birds----they seemed of all created beings the nearest to pure spirit--those little creatures with a normal temperature of 125°

What that we could see our demons.

Feel their fetid breath on our cheeks or

the texture of their skin.

The grip of their fingers lifting our hands to sin.

Would they seem beautiful?

It'd be no great surprise if, to me, they did.

I who am blind.

I who even in seeing

fail to perceive, much less

comprehend. It's mercy that forbids it.

Mercy that disallows my senses

to be stirred by glorious phantoms

ringed in mist or flesh.

Still...

This tendered song breaks and splits, parsed

with hope of meaning or at least some meager image

of light or death

or the hint of a harmony.

Does meaning nest quietly

behind the veil?

Resting like the dead beneath the thin soil

and thinner air. Is it

grasped like smoke

or sentiment?

Can it be bound or

fettered, caught and trained

to stand and

expound?

Does it peck at the living,

searching for mites of

consciousness with

its beaks of flame? Or,

is it silent in its sleep,

casting dreams against

the seabed where they rest, stunned,

in wait

of the end of ends?

Sing freely and loud. Or stamp the soil into stone

and press the wind against the flat of your hand;

palm the breeze. Lick at the sky and its blinding

depths. Strike against the blue that hides, or the

darkness that goes and goes.

And maybe, just, you'll hear the sound of

singing. Angels' tongues licking too, Heaven's fists

striking the taught skins of worlds, stamping

as from molds the spirits of man and the tinkling gears

of ethereal animation. Palming meaning into chords

and thoughts that ring,

binding breath with dust or bones.

Being becoming being and

splitting, still.

Lovesong

But if the unbelieving depart, let him depart. A brother or a sister is not under bondage in such cases: but God hath called us to peace.

-1 Corinthians 7:15

It isn't enough to wish you well.

Not to want for your goodness,

to feel or taste it

like Heaven's wine on the tip of the tongue.

If only to forget it.

Like a daughter who loves

but doesn't know love.

Or an old friend forgotten and dead.

The rulers of older empires bathe

in sunlight or in thought,

scrub as it wraps itself like the

tongues of serpents around their arms.

But what now and here

can we offer?

The warmest thanks to all

adulterers and their most feeble,

most honest,

honorable attempt.

Accept our failings, our piety,

our outright hate, please, with

patience.

Smack together in air,

and cry your praise. What else have

you to do? Grow your red hair long

and kiss and hit, knowing, perhaps,

that at least,

the dying moves slow.

Brandish your love like an axe against

the emptiness. Beat it against the burning

tree or door, till it's ash or opens to

something else.

Here dear,

have a drink.

Have another.

How can you be blamed? Love.

Are you not cutting off the hand

that sinned? Sacrificing

your flesh for the sake of something more,

if not only for the tendered want for more?

If not for then at least for now.

If the world is dead and truth dying,

cut out the eye that sees it and

stumble blindly on.

Sounding

"...even though there stand beside thee thousands of archangels and ten-thousands of angels, the Cherubim and the Seraphim, six-winged, many-eyed, soaring aloft, borne on their pinions, singing the triumphal hymn..."

-St. John Chrysostom, from the anaphora of his Divine Liturgy

From months in early summer

the mouths of eager kids,

split wide, or with honest questions

set falling fair-flying pinions--upborne

and outset feather or gear--

to spin and ever-chanting,

breath filling ether and resounding.

Echoing, the din breaks against the ceiling of things,

smashes against the rocks,

poking up from the bottom, as with a broomstick

or cane.

Why the wheels?

The rings of rocks and dust. Pray, creation's dash,

spinning about, The worlds,

snuffing it?

Tumble dryly,

you creatures of light and thread,

holy fog, sputtering gearwork, heavenly industry.

Giants drawn on,

spinnakers filled by your breathing,

filled like shorts, rise to your howling pitch. See?

We fetch up.

The Clearing

They came to the forest and made a clearing,

blasted the stumps, split the wood,

and built the woodshed.

Too tired

to build the house, they bought a roller,

white paint, some asphalt,

and made a tennis court in the clearing.

They forgot the fence. They played tennis

that summer till all the balls were lost 

in the forest;

and when the woodshed 

caught fire, it was almost as pretty

as the blaze the sparkler factory made

when it burned outside of Wheeling, West Virginia.

--a d

regarding the progressive improvement of the universe

--afternoon

'good is always getting better and bad is always getting worse: the possibilities of even apparent neutrality are always diminishing.'

          -lewis

there are some christians, the orthodox included, who would claim that the universe has, since the incarnation of the Christ, been in a condition of constant improvement. the problem, as it appears, with that is that it just doesn't look like it. what with aids and starvation and war and the general de-christianization of the world as a whole, it's hard to believe anything's getting better. this is something that i've thought about quite often, though not often to any great benefit as far as providing any kind of answer is concerned. but i think there is an answer, probably many. the only two that i am clever enough to understand (i can't even claim them as my own, or that i even really understand them, not really. anyhow...) are as follows: 

first, there seem to be two kinds of pain. pain that is all bad and pain that hurts but that serves a good purpose or has a root or foundation that is essentially good. pains of the first kind are clear enough: if i close my car door on my ankle, it hurts like a royal bitch and nothing good comes of it. the latter are pains like those one experiences after playing a bracing game of racquetball or those caused by surgery or a visit to the dentist (the last are questionable). the point is that many of the apparent evils that we experience or are experienced by those around us could be of the surgical nature. it's hard for us to see how they would or could be at all good, and i would never go as far as specifying what kind of pain belongs in which category, but it's a reasonable assumption for someone who believes in a loving God who is actively engaged in His creation.

secondly, and this may be in some ways connected to the first point, it may serve to make it more clear, the universe doesn't seem to be bettering itself, or being bettered because evil is becoming all the more apparent. the lines between good and evil are much less blurred now than they seemed to be even a hundred years ago. so, at the same time, good is being refined as it appears in the lives of men. the wheat is all the time becoming more easily distinguished from the chaff, the sheep from the goats, even as can be seen by us. so not only does pain remain present in both its forms, the evil that perpetuates it is growing increasingly potent, and with the advent of world media (i'm out of my element here so if i sound ignorant, especially as far as my vocabulary is concerned, it's because i am) we now have the ability to witness more than has ever been possible. it seems like there is more war, famine, disease and hatred than there ever has been because we know about every instance of each (save the last). some have said, though i haven't taken the time to look up the studies myself, that there is now less of each of these things than there ever has been. there is certainly less famine; the living conditions of the world in general has obviously improved and continues to do so.

none of this is to say that the war or famine or disease that does surround us is permissible, that's ridiculous, and it also isn't to say that we should relax our humanitarian efforts as far as charity is concerned, just the opposite. because the universe is moving toward its complete revivification we should be spurred on to more and better forms of action. it should be easier for us to choose good: the choice is clearer. though at the same time, the more appealing aspects of evil have grown more potent along with the deplorable and are therefore less easily avoided or resisted. 

i don't know when the end of all things will  be, i haven't the foggiest. thank God. every generation since the ascension has thought theirs was the last, after all, how could things go on any longer than they have, how could humanity fall or ascend any further, become any more or less human, respectively? billy graham, a saint in his own rite, thought Jesus would return in glory before the 1980's. considering the 70's i can see where he was coming from, but i wouldn't exist if that had been the case (i think. i suppose i was created at my conception...?). he was obviously wrong and it's arguable that his prediction was at times detrimental.

  i think we would do well to retain our sense of urgency as far as evangelism is concerned, but i think it should be more concerned with the spiritual formation of all concerned than with the number of responses a church got to last week's altar call. we need Christians more than we need converts. men and women who know and love God, to a greater degree than what is necessary for one to stand and receive a blessing and a baptism that acts as a public declaration and a symbol. we need christians who's conversion was one that happens over the course of years, even decades, who work out their salvation with fear and trembling. the foundation needs to be active love of God and Good, not feelings of guilt or peace or warmth or passion or whatever. 

sorry, i got a little carried away. i should just give in and buy a soapbox and start a denomination of my own.