The Road
a twisted serpent
lay
t’wixt home of blessed hope
and the final tie where night confines
the day.
There in that shallow shadow of twisted moment’s thought
Red was green
and fell between
with some memories
he’d brought.
He, chaste lover,
confidant of clowns,
sadly
sinking.
slowly
keeling.
simply
drowns.
While he dies
from where he fell
a slash-ed stain
of crimson
follows him slowly
down the road
toward hell.
That crimson strand
no wound of him
yet set for his defense
a gruesome, gory
bloodsome thing
was worth all men’s offense.
II.
He thought,
whilst he fell,
for fall he did
and
down toward hell,
“If God is real,
If Sin is Strong
If Humankind be flawed
No one can say
He serves a man
Who does not save him from himself
And so keep him for God.
III.
Lone is not the loneliest word
nor One the most common single.
Last is the word most lonely
Last, the word for lonely and alone.
The Last Time:
“I saw him”
“We touched”
“The baby crawled.”
“The flag flew”
“Our lips touched”
“He sang”
“She danced”
The unexpected last time
you know the one
when we got
down to our last strike
the one time you did not look back
to see that loved face
and never saw it again.
The Last Supper
you took with Him
His famous last words
His last rites
Your last wish
to hear Him
one more time
unrequited,
leaving you
with a dozen more years
but lonely every moment.
Every happy moment
interrupted with the thought,
“Just wait until I tell Him…
…about this one…”
Oh.
One, Lone, Lonely
longing
for one more time
that will not come.
He is gone.
I let Him go.
I ran away from Him,
so frightened
He might keep me
and
I did not look back to see His face.
Writer’s Note: God creates in prose but redeems in poetry. I really don’t want a doctor who prescribes in verse but I know for certain I don’t want a theologian who works only in prose. If you cannot take me out there, and you cannot, make me feel I am on my way. If you cannot work out an equation for God, wherein the penultimate symbol is two parallel lines, meaning, “equals,” you must show me, really show me, what and when and where, even if you cannot tell me The Whom Of It All.
God creates in prose. God redeems in poetry. Why else would we chop up our Bible in verses and call the best parts hymns, if we did not feel God working in us from an inset spool of poems unreeling from the back of God’s head, from the center of the divine heart, from the heart of God Godself?
God creates in prose. God redeems in poetry.
So, I wish us all shabat shalom.
