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Hosea's Love
They said the Lord told me to take a faithless wife.
Whatever they said, I came to her temple
a man on fire, preordained for tragedy.
I couldn’t have cared less that Gomer
was so experienced in the ways of men.
I saved her from the poverty of her previous life
—that’s how we talked about it—as if our past
was but a shadow to the glory we found in each other’s
light. She knew things to try that even me,
for all my fantasies, had never imagined.
Even after we married she pursued me,
and my appetite for her was insatiable.
Only a sheltered mind will be surprised to hear
that a canonized voice like mine, a voice
speaking forever on God’s behalf, was once a man
who went whoring. How else would I have met her?
How would I ever have stood for God
in a time when Israel was wracked in war,
and even the rich ran aimless through the streets?
Unless you’ve lived it, no words will make you
understand what it’s like to have your love
run around on you. I took her back
—more than once if you must know—
cared for her children, none of them mine.
I never understood God’s heart
until I made the connection of my pain to His.
All Israel falling for each other, for the Assyrians
and their temple orgies, sacrificing themselves
to any given god. I sacrificed the pillar of my youth
and the self I thought I’d found in her,
so that someone like you can return to these ruins,
piece together my story from its broken
tongue, and come to know a love that will not let go. |
Noah's Evidence
Promises, promises, but in the end we float
upon the tide of our choices. Even when the flood crossed
the banks, even when the olive trees ripped
from their orchards and their temples went floating
down the streets, they thought I was a silly man
trying to hold on to Heaven. You might think
they clung to the sides, begged to climb in.
Not so. Your scientists report
no evidence of a global flood. All I know
is the mountaintops didn’t poke their noses
to the sky for weeks. News flash: no one
is filming your life looking for the facts. No one
keeps you from seeing. You thirst for the water
all around you. You drown in your illusions.
Fact: God never explains God’s mind.
You may have noticed God has a habit
of this, blotting out the stars of hope like a drunk father’s
shadow, then, drying up, starting over.
You may think that’s over the top, but it’s true.
And what if God really did spray that rainbow
across the clouds so you and I could remember
how God weeped and gnashed God’s teeth?
All you want to debate are the facts. The fact is
when you went and killed off God you cursed yourself
with your malls and smog and stadiums and wars.
The planet is not so big you can’t flood it
on your own. The open sea is an albatross dangling
like a misplaced modifier from your neck, a dove
that never returns. Put that in one of your Op Eds.
See how far you get before the fact of your own life
is blotted out. You gain your life by promising it away. |
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Ezekiel's Mad Dream
Just look, even your soldiers stumble
into mass graves playing two-hand-touch—
at the foot of a Mesopotamian plateau
we once considered sacred. They were taking a break
from their oil well patrols when one tumbled
into a pit of bones. The Sergeant,
who already had seen too much death, picked up a skull
and rolled it over the scabbed dirt
to his brothers. Semper Fi.
I ask you—who is any of us in this?
Even in his madness Hamlet saw a life
in the skull, how it had a tongue
before it was recovered from the earth with its pate
full of dirt. Your medical schools hang skeletons
in labs as a mnemonic device.
Josephus left them hanging in the gardens
of his generals should any of them forget
who we are. Egyptians paid their life savings
to the royal treasury to embalm their flesh
with honey, thyme, sage and ash long before me.
What keeps you bound you shouldn’t need
reminding of. You’re dust given a tongue.
It’s the words that spring from your chest
that prove what you would die for. I was mad for God.
His Chosen are only the ones who remember
from where they’ve come. When I prophesy your future
I set your bones back. I sing you into sinew
and skin. I call forth the wind for your breath.
I give you the swallow’s song to dance to.
One day your heart beats free of its cage.
One day even your skull is the pollen
that stirs the blossom. Right where you stand a temple
rises and falls and no one hears
because no one remembers who any of us is.
You can’t label one thing separate from another
as those Greeks would have you believe. You can’t
know the dancer from the dance.
We’re all wandering these fields looking for our limbs.
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Magnolia