immolate

Oh God Who speaks Your Name-- to us--

Oh God! My mouth, my mind is full of straws,
To hold so fierce a fire:  I cannot plait
them thick enough -- the hunger of that Name
consumes these boxes. These cardboard shoeboxes
i inherited, or made. i decoupaged with third grade
Sunday School paper pictures: pinkblonde Jesus
reaching stiff arms toward such clean, white friends--

I read Your words, and watch my pictures burn.
For in this revelation the earth groans, and splits --
Rivers dry up. Seas tremble. Oceans churn.
Angels, radiant and fierce, shout out their joy. And stars
Turn cartwheels out of chaos, round what unspoken hinge
You only cherish. --
And justice burns. It marks the time like liquid stone
Boiling and flowing, hardly seen, until the appointed day has come --
And that day will come. --

Oh Love -- that Love that measured out the stars
In their million million flagrances -- that knows
Too, the ceaseless communings of their smallest parts --
That longhearted Love that sits outside of Time
That Love that burns, that pierces, cuts, and scrapes away  --
That wrapped Itself in particles -- in skin -- to walk
for love among us -- Oh Love Who will come again --

How can paper bear a live and burning star?
Yet may these words, burned up to smoke arise
Incense to You -- not sweet of what they are,
But sweet for what they long for.
Sweet for their Desire
Toward which, in Which, by Which they are set fire

reference: the Book of Job. Not done yet.