I have no hope, but I will speak, Job said.
I will break my teeth on this world,
and spit the bloody chips out in your face,
you who made this, you who made us
for all these good gifts you gave us.
I have this faith:
to come to you, to hold out my fist full
of hot rage, to say
this is no justice,
to open my fist up in your face
if you will not be just, we have no justice
if you will not be tender, we have no tenderness
if you will not hear us, we have no hope
the world will not bear the weight of us,
of all this wickedness
done upon us, and by us: it's
too many graves to count
these days, these days, these days.
Do you count them, God,
these graves?
It feels like dying, this new life you gave,
this roughskinned seed of faith. I'm like a stone
caught in your throat. You said you'd save
sinners, not the righteous. Your name tastes
burned and bitter in my mouth.
You said you wouldn't leave us, here, alone.
Your blood's dried sticky, bitter on my teeth--
the hot salt lump of meat caught in my throat.
I gulp and choke. It's not meat my body needs,
not this raw gore. I wanted bread and wine.
You said this is my body: take and eat.
I take you into myself. My stomach turns
outside itself, revolts. I'd throw you up
like the beast revolted Jonah onto the earth,
to preach your gospel to some shithole shanty town
poor enough to pray for your new birth.
I drink you like gold ash: precious, poison.
Crawl like a fly, tasting the burned dirt with my feet
to crystal streams, where praise warps into noise,
salt in my ears.
I hate it here.
I hate it here.
And you, still, say Come. Say,
Take and eat.
Can't get back my baby
No matter what I do
I can't get back my baby
No matter what I try to do
Whole world full of children shining
All I want is you
Fed my baby peanut butter
Fed my baby rice and beans
Can't put meat on the table
Can't grow backyard greens
Fed my baby peanut butter
Bills past due again
Want to burn that goddamn schoolhouse
Want to burn it to the ground
all those broken window schools
Just want to burn them down
Want to pack up all my babies
And leave this goddamn town
Five dollar bottle
couple gram of weed
Gonna buy myself a bottle
and a little bag of weed
I might as well buy something
I can't get what I need
Look at all the pretty babies
In their worn out tennis shoes
Look at all the pretty babies
Makes you want to sing the blues
Whole world full of children
All I want is you
I can't get back my baby
No matter what I do
I said I can't get back my baby
Baby
No matter what I do
How is this world good? How right?
the best of all possibilities
of being,
the only way to gather up the threads
of all these lives?
Shall all be well?
Lord, through what dark and bloodstriped door
are we borne, wailing
into a life of grace?
Must it always be this: the crushing, and the grief?
Are we, altogether, so stained
that only death makes way for better life?
Is this faith? To ask, at last, that we be eaten up
by our own appetites, by our own wounds
to make a place for better life?
Is our painful death a gift for what comes next?
You Who demanded the children too
be consecrated
to You in death
even the children, Lord,
and the beasts,
You Whose Name is mercy--
You do not let us forget it,
they are written into scripture,
how Your demands glittered,
unrelenting,
biting and breakable as teeth.
I would not see my people crushed,
our children lost--
Is there no healing?
Is this our last best hope:
A god who sees, who holds each tear, and who ordains
no less pain
I make my claim
against your righteousness:
I rest
my case.
Lord, what a wandering season
circling about you
stones in my shoes.
Lord, what a weary season:
I go out and come back
not finding
those streams,
those quick and laughing streams.
The memory plays about these dusty days
like music.
Once when I was young,
creek wading in springtime,
the banks flushed and full
all the pebbles gleamed and shone
in the quick water,
the brown ordinary bumps transformed
to brilliance.
Manna, I think
must taste like the white wafers
at church: hardly a remembering
of bread, stale,
hard to swallow without wine.
Easy to grow weary of such food.
I hold out my hand for the white disk again
and again,
I go in and come back,
I return to you, searching.
I remember the press of brightness,
whiter than white, bluer than blue,
enough to crush me
into silence, a weight and light
to fill up heaven
to press into the earth
to fill up every fold of it.
I could not hold --
Oh Holy --
I would go on dying forever there
in that whiteness,
but one does not hold glory
as one might hold a stone.
One goes on walking, in and out
returning, hoping.
We live our days' work;
the sky glares down: blatant,
vengeful, orange
with far off fires.
We crawl through our days' work
like unwinged flies,
soapfooted,
honeystuck,
besmeared with lies.
I'm piecing quilt blocks:
calm blues and greens,
right angles meeting
squarely, where they should.
Outside the sky glares at us.
Our little screens blare at us,
promises, compromise,
thick with lies.
There is no peace,
no clear blue in us.
Most days we walk. The baby
picks up little precious things,
acorns, fallen leaves.
There is a dead bird on the sidewalk:
once it was a mockingbird, but
it does not say anything now.
Ants have eaten its eyes,
they seethe on it busilypacking away little parcels of flesh.
Next door Miss Dorothy
white haired and stooping
pecks her tentative way
behind her little dog.
At the end of the street,
across the road,
the middle school looms
crumbling red brick
and cardboard covered eyes.
Into its mouth
brown children go back and forth busily
it swelters and chews them, but
they get free lunch.
I know at some brown
brink a sun's up
rising
but
Lord
some of these days--
It's not just my blues
on my back
Lord
you know it's
generations
have trod have trod have trod
when will we reckon
the weight
of generations
Lord you know
I got my own blues in my pocket too
and all that on my back
it ull press a man down
till he leaks oil like a seed
crushed
this boot on my back
can't press me deep down
enough to that
dear freshness sprining--
it's too deep
beneath this dirt in my mouth
got this knee in my neck why
do men not reck God it's not just
my blood in this dirt in my mouth
that can't cry
God do you hear
these rocks
it's not just
