
can find nothing but a loop of words
twisting hollow in the void
and writhing for a meaning
they cannot have – a weary cycle.

Find for me my lover and harangue Him so:
“Why is it you keep looking at me
And reminding me the loop is
rather your crown of thorns –
must you always outstrip my tired sorrow?”

Poetic Ignatian Contemplation On Luke 14:25-35

Luke 14

25 Now large crowds were traveling with him; and he turned and said to them, 26 “Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself, cannot be my disciple. 27 Whoever does not carry the cross and follow me cannot be my disciple. 28 For which of you, intending to build a tower, does not first sit down and estimate the cost, to see whether he has enough to complete it? 29 Otherwise, when he has laid a foundation and is not able to finish, all who see it will begin to ridicule him, 30 saying, ‘This fellow began to build and was not able to finish.’ 31 Or what king, going out to wage war against another king, will not sit down first and consider whether he is able with ten thousand to oppose the one who comes against him with twenty thousand? 32 If he cannot, then, while the other is still far away, he sends a delegation and asks for the terms of peace. 33 So therefore, none of you can become my disciple if you do not give up all your possessions. 34 “Salt is good; but if salt has lost its taste, how can its saltiness be restored?[a] 35 It is fit neither for the soil nor for the manure pile; they throw it away. Let anyone with ears to hear listen!”

A Poem Emerging From Ignatian Contemplation

How could you?
How could you
look into their souls
seeing each particular heartbreak
you called them to,
each particular cross –
how could you look them in the eye like that
and still do it, still call them?

How could you?
How could you
when you knew from the start
it wasn’t success you were calling them to,
when you knew their visions of victory and triumph
were simply that – visions
melting in air?
How could you when you knew
you could never give peace
as they wanted, as the world gives?

How could you when you saw
it would inevitably lead
the softest hearts
you taught to feel
to feel the agony
of hatred
against
father and mother
sister and brother
lover and child
friend and fiend –
would you strip us even of our love for enemies
when the enemy against whom
we marshall armies and build fortresses
is God himself?

How could you call them
out of their short-lived zeal –
pacifying them for a time –
anesthetic salt –
into the abyss that is the reality
that crucifies them?

How in hell could you do that,
know the particular secret misery of each
and call them to exactly that?
What kind of sadist Saviour are you?

And yet…I still melt when you look at me with those eyes
that I now see have been speaking all along
not with imperiousness but tears
that reflect each pain you have seen
cherished in your blood
that weeps more for our misery than even we do
and teaches us the question

– How could you do that? –

– How in hell could you do that? –

is not an indignant cry of anger
but a gasp of thankful awe
because there is only one
who could do that in hell and
it is You.

Manna?

I know you in the bread and in the wine;
The shadows make it harder now to see;
Speak! In the dark, is that your hand in mine?

Yes, yes, you are beyond what we define;
Still have you deigned to give yourself to me;
I know you in the bread and in the wine.

Yet now the darkness, even when I dine
Before my foes, is darker and less free;
Speak! In the dark, is that your hand in mine?

There are who say your glory does not shine;
So do I feel; and yet I disagree;
I know you in the bread and in the wine.

But, like a hart, my thirsty senses pine;
I wait with oil, drenched in purity;
Yet speak! In the darkness, is your hand in mine?

You whispered, “Do not cast your pearls to swine”;
Too hard to tell what swine and pearls be;
I taste you trembling in the bread and wine;
But in the dark – are those your lips on mine?

In Idipsum Dormiam

There’s a beauty in bed

Where I lie;

It is

When sleep touches us

We mad can be

A moment

Like everyone else

Before

We wake

Fretted,

The voices

Sputtering

Like an engine

Before 

The patterned rut

Turns

A sinister

Gentle hum

Driving

The machine that is to me

The semblance

Of a shriek.