I long for champagne kisses
to be given to me
your mouth the open bottle
me goblet gaping, me
so thirsty for an altar
and vows once said renewed
and toasts in night air ringing
and union Reunioned …
Source: Champagne Kisses
Monthly Archives: December 2016
This Brilliant Indifference
I am a childe of dark, a childe of light.
I was born beneath the shining moon but just outside it’s golden touch there, on dim green meadows blanketing the warm red earth
in comfort midst the…
Source: This Brilliant Indifference
Between the Lines
I need to repost this poem from a couple years ago a day early…and I don’t even want a SHADOW of eyes on this that aren’t willing to LABOR today to birth understanding of what I am writing about…
it’s so fucking obvious what I am writing about…
I am writing about what we are all mealy mouthing by blaming it on a specific year (as if the year were a shambling zombie…as if the year were different than any other year, as if WE were not the shining difference every goddam SECOND)…
but every single person SHOULD labor with this poem, and labor HARD…
cus it’s the liturgy you will need as you’re pulled inexorably to your end…
if you DO decide to click on this…then really get your hands into it, and don’t go looking for pretty words and cutesy lil poetic kuans…cus this aint it.
This is the blood of a Poetess…
this is the stuff of poetry, however poorly executed it is in my fumbly arthritic heart whose joints ACHE and SEETHE with rage at death and grief at the ways we pull our snugglies around us and pretend…
“…and there I walk, alone between the lines,
my feet upon the ties, the ties that bind
and my heart ponders lines, and ties and spaces
in between the lines, the ones inside of me and what is hidden
there to see by those who stop and look and listen
…and take the time to read between the lines…”
Tree-lines mark the end of alpine meadow-frolics green
and the start of stone relief against the ever-constant skies
stretched out in steely greys and stellar silver blue sky-lines,
and space between the lines…
Source: Between the Lines
The Poem “Just”?
Hey dear ones… Has anyone read “Just“? It’s posted a day or so ago… Not a like or comment… Does it suck? Is the homophone play just too much?
I’m curious, cus this was birthed in that lil flurry of poems regarding time… But just was not singing enough… Until I saw a tie to time and diminishment and justice cutting up and down that continuum…
You can take out the word just… And it limps along off-balance… A commentary in itself…
Forgotten Beauty (Holographic Version)
Just
I just strive so hard just to remember,
just remember what I just now said,
just remember what I’m gunna say
and just said and just say and just said (and just say).
and your mind just strains hard to recall
what you’ve said, what you just mean to say
and then just reaches forward so quickly
to grab onto what you’ll just say next.
Mem’ry just pulls against expectation
twin sisters just trapped within time
like quick pagan twin versions just jumping
just like virgins, or just like Three Graces…
they just melt in our faint grasp completely
fleeing ere we can touch them, just gone
in that moment just blooming, becoming
we just clinging tight to a mere echo,
to a faint rumor lurking, just lingering
an arroyo called ‘Just Vanished Self’
and that rumor just leads me to moments
of kindness, just unmeasured time
elemental unfettered just kindness
that settles, in just quiet knowing
just a knowing so gentle and tender
of my heart’s every deep just desire
and a time of just tears just like rivers
rushes just to the ocean of being
just to wash mem’ry, anticipation
(they’re just one and the same all the time)
I just witness my fiery capacity
to just love but it just strains its tethers
to long splintery docks, just grey time
that prevents me from leaving, just sailing
on that lake singing just of the ocean
of just being…being..just in time
just unbound, just free in my just joyful
Beginnings…just joyful…become
Turning Inside Out
my skin is stained by your lips
stained red, stained wine, crushed grapes
delicious between your white teeth.
my skin is blue from your touch so cold,
so hot within ice cold choice austere,
your lo…
Source: Turning Inside Out
A Lasting Awareness
Past,
present,
and future…
all immediate…
in me at
once
there
simultaneous…
at (in) the (a)
same time (place)
time is this
impression: (or is not time)
a lasting awareness
of one’s self moving
in a sea of selves,
dependent yet alone.
time matters precisely
because it ends
and yet is
still
there
After The Fire And Fury
After the Fire and Fury,
after the lies were consumed
there on the hearth in the ashes
just loose teeth, the only thing left…
…those teeth without jawbone to ride on
no power to bite my soft skin
and no way to grit and to grind
and I stare, there is nothing to mind
my life changed…the nights became darker
and yet somehow more restful too
days took on a crystalline quality
I realized that I had begun
to view my entire life’s history
past/present/future all at once
as mere memories ashy and cold
in the ashes there, deep in the hearth
What’s the precise time, the moment,
in the life of a country of one,
a country where Samson’s been blinded
by his lust and his own hot despair
and self-tyranny takes hold in terror?
It rarely happens in an instant;
it arrives imperceptible, slow
and, at first, the eyes of the hopeful
adjust…and pretend all is well…
I was drifting in one endless present
(the present, pray tell what that is?)
line of vapor, invisible instant?
But now I see clearly, no filter,
the connection of past and the future,
between motion and rest, it just lurks there
as if it’s in no time at all…
and what is it, lying there useless?
It’s just us (justice), it’s simply us.
Advent Reflections: The Activity of Incarnation (Introduction)
Advent:
the short period
during which all
the years of groaning,
from that first fatal blow dealt
by selfish egocentricity to the
entirety of creation…
which turned off the Divine Light,
are compacted into one designated
thick period…
not “long”, but “longish”
and full of longing.
Thick.
Packed.
Full.
Stacked.
Designated…
to wait.
Wait.
WAIT
Waiting for the most part is experienced as obdurate dull hunkering down and drinking from the cracked teacups of platitudes…ingesting such sops as “everything happens for a reason” and “this too shall pass”…yeah no…those things will not cut it, to get us thru this night, this absence of Divine Light that lays over all things, this utter darkness of the ego dictatorship.
Waiting…true waiting is become for us an empowered marking of events as they flow, infused by a knowing confidence that we wait for something certain and substantial…we wait for something coming and yet already here…we wait for the joy that veritably strains at the gates of birth to come forth!
We wait for someone…Someone…and every year that Someone comes fresh and new…and full of the very Presence that fits the absence of our existence like a Hand in a glove, like a key in a lock.
The Ultimate Mystery of Existence is the Incarnation: that joining of Creator and Creation into one full and harmonious miracle of Being…a joining that was planned and executed before even the foundations of the earth were laid, long ago sometime in eternity past when God in communion with God manifested the Eternal Sacred Heart in Passion Absolute and took up residence forever at the crux and core of all things, all rays, all paths and promises…that begotten presence which chose to be called Son climbed that tree and hung…hung…hangs…and hangs…
behind, beneath, above, within.
In every single cry of horror the cross is at the center.
In every single laugh of promise the cross is at the center.
In every single expression of wonder, every single nightmare of despair
the cross
at the center
And in the most central and deepest Intention is that Union, at the center of which the cross veritably pulsates!!
It is the Mystery of the Incarnation…which is spoken of most plainly in the lowly caterpillar…or is it spoken of most darkly in the mystery of the Chrysalis? Wait…it is spoken of most clearly in the emergence of the butterfly.
We are that caterpillar, our lives a Holy Chrysalis of Dark Promise, and our becoming the butterfly whose wings we feel pulsating within our breast, that activity of Wonder which flutters in heaving convulsing implications that there must be Something!!
And so this morning, I wanna talk about that…the activity.
The activity of the Incarnation.
During Advent, we can look at the various “actors” in the Christmas Story to take our cues and understand our path forward, onward, higher/deeper, inward/outward…
Advent Reflections: The Activity of Incarnation (Part One)
Let us start with Mary.
She is the type for each and every one of us.
Each of us is a potential “Mother of God”,
a “blessed among all women”,
a chosen and fit vessel to carry the Child of Promise, the Messiah!
And Mama hovers, draws near, and watches…She waits too!
Did you know that God waits?
That every single day of time is God’s Advent waiting?
But back to Mother Mary…back to you…who if you will, can choose to “be” Mother Mary. She said to God “Be it unto me according to Your Will”, and “my soul does indeed magnify God”!
OH! The shockwaves of that declaration continue to ripple still! And she did indeed receive the Child into her inmost self, and God took up residence there and joined Themself to humanity forever and always, and the butterfly was born…the God-human, the human-God…that indescribable uncanny union of the Divine and the human, which is spoken of as “the new creation”.
And Mary brought forth that Child…after a 9 month Advent of gestation…and that Child is the Deliverer of Creation.
And this is the first phase of Advent Activity…and your first task. Make room within your being for the Child to come and be implanted within…and bring forth that Incarnation of human/Divine life into this world in everything you do and say and think and are…you yourself in a very real sense “Mother” God…birth God…and it is your divine calling…no…your Divine RIGHT to birth God this Christmas, this year.
And what exactly would that look like, to bring forth God in your life?
Well…who is it that you want God to be for you?
That is who you must bring forth to the world.
It is the activity of Advent as an individual to birth and bring forth the Divine presence that only you can bring forth.
Oh Chosen Mary, blessed among all humans…search yourself, and make room…for the Incarnation within to come forth…
Advent Reflections: The Activity of Incarnation (Part Two)
Out in the cold, living in fields…Looking after animals, in the dark of night…
Lonely, stiff and cold, hungry, sleepless and miserable, surrounded by slumbering insensate beasts who couldn’t even begin to give a crap about anything except their own comfort and care…full bellies and security from wild beasts even if it meant being captive to their comfort and thus forever doomed to the dust-life…and never a dawning of even the beginnings of wondering what is Wonder…
…it is there we meet the shepherds…who are aware…ALL too aware of these things.
I mean, c’mon!
The story tells us they were living out in the fields!
They had no homes.
They had no place to lay their head.
Except in the fields…with the beasts they cared for…and their own sense of wonder…wondering why the rich sat at ease in their cedar lined homes…wondering why their bellies were so empty when the refuse cans of the rich were so full of excess and waste…wondering why the stinking Romans had authority to take and break and dictate…
wondering why God was silent, absent, insensate, indifferent…
and into that dark and lonely discomfiting despair came a Divine breaking in and breaking thru!!
In the midst of the darkest, most silent, most still, most absent of hope, most slumbering unaware time…came Heaven’s declaration that a Child had been born! A Child had been Given!!
And His name was Wonderful!
His name was Counselor!
His name was Prince of Peace!
He was The Everlasting Father (yet an infant, meek and lowly)!
He was the Dayspring, the Bright and Morning Star!
Ahh…Morning Star…that Star that presages that night is drawing to a close, is ending.
And then the shepherds were given His core name, His Heart-Name…
Emmanuel.
God with us. God with us.
God is with us.
Go to the lowliest place, for that is where God chooses to appear! Do you not realize that everything you wish God to be God IS in the revelation of Advent? He chose the lowliest, the weakest, the most foolish…and in that place was born…in a feeding trough…a manger.
You do get that, don’t you? The Bread from Heaven was laid in a manger (another name for trough from which cattle eat)? And broken there for us…to “eat”…to “ingest” and have Him become one in essence with us?
The shepherds were told to go and see the baby, and then to go, and tell it on the mountains, tell it in the valleys, tell it everywhere there were hungry ears…that EMMANUEL HAD COME!
And they did.
Thus we see the second activity of Advent: you are called, as a shepherd, as one who is aware (regardless of whether you are full of hope or full of despair…either one is the sign that you are an “aware one” and thus are chosen and blessed)…to go.
Go.
Tell it on the mountain.
Tell it in the valley.
And keep your eyes open to spot the Child! You shall find Him in your neighbor…that “asshole” down the street that drives by you everyday, eyes fixed forward and exuding anger and frustration…that “airhead” in the cubicle next to you who is seemingly obsessed with her makeup and her dating life and fashion…
You will find Him in that hopeless one next to you on the subway whose beautiful incredible skin is the wrong hue in this culture and whose shining incredible heart is so wounded and bound by the hatred of others…
You will find Him in the transwoman on the street just trying to live in her skin…in the homeless youth whose vision is more obscured by their hair than it is by their heart…
This is the activity of Advent for the shepherds: find the Christ Child…in all His mangers…and proclaim that Child’s Name:
Emmanuel: God is with us.
Advent Reflections: The Activity of Incarnation (Part Three)
In a foreign land, early.
Not early in the day…or even early in the year…
…but early in the Kairos of Significant Appointed Time!
And with Open Eyes…there waited Wise Men…who watched the skies, looking always upward for the arrival of…SOMETHING…they knew it not, what they sought, but they knew it had to be…because of the ache inside and the absence of something that caused the ache.
And then…there it was! A star appeared in the sky, and in that quadrant that allus presaged SIGNIFICANCE!
And as they watched intently, behold! It began to shift! And as it shifted, so too within them something shifted, something began to be drawn…something…SomeONE…was tugging at them, pulling them.
And they left their homes, their places of comfort and familiarity…and began the road trip of all road trips, one that some scholars theorize lasted a couple years!
Do you see this?
The incredible events of Advent that happened within the scope of 9 months for the principal actors and happened in one night for the shepherds…
…began as much as two years earlier for the Wise Men!
Talk about Active Waiting! Their waiting involved a journey as well!
They passed thru many lands, and as they were men of means and wealth and influence, their entry into the various kingdoms and lands thru which they passed created a stir, even consternation! But only because it was…odd…strange…unusual.
Until they got close…to the land for which such things held great import…that land governed by an evil and malevolent pile of egocentricity. In “The Fox”, it was as if all of the original assertion of ego which extinguished The Beginning Light was concentrated and distilled…and this small, infected and diseased pus-ridden pimple of a human being who was so full of hate and fear that he even killed children in his attempt to maintain his power was jolted by the arrival of these men and the implications of the Star, and the shockwaves that were about to break.
He was cunning, unctuous, viscous and smooth of speech like a cobra hypnotizing its prey…but the Wise Men were, well, wise to him…and they held him at bay with deference and deflection…and journeyed on after giving him the impression that they would indeed abide by his word when in his land…
and then they at last came to the place over which the Star pulsed and danced…
a baby…in a humble hovel stinking of beasts and despair…and their open eyes beheld Him.
They gave Him Gold…because they saw He was High and Royal, above all beings.
They gave Him Frankincense…because they also saw He was a Priest above all Priests.
They gave Him Myrrh…because they saw something hidden, from all others…until it was manifest…
…they saw that this Baby was simultaneously there, in that manger, and also at the crux of all, and hanging in agony, in Passion, and that His blood was the Spring that watered the very roots of the Universe…
and the Myrrh was burial spice…for by His death our life is.
They knelt…and worshipped…and were changed…by Emmanuel…the Incarnate One.
After awhile, they chose to depart…but did they obey “The Fox”? Did they come under the rule of government?
No…they had been changed forever, and they now were serving the Agenda of heaven and they resisted the intention of the earthly…and they departed in “civil disobedience” in order to preserve the life of God With Us.
And that is the activity of Advent declared to you in the story of the Wise Men.
Part Conclusion: https://charissagrace.com/2016/12/19/advent-reflections-the-activity-of-advent-conclusion/
Advent Reflections: The Activity of Advent (Conclusion)
You must find the way that the Child calls you to live a life distinguished, transformed…changed after your encounter with the Incarnate One…
Encountering Emmanuel first within yourself, and bringing Him forth in the manger of your life…
Encountering Emmanuel next within others…and telling those who still languish in darkness that Emmanuel has come…
Encountering Emmanuel then in the World…and living in a way distinguished and different, resulting in the establishment of His Kingdom, the government on His shoulders, and His never-ending rule of Justice and Mercy Kissing…
This is the lesson and activity of Advent for us…may it be Living Bread for us.
Amen.
Taking Apart A Ship
Time is like a ship of planks
constructed to cross an ocean
from shore to shore across
those waves so furiously
expansive and endlessly
arriving
away
from us
Telling time is like taking apart a ship
and using the planks to build a ship
for someone else building a ship
across time
just in time
out of time…
Out of time…what is that, really?
Actually, I meant to ask where is that
really, no, it’s who…
Who is spoken out of time
spoken and inhabited, there
in that place walking in wilderness
when an invisible voice speaks to ask
“Who are you?”
“I will always be me…always.”
Ah, and how long is that
how long is that?
A Triptych On Time
https://charissagrace.com/2016/12/18/i-tell-time/
https://charissagrace.com/2016/12/18/if-winter-really-comes/
https://charissagrace.com/2016/12/18/a-sylvan-sound-so-sleek/
These all three go together and speak of the three aspects that we impose and make regarding time
A Sylvan Sound So Sleek
Sit quietly
Close your eyes
Like one who wakes
from a long sleep
a com(m)a
Listen to the
trickle of time it’s
a sylvan sound so sleek
and flowing around you over
you and below you, above
you and in you and
in you and in
you in time
Open your eyes
Look up into
a clear sky
Try to see just
How high or deep
is a hundred feet
or a mile long
It’s just you in time
(you know) and time
in you (know time)
and never the twain
shall meet or part
If Winter Really Comes
whatever
hour or
minute
this is
how it feels
to inhabit time
swift
creakly
slick
deeply
intimate
infusing
every slippery word
or graceful gesture
light and darkness
make their sound
and give birth to time
and time and time
just flies away,
just passes by,
just exists (no) more
that’s what time is now
that’s how little time
I have to do all
the things I am
thinking about
if winter
really
comes.
I Tell Time
Some nights seem slippery,
more than I like, lately
maddeningly abstract
yet deeply intimate,
infusing every
word and gesture…
and breath
I wake to the sound
of dark, without detail
underanemptysky
or maybe
underground,
in a cavern or
falling thru space
I might be dreaming
I could be dead.
Time moves one direction
but I move all directions
and take time with me
I tell time
Her Own Vampire
She was divided, rent
and torn to pieces
clinging to night
in the brunt
of day
she swirled
and melted down
outside
lying in coffins,
in caskets
(her heart her soul)
so black, beneath the dirt
so red inside desire
so bright and filled
with longing
she was her own grave
and when night fell
the earth moved
and trembled
and her brown-streaked
and desperate hand curled
into a claw carrying
crescent moons of dirt
deep beneath haunted
and hungry nails
as she undead
to her ownself
rose from the grave
to wander in
the night
reaches
she was her own vampire
diminishing, growing all
at once becoming
and draining
herself into
Herself
On Your Way Back Home
It’s over there,
down around
that small merry curve
duck your head, Dear
and be knighted
by mischievous holy
bows branching
into yearning twitchy
twigs
as you walk
thru the Sacred Arch
on your way back home
nestled
in the snowy reach
there on the
porch
of the
Last Deep Forest
round about
those happy fringes
Hiding With Grace
a quiet roaring
carries me
into the
arms
of
deep
forest
mystery
a
silent
snarl at
everything
that injures,
that horror harms
rises up thru jade velvet
moss dark and pungent and drawing
me down
I
sit
running
my fingers
thru silent silver
fog
creeping
around
tree trunks
and caressing
their yearning
tops
with
misty
lips
and
I
sit
I
see
that
fog
enters
me
and
instructs
with
kisses
and
tickly
fingers
and
teaches
me
how
to
hide
with
Grace
In Your Wonder
Here I am
caught up in your wonder
and wondering how
it is that you have written it
all over me
and around me.
I am here inscribed
by your eyes, your lips
your hands have writ large
in wonder upon …
Source: In Your Wonder
Advent Poem: The Season of Emptiness
This poem is about how the work of Advent involves a preparation of Empty Bequeathed…and it uses transition as its vehicle.
This Christmas,
nothing has been exposed,
revealed as the imposter
it still masquerades as.
I am empty of screams
but full of me and
ready to receive
the Promise of words
to give voice to
what’s unspeakable, unnameable,
to dress that wound
infected with nothing
and salve it with
the scratchy tickle of truth
and set free we
shadowbound, to be
our shining selves,
casting shadows
instead of being flat
and cast by them.
It is the season of emptiness, and places
prepared by pain are hungry
for the Presence
and the Promise
that only emptiness contains.
Advent Poem: The Season of Enough
My Favorite Advent Poem! From 2014
It’s the season to journey
to places we know so well
but haven’t been to…
and now it is time
in this never enough world
to declare the season has come:
it’s the season of enough!
ENOUGH!
Enough of the certified baby so boring,
our “gentle Lord Jesus so timid, meek and mild”,
enough of the muffled mage soft-spoken and sage
who wouldn’t say shit even if He’d a mouthful!…
See That New Lil Button?^^^
It’s up there on the button row…beside “Home” and “Poetry”.
It links to all things Advent on Grace Notes…and is a good place to click as you do the hard work on waiting during Advent.
Advent Poem: The Season of Hope
I set off on this journey full of hope.
And wrapped in splendours of belonging here…
or there…it doesn’t really matter there or here
which far exceeds being nothing nowhere
But a…
Source: Advent Poem: The Season of Hope
Advent Poem: The Season of Expectancy
Advent 2014
I’m homesick for a Blue Place
that might not be real…
but I know it is.
It has to be!
It floats here,
Azure in my silver
longing heart unsinkable
and it’s scarlet voice calls
from Beyond into beyond…
The Big Books Of My Longing
In the Big Books
of my longing
the pages
(fresh bread fragrant,
full, and beckoning)
speak of other
days and other
worlds hung in
Mystery Skies…
where Winter walks
in sleighbell slippers
and flashes snowflake
teeth in starlight,
teeth gleaming
in teeming flurries
dancing furiously
frivolous and fancy
free…
reaching to me
inside my room
in the Big Books
of my longing
and pages rustle
like wrapping papers
and chestnuts pop
so merrily,
clicking their
Christmas tongues
tsk tsk tsk…
and She,
Lady Winter
in furs of hearth
and home, underlaid
with ermine fires
like brown-tinged
liquid gold, furs and
white hot coals inside
Her Heart so cold…
so Warm…
It’s just outside
my window pane
(and glowing
in the pages too)
in the big books
of my longing…
Look! And see how
even in Her Presence
(Her very Presence!)
In Her Presence
ducklings sneer
at that name called
Frozen
and quacky laff and
swing a wiggly waddly tail
and burst in shattering wings
that break the pond-limit water pane
once so still and now awash in
ripple-tizzy ripple run
tum tum tum
pum
just outside
my window pane
they break
with earth
and rise
revealed
just ducks
of quacky
laff at regal
August Winter
in December…
while
the swans,
contrapuntal
in becoming
also rise
(like the
floaty moon so
silverlight in
revelations
of duck
and dirt
and
common
clay)
Swans,
become stars
swimming thru still night
and singing all Her praise
and shining gracefully
on gliding wings…
in the Silent Singing Snow
and
every
sound
echoes
my heart
inside that
just outside…
just outside
my window pane
and the Big Books
of My Longing
JP Readies Herself
Leaning Hard Against That Night
Written two years ago…EERILY implicative regarding our likely future under trump and his narcissistic impulsive evil
icicles hung glittering clear,
they shot diamonds, mercury bright
and gleams refracting morning light
they hid the horrid crime that happened
in the cold and dark black night…
how can people …
Source: Leaning Hard Against That Night
Advent Poem: The Season Of Wasteful Love
It’s time, it’s time for waking up from sleep!
Wake up from drunken stupor dull and cheap!
Embrace the road of pardon, so costly
the path of mercy rich, completely free
For mercy falls thick, unfathomable
in unexpected places, shattering.
Grace oozes to the unpalatable,
and ruins our sense of who is deserving.
God’s grace is lavish, prodigal and full,
prodigious in the Person of a God
who comes among His people glad, and gives
Himself in trust into their clutching hands…
hands desperate and fallen onto rocks
and reefs and broken in the tragic wreck
God comes, knowing the outcome in advance
exhausting, costly, God comes down in dreck
to simply be defamed, to squandered be
Ah…who can grasp this wasteful heart of God?
That Sacred Heart marked by Peculiar Grace
Disruptive Grace, unsettling the proud?
That Grace, that roaring Grace Alive and Loud!
And so beloved, do persist in love
when you grow faint and nearly overwhelmed,
persist in peace and persevere in grace
when rank injustice dark obscures His Face
for on the other side of justice waits
the grace disruptive, jarring and so thick
and lavish laid upon us, blow by blow
and matching every lash…wastefully so!
God’s grace disrupts our prideful righteousness
Grace summons us to choose, respond in kind
And our cheek naked, turned and tender there
And Grace, just grace, that covers every care.
Advent Poem: Awaited Invitation
a weighted invitation
a hush emerges,
pregnant time,
a sunlit drop
hanging on
the tip
of that
sharp green leaf,
capturing the sun
just before
release,
letting go
to join
desiring
earth
in
eternal
petrichor
blossoms
the moment
air becomes
breath
the moment
breath
dissolves
again
into
air
and the moment
pierces, passes
thru
into,
a silent arrow
stopping hearts,
that sharp and hollow
point piercing, sucking
hope and fear alike
in one fell
zinging
sssccchhhuuunnnkkk!
noetics fall away
yield the moment
to Poetics…
Awaited
Invitation
Advent Poem: Away With The Gimmicks (echoing ‘Away In A Manger’)
away with the gimmicks
we’re done with your crap
the lies that you laid down
the manger a trap
we want a tradition
that’s living and free
and songs of thanksgiving
and fresh liturgy
that’s ancient and yet new
and still relevant
so profound, so simple
so “un-sycophant”
Entrance, proclamation,
the Eucharist true,
sending out, gathering,
preaching Good News
Restore the New Baby
the Time Bomb in time
the Bread come from Heaven
the Living New Wine
away with the gimmicks
the scripts and the lies
So faith, hope and love can
come open our eyes.
On The Shores
Where will it be?
Here…on the shores
of
this
nation?
Where will it be?
That future lost wondering
seething and shambling
generations will come
stand shaky, un-kneeling,
stand in hushed horror,
stare at the gates,
the looming blank gates
and the haunted
and harrowing houses
within
the walls of more walls…
Where will the cries
and the screams
and the howls
of the dispossessed
and the long dead
ring and groan
and echo and moan
on the winds that strain hard,
try in vain cold-scourings
to blow clean and to cleanse
to exorcise acts
of horror…and hatred…
in-hu-man-ity…
Will it be in
the beautiful mountains
so pine-covered, veiled
in gauzy soft blue?
Perhaps down beneath,
in the swampy and wonderful
croaky and crawly den
of ancient gators?
Or built
in the bones,
on the bleached
and unburied
bones of the hot
painted deserts?
Or nested
so comfortably
ensconced, a proud present
plover quick-picking
and plucking the carrion
from fetid gums
in the gaping sheer mouth
midst the bracing, imposing
implacable teeth
made of jagged still
mountains?
Or bleeding forever on
the shores of the seas
and the grieving shrill cries
of the gulls…
of the gulls…
oh…where will it be?
Where will the haunted
ziggurat hunker,
a crater at home
in the wastelands and horror
of inhuman time,
of living black holes
of hatred that sucks
all the life and all light
into
the dark
pusillanimous
core?
Where?
there…
on the shore…
Love At Knife Point
You
write
I love you
with your knife in my back
point point point point point point
bloody pinpricks and slashes
on my skin, in my heart
across my face in
careful cursive
curses
you
make
a mockery …
Source: Love At Knife Point
Charissa's Grace Notes 
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