Babylon Besieged

(note: I actually didn’t mean to post this on the anniversary of 9/11. I didn’t write the poem with 9/11 specifically in mind and I did a double-take when I noticed this morning that I had posted it by accident on the hallowed date. Nevertheless, in a more general way I did write the poem in dialogue with a world that is filled with violence, that has been made weary and frayed by too many wars and bombings and genocides and lynchings and disappearings. It is in this world that I hold out my hands to Christ and ask him to give me a new song to play.)

Babylon Besieged

Children starve and nobles dance
But the poor weep
While we cannot
And I
I am a rich young ruler
Who has never known what it means to be alive
Though perhaps now
I am beginning to learn.

In such a world
I could have sung a brazen song, pretending
Life like a prop against the gate
Of Babylon besieged
But why
Should I disguise the sting of your poison?
My bloody heart.

I remember a day when
Golden sunlight anointed the dust
And I saw our future written in the clouds
The bombs fell so slowly
That the children played in the patterns
Of their shadows on the rooftops.
We have lived with death
And forgotten its meaning.
We have lived without life
And forgotten our purpose.

Today was born in smoke
I can’t see the city- I can’t see the street
Nevertheless, life has always been beyond my reach
And that is why I’m kneeling on the gravel
Here and now Friend
Reaching out my hands to you.
Will you fill them overflowing
With foolishness?
With a life I’ve never had?
I dream of a life
My city cannot understand
But I’ve heard your call
And I pray to you
Give me a heart.

My faith is kneeling in the bloody city
Beyond the irreversible stutters
And statics of the bullets
Of shells bursting in air
Beyond the dollars and dusts that numb the scars
Of souls malnourished
And overcoming all lonely tears and propaganda fliers
And overflowing dumps and empty hearts
Love cries a new song
Triumphant in death but never dying.

My Irreplaceable Friend,
In you I play a new song
Because you are the breath
That moves in me to love.
Here in Babylon the besieged
You are my breath
You are my love
You pick me up off the pavement
You set me on my feet again.
And for that
You have my love
And my devotion forever.

A Poem for Friday

I think I’ll start a tradition of posting a poem every Friday.

Here is a deserving first- I think it’s beautiful.

Friend, in the Desolate Time

Friend, in the desolate time, when your soul
is enshrouded in darkness
When, in a deep abyss, memory and feeling
die out,
Intellect timidly gropes among shadowy forms
and illusions
Heart can no longer sigh, eye is unable
to weep;
When, from your night-clouded soul the wings
of fire have fallen
And you, to nothing, afraid, feel
yourself sinking once more,
Say, who rescues you then?-Who is the
comforting angel
Brings to your innermost soul order and
beauty again,

Return

I lay down on the floor and felt tired, empty, and confused, but it was ok, because I was returning to God again. I’d been hiding my exhaustion, my lostness, my creeping despair even from myself. I’d been packing it deep down into my heart like fluff in a stuffed animal and trying to ignore it.

As so often before, I’ve been trying to ignore the truth: I don’t have it all together.