Tag Archives: art and poetry

Lenten Calendar: Forsaken

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Every hour of every day there are crucifixions,

Justice Scales by Emory Douglas

Justice Scales by Emory Douglas

the Christ on trial in someone, somewhere,
judged in fear, condemned in ignorance,
mocked and beaten, imprisoned, killed,
while we watch at the foot of the cross
or from three cock crows away, and ask,
‘God, God, why have you forsaken them?’

The world is full of Good Fridays and Golgothas.
In the small arena of our lives,
there appears to be the same defeat of goodness
and it’s difficult to wear a bright smile
when the heart hangs heavy in a darkness
full of thorns and nails and swords.
Unable to see beyond dyings, we cry,
‘God, God, why have you forsaken us?’

from ‘Easterings’ by Joy Cowley

 

Justice requires attention and presence. Injustice demands we look or walk away. We sense this when we witness it — if God were only here, we think, this would never happen. Pray for somewhere that seems God-forsaken. Keep your eyes open for ways to shine God’s light in and on dark places.

Advent Again – day 27

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The Promise of the Spirit

 

from “Mountain Building” by Victor Hernández Cruz

 

The Moros live on the top floor eating

Roots and have a rooster on the roof

Africans import okra from the bodega

The Indians make a base of guava

On the first floor

The building is spinning itself into

a spiral of salsa

windowslights-debra-hurd

“Windows and Lights” by Debra Hurd

Heaven must be calling or the

Residents know the direction

Because there is an upward pull

If you rise too quickly from your seat

You might have to comb a spirit’s

Hair

They float over the chimneys

Arrive through the smog

Appear through the plaster of Paris

It is the same people in the windowed

Mountains.

Advent Again – day 26

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“Your mind will muse on terror… your eyes will see a quiet habitation”

“Woman Holding a Balance” by Johannes Vermeer

from “Hermeneutics” by Kerri Webster

 

All winter she’s been growing more powerful.

Radiant, says the man at the bar.

Voluptuous, says the docent.

Nervy, says God.

All winter her soul has been juddering.

It feels like drinking gold flakes!

The word sleeps inside the stone.

The wind tongues the underside of the lake.

Inside the rifle scope of time, God

teaches her Grounding Techniques

through his emissary, a Certified Therapist.

Beetles bore their dirty traffic into pine trees.

God says, You cling to deixis

like a life raft. Here, you

say. Now, you say. All winter, you say, like it means

something, days crossed off your compulsive

calendar, wind tied to your wrist like

a pet. This dumb hunger for

fixity! I made your cells

to shed, says God. See them

everywhere, everywhere.

…

Advent Again – day 23

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“again in the pains of childbirth”

 

a-woman-called-mother

“A Woman Called Mother” by M.T. Brown (personal collection)

“From ‘The Black Maria'” by Aracelis Girmay

 

The body, bearing something ordinary as light                           Opens

as in a room somewhere the friend opens in poppy, in flame, burns & bears the child — out.

 

When I did it was the hours & hours of breaking. The bucking of

it all, the push & head

 

not moving, not an inch until,

when he flew from me, it was the night who came

 

flying through me with all its hair,

 

the immense terror of his face & noise.

 

I heard the stranger & my brain, without looking, vowed

a love-him vow. His struggling, merely, to be

 

split me down, with the axe, to two. How true,

the thinness of our hovering between the realms of Here, Not Here.

 

The fight, first, to open, then to breathe,

& then to close. Each of us entering the world

 

& entering the world like this.

Soft. Unlikely.      Then —

 

the idiosyncratic minds & verbs.

Beloveds, making your ways

 

to & away from us, always, across the centuries,

inside the vastness of the galaxy, how improbable it is that this
iteration

 

of you or you or me might come to be at all — Body of fear,

Body of laughing —& even last a second. This fact should make us fall all

 

to our knees with awe,

the beauty of it against these odds,

 

the stacks & stacks of near misses

& slimmest chances that birthed one ancestor into the next & next.

 

Profound, unspeakable cruelty who counters this, who does not see.

& so to tenderness I add my action.

 

Source: Poetry (April 2016)

 

From <https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/detail/88747>

Advent Again – day 16

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On that day the deaf shall hear
    the words of a scroll,
and out of their gloom and darkness
    the eyes of the blind shall see. – Isaiah 29:18

dark-sea-dave-anderson

“Dark Sea” by Dave Anderson http://clampart.com/2012/04/dark-sea/dark-sea/

from “Song for the Last Act” by Louise Bogan

…

Now that I have your voice by heart, I read
In the black chords upon a dulling page
Music that is not meant for music’s cage,
Whose emblems mix with words that shake and bleed.
The staves are shuttled over with a stark
Unprinted silence. In a double dream
I must spell out the storm, the running stream.
The beat’s too swift. The notes shift in the dark.

Now that I have your voice by heart, I read.

Now that I have your heart by heart, I see
The wharves with their great ships and architraves;
The rigging and the cargo and the slaves
On a strange beach under a broken sky.
O not departure, but a voyage done!
The bales stand on the stone; the anchor weeps
Its red rust downward, and the long vine creeps
Beside the salt herb, in the lengthening sun.

Now that I have your heart by heart, I see.

Advent Again – day 15

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“The desert shall rejoice and blossom”

fom-gillette-beyondtheruins-cathedral

“Haiti – Beyond the Ruins: Cathedral” by Bryn Gillette

from “Illumination” by Elizabeth Woody
…
Tender events are meeting halves and wholes of affinity,
the recurrence of whimsy and parallel streams
flush away the blockage of malaise.
Incessant gratitude, pliable kindness smolders
in the husk of these sweet accumulations:
abalone shells, the thoughtful carvings from friends,
the stone of another’s pocket, the photo of mystified
moon over water, the smiles of worn chairs.
…
The sun has its own drum contenting itself with the rose
heart it takes into continual rumbling. The connection
of surface and hand. The great head of dark clouds finds
its own place of unraveled repercussions and disruption,
elsewhere, over the tall, staunch mountains of indemnity.

Advent Again – day 12

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not slow, but making space for all to change…

movement-in-kind-by-matthew-whitney

“Movement in Kind” by Matthew Whitney

from “A Change of Maps” by Carolyne Wright

 

…

Above us, satellites measure the drift

of continents, dissolving vows

of bedrock, offshore shelves conceding

 

all their striations to the sea.

They track the moon’s loosening orbit,

explorer shuttle homing in

with batteries of data, micro-

 

chips shrinking our wildest dreams.

We roll up the old cartographies

coordinates overlaid with newer,

more transparent certainties

 

in the subatomic shadows’ glare.

Where now? we want to know of landscape –

houses and poplars and children the maps

and master planners have no idea of.

 

Our arrival will coincide with the true

colors of our going. We look

both ways for distances that shift

their bearings in our favor.