christmas poem

The Second Before My iPod Shuffles

For Blade

I.

Technology gives the gift of random

To which I give my right to choose

away to the ghosts inside the gears,

the rights to fill my ears with blues

or landslides, muddy waters, speares, 

hem and tangos, sandstorms, jazz,

Madonna, ABBA, midnight mass.

I want a melody to fit my mood

Hard and loud or sleek and smooth.

And anxious wait and pressed between

the staccatoed silence of a magazine.  

II.

But it’s oh so quiet, 

on the cusp of words,

Look right, 

look left, 

look right again.

Tap your foot in the grocer’s line,

Count down for Christmas break to begin.

But then,

The pregnant pause gives way to noise

(we cross the street or find a wife.)

the song’s a healthy baby boy,

A baby crying with us in the night.

I wrote this Christmas poem for Blade, who I barely knew, for my poetry class three years ago.  I can't even remember why I wrote it for him; I think it was in response to one of his poems but I'm not sure.  Funny that three years later he ended up helping me record my song and that he recently found a wife (who is awesome and who I had a lot of connections with before)!  It's wonderful who God places in your life for a short season and then all the beautiful and surprising recapitulations that can happen later.  

This poem remains unedited since its original conception.     

a bread breaking moment

Thursday-The Lord met me at two a.m. in a garden of icons and candles.

Friday- The Lord met me lying on my face, surrendering all my desires and touching the cross.

Saturday- The Lord met me in a horse’s kiss.

Sunday- The Lord met me in joy: car dancing, tulips, ham, good friends, and worship.    

Monday- Today I ate breakfast with a friend and found myself saying this line that I’ve said far too many times, “I wish I had a man, a job, a path, something.”  It was one of those glorious mundane moments when you realize there has been a dramatic shift in the way you view the world.  As I said it, I realized I didn’t really mean it anymore, not like I used to.  Saying the phrase was like lifting a cigarette to my mouth out of pure habit, but then realizing I didn’t even like the taste, that I didn’t need it anymore.  

Something happened to me this Lenten season, particularly this Easter weekend.  I don’t even know how to articulate it.  I suppose I got to taste the sweetness of what it is like when His story, however briefly, eclipses my own.  When instead of clamoring for Him to meet me where I am at, I seek to meet Him where He has revealed Himself most fully, meditating on the cross, the tomb, the resurrection.  And of course when I do that, I think I’m more open for Him to meet me where I am at, whether that is at the equestrian center or driving in my car.       

In some ways I’ve felt like the disciples on the road to Emmaus, lamenting their loss, feeling confused about what comes next, maybe even complaining about how God has left them to figure it out on their own.  Jesus comes and they don’t recognize Him at first, but then He breaks bread and they realize Christ has been with them the whole time.  I’m sure if they knew who was on the path with them, the where or what of the path would become much less important.  I guess I am starting to believe that Jesus is walking with me, that He died on the cross because He loves me, that He rose from the dead.  I know that sounds basic but somehow I have not spent a whole lot of time in my Christian walk thinking about those truths as much as “what should I do to please God today; what should I do or say?”  Or worse, what should others around me be doing or saying?  

I am so grateful for everyone who has ever put up with one of my many “what am I doing with my life” conversations, including this one.  It’s not that I’m above that question anymore; it’s just not laced with the same worry poison.  It's not like there was a dramatic moment of deliverance today as much as a realization that came simple and quiet, like a shy cat or a gentle horse.    

good friday

A song I wrote for Good Friday.  Thanks again to Blade for the help recording it.

https://files.me.com/blade.barringer/11ti56.mp3

In writing this song, I was aware of two desires.  The primary one was to call out for the grace, like Julian of Norwich and many other saints, to see and to know more fully the love and suffering of Christ which He displayed on the cross that I might worship and adore Him more.  The second was the awareness of an underlying desire to see Him on the cross, not in order to worship, but in order to satisfy my own sinful craving to see innocence suffer for my pain.  It’s hard to put to words the depth of darkness in my heart that I confronted as I wrote this song and began to identify with the crowd crying, “Crucify Him!”  Yet at the same time I know that Christ died not only because of these desires but for them.  The depths of His mercy is fathomless.  There is so much that has been written about Good Friday, and we have barely scraped the surface of its meaning.  In some ways I feel like I am just adding to the din, and that the Passion is so holy, we ought to just stand in utter silence before it.  

But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was upon him, and by his wounds we are healed.  

-Isaiah 53:5

no particular order: pavlov, war, a lava lamp

in the halogen       & eerie glow

        of nearly-dark-         &-yet

         your open      mouth drips 

  thick    unyielding     slow

      breath & chest         rise up

                 to reach a credal 

        flow of murky    gel    psychic secretions

                leaking from a face

                     then     sinking 

                           like an angel     corpse

                       hole-    ridden as a piece 

                           of lace.

                               i watch transfixed 

                          you             slumber

                  peaceful unaware      of war

                             salivating hungry

                hanging in the air-

                                      -the feds

              just thread     a tube through    the hole

                      inside my cheek     to measure 

                   my desire for    a baby   

                                      a vacation on the beach

                           stability 

                                             like the rise

                              and fall of nations

                        arbitrary     blobs

                            arbitrary             masses

                forming      arbitrary       mobs

                           fumbling for a trigger

                                   their rhetoric     a bell

                                       claiming you can hear 

                         your people             scream inside 

                                an empty shell.

                   it is only an ocean     of blood 

                       cooling     burnt out

                                      burning brains,

                           (we dream &    drool    & twitch)

                                  too tired or        too high    

                                     to fight               such deep & 

                                                                   groovy grains.

Apparently Pavlov made holes in dog cheeks to measure more accurately their saliva output.  

Lava lamps were all the rage at the same time thousands of young men were dying seemingly for no reason.  

Maybe most of our hatred and distrust (and love?) is far more conditioned than it feels, at least the outworking or the who-and-where of it.         

my own "just so" story

Winter succumbs to summer’s hand

they meet in the spring.  

they meet in the sparkle of a melting icicle.  awww.

where the harshness of winter meets the distant fire.

Winter and summer are in love.  But only in spring and fall do they get to hold hands and look deep into each other’s eyes.  In the blazing heat of summer, they are lonely.  And too in the harshest days of winter.  This is why we freeze and sweat.  Heat stroke.  Frostbite.  Misery loves to make her company understand.  But in the spring, they kiss and birds begin to sing, and in the fall the tree leaves blush to see such unabashed love.   

In April it rains a ton--they cry to see each other go

but in my wet clothes whining I cannot forget

their misery helps the flowers grow.   

These are mostly just cast offs from my poem a few posts back about spring.  I am slowly collecting reams of rejected lines.  This seems like a good thing.  I used to never ever edit.  It felt like cutting off pieces of my body.  Speaking of, I have to venture out into this nasty rainy day to get a hair cut.  Consider this post the locks of my hair placed in an envelope and sent to your door. 

gladly would i exchange bread for love

          As a boy growing up in Serbia, my father leaned to play guitar from a gypsy, recently released from jail.  My grandfather, who was a baker, gave the gypsy bread in exchange for lessons, and over the years my dad became a wonderful guitarist.  When my parents met in a college town, they sang 60's and 70's folk songs together, and I wonder sometimes if that common language of music helped them fall in love.  She doesn't sing anymore, but she had a beautiful voice.  Growing up in Ohio, many nights I would fall asleep to my dad playing guitar downstairs, old Serbian songs, the blues, or songs he wrote, listening to him repeat a single measure over and over again until I fell asleep.  For the past 5 years, he and my sister have played music all over Cincinnati; my sister sings and my dad accompanies her.  He enjoys every second, his whole body engaging the music while my mom joins in from her corner of the restaurant or bar, smiling and completely engrossed in songs she’s heard a hundred times.  

          Last week I dreamed my dad was playing guitar, and instead of my sister, it was my mom who was on stage.  She was tap dancing with a top hat in her hand.  I could physically see the notes peeling off and flying from the guitar like cartoon bees, looping and whirling with dashed lines trailing behind them.  As part of the act, my mother caught each one in her hat.  It was a sweet scene, but the most beautiful part of all was to see my mother positively beaming.  Sometimes in dreams one can physically see things that cannot be seen, like notes, but at times, with some kind of dream-sense, one can “see” things without any physical manifestation at all.   All I know is that I saw the very essence of my mother’s deep love for my dad in her smile and in her dance.  Her face radiated and beamed with delight. 

         As my sister moves closer and closer to her own wedding day, I am grateful that she will be taking with her such a happy hope.  While thousands of people in my generation feel anxious about marriage, wondering if it ever “works,” both of us know full well it can.  As crazy as my parents can be sometimes, another blog for another life, I have never seen any couple laugh as much they do and so throughly enjoy one another’s company.  In a go-behind-the-scenes culture where often things are worse than they seem on the outside, behind the doors of my 9416 family life, it is better.  Not perfect, but I am learning over and over that St. Paul spoke the truth: “Love covers over a multitude of sins.”  And it does.  I am extravagantly blessed, and I’m so excited in seven months to invite someone new into our family.  I’m glad he plays guitar.

palm sunday

                          for McKenna

He was not the king we were expecting;

       He was better than our plans.

           Hosanna, gentle sister, 

                you’ve been delivered

                      to a thousand open hands.