Here is a poem about words
Scarlet Birds
Indeed words fly by
The place I've found near your house.
They fly like scarlet
Birds do when amazed
By your sudden bright presence.
I want to grow wings.
Please take these words in.
Let them light on your perches
Array them round you.
December 28, 2008 8:35 AM
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This is a theme, an image embedded in my spiritual walk, a vision of my relationship with God and God with me, except for the giggling part. I take all this too serious, really. I am grateful that my age is shifting the shape of things so I can write a poem like this.
The Laughing God
Here's the happy god,
The one who still laughs with me
But I catch his heel
And I won't let go
Though he reach down and touch me
Like a surgeon's knife.
Pull me out of here.
That's what I demand of him,
This popular god.
He twitters, giggles.
He does a spry godly dance.
I have to let go.
December 28, 2008 12:25 PM
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Gods are not all they're cracked up to be :)
ReplyDeleteTwo GREAT poems!
ReplyDeleteChristopher:) I have written so many poems about words...mine have always been sad. I love your word poem. So much hope and joy in it...
ReplyDeleteFor me, words
were always stones:
Hope, Love, Grace...
I thought I could lay them out
as a path and you would find me
in the garden still on my knees weeding
but my words so easily deceived me
and became a wall of
Hopeless, Loveless
Without Grace
Until the scarlet birds
flew from your mouth
and lighted upon the stones
A sudden array of bright light
I do not take these new words in,
they kindly lead me out.
"The Laughing God" is so well written. The giggling and the surgeon's knife...the two together are powerful images...and you holding on until you no longer can. For some reason, in this poem, I understand God better...
I love the bird one. My kind of poem. :)
ReplyDeleteMichelle, for me it's worship that is not all it's cracked up to be. Gods are what they are but we have a helluva time trying to figure out what to do with them. Why not argue sometimes? Wrestle? Poke fun at? If Jesus is born in a manger - just an image - then God is at home with truck (lorrie) drivers, and they with irreverence. So why not tweak God right on the nose? Doesn't it seem like the world needs that sometimes? All the time?
ReplyDeleteMarty, Thanks for saying so. I will pass it on to my muses. I just record these things :)
Faith, Your poem is a happy addition though as with Marty I will pass your meanings on through. As has been happening between Rachel and me and you and me, I am happy to pass fine words through and see what my muses give back.
Rachel, of course it's your kind of poem. Only you are earthier than that much of the time.
"Let them light on your perches
ReplyDeleteArray them round you."
Very nice.
I love the image of a happy god, shaking you off with a twitter. Too often, I think we forget that God must have a sense of humor.
Karen, Indeed, a sense of humor in fact deep rich and practical. In fact much of His humor is of the practical joke nature, only never ever shallow.
ReplyDeleteYes. I kind of believe we are god. If you know what I mean.
ReplyDeleteMichelle, maybe I know what you mean. Buddhists and Hindus and people like that say we need a lot of remedial work before saying such a thing makes any sense at all, but the sense of destiny is there nonetheless. We would like the privileges of godhood but not yet even close do we want any of the responsibilities. For God's sake, they are arguing about waterboarding on the tv now. Legitimate torture. If that is Godlike, then I am firing God.
ReplyDeleteWhich, of course, is where arguing with God comes in because it so often seems that suffering is deliberate and enjoyed at the divine level. That's no way to run a universe.