"Let's break up," a poem

VII.
“Let’s break up,” she said
just to rile him up.
She liked the way
his eyes turned glossy.
If she were lucky
a tear would ski down
his cheek
dodging flags and trees
called freckles
and she could catch it
on its final turn
on a lower peak
before the big finale
(all for dramatic effect).

She folded her arms,
took a step back, and
waited. “Well?”

“Okay,” he replied.
“I never liked you much
anyway.”


--

(It's fiction, geez.)

The Incarnation, a poem

The Incarnation

Let’s talk the “Incarnation”

because it is a big word

for something easy for me

to describe: God the baby.

God, who has the power

to shape-shift, turned himself from

a God into a human.

Sort of. It’s not exactly

that simple. Or…correct. I

may have tried to make this a

little sci-fi, easier

to swallow for we who don’t

like the idea that God

would turn himself into one

of us. We’re kind of screw ups.

Why would he want to be like

us anyhow? And why come

as a six pound, five ounce babe?

I find it impossible

to imagine you teething,

spitting up, dragging your full

diaper on the ground behind

you--you, a God, someone we

call Jehovah Jirah, God

the Provider, who is now

in his crib or trough crying,

wanting milk, needing his mom.

If I were honest, I would

tell you I like you like that:

small, innocent, pathetic,

unable to lift your head

even. Helpless. Like you’re like

me. Like you’re me who’s drowning

in the demands of people

who don’t realize that I

cannot even lift my head.

But I don’t imagine you

like that, not even on Christ-

mas when Nativity scenes

pop up everywhere. I

can’t stop myself from thinking

about you on that cross or

walking on water. You’re a

man with a straggly beard, not a

baby wrapped in tattered cloth.

I don’t picture you as a

babe, but maybe I need to.

Finals interlude

Okay, so I haven't been inspired to write at all. I'm just trying to get everything finished: finals, classes, papers, projects, etc.

So here's a poem I wrote for creative writing this semester. It's about -- guess who?


VI.
On his windowsill he keeps
dead insects in alcohol
in glass vials. Dragonflies
and moths with motionless wings
sit still, keeping guard. Below,
he sits on his couch not a
bed—he doesn’t own one. He
sleeps hard on the floor alone.

On his couch, behind a closed
door, he thinks and stares at
the cardboard beer box he cut
and flattened into décor
above his closet. The rest
of the wall: bare, beige, and bland,
except for a lithograph
of Emily Dickinson,
plucked from a library book.

In the corner: his altar.
Three guitars—an acoustic,
electric, and bass—lean up
against his vintage, baby-
blue, nineteen-seventies amp.
A one-millimeter pick
sits and waits for him to play.
When he does play, it’s with shut
eyes. Concentrating, he jams.

With knock-knock-knock on the door,
a young woman walks into
the bachelor’s dead-bug, bed-less
hub—his pad. He stands up and
hugs her, smells her hair, kisses
her neck near her collar bone.
He says, “I love you, pumpkin.”






Deep, pleasant sigh.

Lauren

Christmas Break Goals 2010

Okay, I used to do this all the time. Every Christmas, spring, and summer break I'd make a list of goals I want to accomplish. Especially with three and a half weeks off, I figured this would be appropriate to do.

Some goals. (Note: Some are completely shallow. Some seem very self-righteous. Let those two balance each other out.)

1. Read three books. Ideas: To Kill a Mockingbird, finish Wild at Heart, Drops Like Stars, a book by Brian McLaren, probably one of the five I asked for for Christmas.

2. Volunteer five times. I miss InAsMuch. I miss working with people one-on-one. 


3. Do my Sojourn homework. Yeah, so the Sojourn has homework.


4. Write a paper. There are so many comm. theory papers I want to write.... I don't know if I'll actually write them, but I want to research them, just for kicks. Honestly, this will help me with my senior project next year.


5. Get a tan. Yup. I'm doing it. Sorry, anti-tanning-booth people.


6. Practice being wise with money. Okay, so in general I'm not bad with money. I can make $100 last me a month if I have to. BUT now that I have money and a consistent income, I need to practice saving and investing and using less of my disposable income on crap I don't need (i.e. food). Basically, I need to budget.


7. Update resume/apply for internships. Summer will come fast.


8. Take care of Body. My poor body has had it rough this semester. Over break I want to get in the habit of sleeping 7-9 hours, eating healthfully, doing physical activity, etc.


9. Blog/write for fun. Yeah, so who has time for this anyway? At the middle of the semester I was decent at updating my blog, at least for poetry. I need to keep doing this. I only have a few writing classes next semester, I can write more for fun. Really. I can. 


10. Relax. I need to do a lot of this. I have had a crazy semester. Tons of work. Upper-level classes. A boyfriend. Geez. I'm exhausted.






Lauren

Txt Msg

Sometimes this is how I feel.

Also, I never text like this.

--

Txt Msg

God, why ddnt u

answer my txt?

I sent it ystrdy

at 2 pm

rght aftr I rolld out of

sin

It said

help me plz

bcs Ive lost my

step or my way

or wtvr

ppl say when

they do smthng

shitty

But u ddnt

evn rspnd or

evn notify me

that my txt ddnt

go thru like

ur sppsd to

whn theres silence

4 a while

Good morning

But friends, your dead will live,
your corpses will get to their feet.
All you dead and buried,
wake up! Sing!
Your dew is morning dew
catching the first rays of sun,
The earth bursting with life,
giving birth to the dead.

Come, my people, go home
and shut yourselves in.
Go into seclusion for a while
until the punishing wrath is past,
Because God is sure to come from his place
to punish the wrong of the people on earth.
Earth itself will point out the bloodstains;
it will show where the murdered have been hidden away.
-Isaiah 26.19-21

--

Oh yes.

--

Good morning. My favorite texts in the world are "good morning" texts from Nathan. They're texts that remind me that whatever happened yesterday--whatever stress, whatever fight or struggle--is gone. Good morning. It's a new day. It's fresh. Let's wake up and sing.

I've called grace many things before. I've called it a hug. I've called it plants that grow in the wintertime. But today, today I'm going to call grace morning.

--

In Iraq, the sun rose at 4:30 a.m. The Iraqi sun is bright; it's hot; it's disturbing; it wakes you up.

I think that's grace. Okay, so I say grace is the morning and that evokes some brand of fuzzies. Aw, it's like that 1990s worship song: "Though the sorrow may last through the night, his joy comes in the morning. I'm tradin' my sorrows...." But really, it's more than that. It's hard. It's bright and blinding.

I say grace makes you do something, take action. In the very least, it makes you get out of bed. Morning is here; you can't stay in bed all day.

For me, morning is planning time. If I am not running late (as I usually am), I think about where I need to go that day, what I need to accomplish, how I am going to do it all. Morning requires something of me.

Grace, of course, is the same way. Grace says that whatever happened the night before, is over. It's done, taken care of. Any wrong I've committed against God is forgiven, and I am washed clean. But, I'm still responsible. I'm responsible for the upcoming day.

--

Isaiah is all about the coming of the Messiah. The prophet warns Israel and its neighbors of God's wrath, but he tells also of a redeemer called Immanuel, God with us.

Remembering that, I'm trying to make sense of the second stanza above, the one after the exclamation about morning! and singing! and sunshine! The one that says to lock yourselves in your house to escape God's punishment.

In context, the joyful stanza comes after Isaiah's description of his people's current condition: "Oh God, they begged you for help when they were in trouble, when your discipline was so heavy they could barely whisper a prayer."

I wonder if that final stanza is a "sobering up." Yes, God is good. God will give you a new morning, a new life, some fresh dew on the ground. But remember what you're doing right now. Remember your current situation, the sins you're immersed in, your addictions.


I think of this stanza as a mourning (yes, a nice play on words for us to enjoy). It's like: go inside your houses and shut your doors and take a while to think about what you did. Give yourself a time out. Keep yourselves from sinning. Watch out. Be careful.

--

I write this post at night, anticipating the morning, anticipating grace.

All you dead and buried, wake up! Sing!







-Ezekiel

Holy the Firm, pp. 60-62

His disciples asked Christ about a roadside beggar who had been blind from birth, "Who did sin, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?" And Christ, who spat on the ground, made a mud of his spittle and clay, plastered the mud over the man's eyes, and gave him sight, answered, "Neither hath this man sinned, nor his parents: but that the works of God should be manifest in him."


Really? If we take this answer to refer to the affliction itself--and not the subsequent cure--as "God's works made manifest," then we have, along with "Not as the world gives do I give unto you," two meager, baffling, and infuriating answer to one of the few questions worth asking, to wit, What in the Sam Hill is going on here?

The works of God made manifest? Do we really need more victims to remind us that we're victims? Is this some sort of parade for which a conquering army shines up its terrible guns and rolls them up and down the streets for people to see? Do we need blind men stumbling about, and little flamefaced children, to remind us what God can--and will--do? ...

Yes, in fact, we do. We do need reminding, not of what God can do, but what he cannot do, or will not, which is to catch time in its free fall and stick a nickel's worth of sense into our days. And we need reminding of what time can do, must only do; churn out enormity at random and beat it, with God's blessing, into our heads: that we are created, created, sojourners in a land we did not make, a land with no meaning of itself and no meaning we can make for it alone. 

Who are we do demand explanations of God? (And what monsters of perfection should we be if we did not?) ...

--

I think I finally get it, Annie.