a poem morphs and boils

Faith

perhaps i’m tied 

to superstition 

with strings 

of childish hope, 

but tell me-- 

in your grown up

intuition--

is purity made

of soap? 

this isn't terrible, but the smugness of the rhyming question with no real meaning bothers me, so i change it.

Self-Righteousness

perhaps i tied my

self with strings

of rotten rope

and the purity 

i paid for

is a flake 

of dirty soap.

Too easy.

Perhaps

perhaps the strings

of telling, 

perhaps the children,

perhaps the flakes of hope.

i let it fall apart in hopes it will reconstitute itself

A Joke

a rotting intuition

walks into a bar 

of soap.

it doesn't.

Hope

perhaps a string 

perhaps the truest thing I've said, but not a poem

A String

..............................................

This could perhaps be genius.  But, alas, it is not.  But it tried.  Sometimes it's best to walk away and cut your losses.  I suppose God writes straight with crooked strings.  So maybe He could even weave this rotten poem into His purposes and for His glory, but I don't see how.  What happens, cosmically speaking, to bad art?  I don't know.  Does it all burn?  What is left of it when it is all boiled down?  What happens, cosmically speaking, to bad theology? to childish philosophy?  to our superstitions about art's ultimate meaning?  A string of hope indeed.  All I know is that purity is not made of soap, nor man for the Sabbath, so I better get some sleep so I can be up in time to teach Sunday school to the children about the fall of man (true story).  Last week we made Adam's rib out of crumpled white pieces of paper.  One child cried out in true grief at the lameness of the craft-time.  My idea this week is to give them a clothespin (representing themselves) and have them wrap it with a string that reminds them of the way God clothed Adam and wraps him in His love, even after he sinned.  A string.  Sin.  Bad art.  Covering.  Welcome to my raw mind.

To redeem this post I will close with a Charles Spurgeon quote I found today about covering.  I pray you will dip this post into a silver bath.  God bless.

"I would, brothers and sisters, that we could all imitate the pearl oyster. A hurtful particle intrudes itself into its shell, and this vexes and grieves it. It cannot eject the evil, and what does it do but cover it with a precious substance extracted out of its own life, by which it turns the intruder into a pearl. Oh, that we could do so with the provocations we receive from our fellow Christians, so that pearls of patience, gentleness, long-suffering, and forgiveness might be bred within us by that which else had harmed us. I would desire to keep ready for my fellow Christians, a bath of silver, in which I could electroplate all their mistakes into occasions for love. As the dripping well covers with its own deposit all that is placed within its drip, so would love cover all within its range with love, thus turning even curses into blessings. Oh that we had such love that it would cover all, and conceal all, so far as it is right and just that it should be covered and concealed...

Do you want an example of it? Would you see the very mirror and perfection of the charity that beareth all things? Behold your divine Lord. Oh, what he has covered! It is a tempting topic, but I will not dwell on it. How his glorious righteousness, his wondrous splendour of love, has covered all our faults and all their consequences, treating us as if he saw no sin in Jacob, neither perversity in Israel. Think what he bore when he came unto his own and his own received him not! What a covering was that when he said, "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do." What a pitying sight of the fearful misery of man our Lord Jesus had when holy tears bedewed those sacred eyes! What a generous blindness to their infamous cruelty he manifested when he prayed for his bloodthirsty enemies. O beloved, you will never be tempted, and taunted, and tried as he was; yet in your own shorter measure may you possess that love which can silently bear all things for the elect's sake and for Christ's sake, that the multitude of the redeemed may be accomplished, and that Christ through you may see of the travail  of his soul."

   

Worthy is the Lamb.  Goodnight.