for all those desperately clamoring for more pearls of wisdom…
that title is tongue-in-cheek, BTW.
here’s a poem:
I’ll give you a hint - it’s about the end of the age (and the guy in the poem isn’t really me…my sister doesn’t have a front porch and I’ve never owned a Jetta)…and I wrote before I got to IHOP.
Open and Shut
A woman once stated,
“hope deferred makes a heart sick”
I was the deferment
she was the heartsick.
Then I shut the door
she pounded for weeks
grew tired
walked away.
I was nineteen years old.
Now, I wonder
where my hope resides…
is it in some distant
desert land of snakeskin
and cattleprods?
Is it in a book by Kierkegaard, Bonhoeffer,
or Dostoyevski’s yearning groans?
Is it in memory of my father’s aching back
and failing eyes? My sister’s newly
painted front porch, my new VW Jetta
or, recently, in a woman with red hair?
Or is it, should it be in the Eschaton?
Not some pre-millenialist tale
of airline pilot preachers and anti-christ assassination attempts; instead
the stirring pot,
humanity boiling in its own
blood-filled, edited and televised catastrophe.
Overflowing the kettle, hissing,
clouds gather,
the Bridegroom arises
sun-burst rays
judgement, piercing light, and a
new blood, poured out upon all flesh
rejoicing, groaning, signs of the earth giving
way to this weight of glory, now.
January 13, 2002
