Miscarriage Again

Death,
    you are the enemy, you took two friends,
and if you can hold them you have seized the wind.
We weep for ones taken, and are as shaken
by bleak absence as by your uninvited presence.

At dinner, we sit around the table with living kin.
We pray and, when our eyes open to each other’s faces, 
we linger over life in a womb—with two fingers
we make small guesses—No bigger than this?  Yes! 

    Death, we do not want for grief,
but there is a Wing you may not reach beneath. 
There, your hand cannot grasp fragile forms
and your grip has ceased to close on even these
tiny
living human beings.

Quotations: Anger

“The gospel frees us from the need for people’s approval and adoration so that we can confront and anger the people we love, if that is what is best for them.  And although it does not always work, this is the kind of communication that really changes people…(more)

On Disagreement

These bricks, in our hands,
rise up like storms to wreck our plans
on disagreement—to lay up, or pull down?  
These mortar joints and tools
break the arms of worker-fools.
For us, there is no harbor in this town.

If bricks could attest,
They’d raise a cairn to our unrest;
This post would tell of work yet to be done.
It can only point the way
back to where we quit the fray.
For us, there is no haven from the sun.

These bricks build choices;
they raise questions without voices.
The answers are chisels on a stone.
Bricks can compromise;
they won’t bruise or get black eyes!
For us, deals are made of flesh and bone.

These bricks will destroy—
rise up like lonely in a boy—
while, ignorant, I try to keep my life.
…we can build…we can rise…
there is time to gain the prize.
For us, the shelter stone is in the strife.

cairn: a marker, often a pile of stones

Broken

Between us, on a tabletop of glass,
a working hand becomes a hammer.

A man wants his way.
He won’t take no.

Blood, though not spilled, boils.
Shards ring out and sing

the ways we will not mend—
how the heart, like a fractal,
repeats a pattern of breaks
and splits when magnified.

My heart rages.  It pushes blood
along a crooked line of strife

until I heed the rattle-crack
and attend the bang of anger.

The embittered rackets rise until
the broken pieces lay at rest between us.

Amid Old Friends

Amid old friends, a working hand
comes down hard.  Fear falls on the land,
as a fist becomes a hammer,
a glass tabletop to shatter.
A man, afraid, will take a stand

when, not according to his plan,
he receives a humble brand
and is loath to drop the matter
amid old friends.

Shards sing out how rage will expand
into violence, will demand,
with a loud rattle of anger
and a bang of bad behavior,
that we heed a fool’s reprimand
amid old friends.

The Denial Of Violence

2.  The Denial Of Violence

It was in a seminary lecture on violence that God spoke, quietly and clearly, “John, violence is a problem for you.  You need some help.”  I went to my professor after class and told him about some of my failures.  Later, we met and he told me to participate in an anger management group and other counseling if I wanted to continue taking classes at that school.

I was embarrassed and alarmed again.  But I followed his recommendation and began to see how my angry, vengeful violence could be changed; that, in fact, the very meaning of my violence could be changed.  (continue)

Hot Water

Under house. Crawl
Space. Three days.
Water heater. Anger.

Plastic pipe. C-ment.
Sore back. Stiff neck.
Grave glare.

Eight-year-old. Small
Hands. Unafraid.
Chips in. Questions.

Satisfied. Crawls out.
My face. Turnabout.
Wide grin.

Vengeance

The Hulk, when he’s uptight,
lets his anger open wide.
But, often, he is right
to don his greenish hide.

Batman has a grimace,
a pained and sober frown.
He lives to certain justice
for that crazy-evil clown.

King Kong can be tender.
He’s more than a mere beast.
Of feelings he can render
a bit of love, at least.

Monster, man, or animal,
vengeance will bring forth—
now vehement, now brutal—
their horror and their worth.