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Poem – drunk dialing God.

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When I create
I’m drunk dialing God.

It isn’t like dialing a phone.
It’s all loosey-goosey.

I might end up anywhere
or nowhere.

Maybe that’s the point.

It is
just like dialing a phone
but without a phone book.

And with my eyes closed.

It’s like leaping from a burning building
and knowing from long experience
that I’ll be caught.

It’s calling
out
and up
and knowing that
whatever I connect with
is what I’m supposed to
connect with.

It’s calling God in the middle
of the night
of my life
and saying I’m lost
and I don’t know how to get back
to myself.

The more I do this
the more I reach out
into that shapeless void
and pull out something that
surprises me.

And in finding it
I find myself.

Everytime.

Poem – eggs, and books, and words.

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We already have an egg.
It is us, becoming.
What if we don’t need to work so hard?
What if we are fine as frog’s hair,
fit as a fiddle,
chicken and egg at the same time?

It is another time for the chosen.

As for me the danger of that is
what I was
because I used to think
that past is just prequel.

I should just leave well enough alone
and leave the future to itself.
It will keep on doing what it wants
anyway.

There is nothing more sad than seeing your own body
broken in pieces.

Our bodies are books
written by God
in the margins, in the gutter, on the spine.
Scribbled notes or glittering manuscripts
hastily written or lovingly preserved
makes no difference to the One
Who wrote us.
There are no withdrawn
no remaindered
no dog eared copies
In God’s library.

We are all beautiful and all needed.

These books are dry patches of a church.

Every day we walk alone.
Each person is a silent building.
Everything that is beautiful is lonely.

Right now you are not awake.
Really, won’t you take my words?
They aren’t even mine any more.

(A predictive text poem, using the letters in the word “water” as a prompt. Written on retreat, 1-17-14, at 8:30 pm.)

Poem – Library

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Look into your hand.
Learn more about the way to be and
let me know what you want.

I was going with a man who was from Ethiopia.
If you want your child to be able to fill their lives
it’s not the sign up that will work
I’ve heard.

Because the way you want your child to be
both
before and
back on a Monday in October

really won’t work.
Rather than being eased,
read more than just the right now.
Remember that it was time for me –

at least it was time for
a few months
after all,

Right?

Yes there is something about being baptized.
You have to get a feeling of being human.
Your knees hurt the more you use them.

(This is a predictive text poem. I used the letters of the word “library” to prompt my Kindle to give me words, and went until it didn’t make sense. I provided only 11 words to this poem, but picked out the choices on the rest.)

Poem – Harvest yourself

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This may sound strange –
this line between
mental health
and problems
is through the field.

Go out there.
Go walking.
Find a field full of
ripe sunlight
and harvest yourself.

Remember what you think you can’t do
you can’t do.
Remember that in our childhoods
there are no rules.

Every day is broken.
Everyone needs a story
about how God has healed them.
Everything we are is a little
bit of energy,
and it is a little bit more than we ever thought.

——————————————————————

This started out as a predictive text poem, using the letters in the word “tree” to prompt the suggested words that I would choose. The meditation was about the Christmas tree, that it is a blend of pagan and Christian. Is it necessary? Is it honest? When something new comes along, does it have to steal bits from the old to get validity?

But then it became something else. It wasn’t about new traditions stealing old customs. It was about staying sane in an often insane world. It was about finding yourself when you are lost. I had to edit out quite a bit of ‘noise’ to make this make sense, but I like it this way.

This is part of the process – whatever you intend may not be what happens. Being creative sometimes means that you are just a vehicle for the Source. Sometimes you aren’t even that – you get carjacked and taken for a ride and then you get dropped off somewhere you’ve never been to and you don’t have a map.

But somehow, because of the beauty of it all, you still find yourself safe and well, in spite of the scary ride. It is scary only in that you don’t have control over it. But that is part of why anybody becomes an artist. To be an artist is to be a bit of a shaman, or an explorer. To be an artist is to go Out There with the hope that you’ll find something new to show to everybody. To be an artist isn’t to take a snapshot of what is – it is to discover something never before seen. It is to discover, uncover, recover. It is to boldly go where… wait, that’s been done before.

Poem- being OK with silence

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It is about being OK with silence.
With not having words.
With not knowing how to fix it.

With being rooted where you are.
And not worrying about where you are headed.

It’s about celebrating the brokenness
because that is how the Light will get in.

It’s about making the broken bit
the centerpiece.

It’s about making the leftovers
the main course.

It’s about not holding on,
not hoarding
not being a homeless dog gobbling up all the food
for fear
there won’t be more.

And it is about being OK even when I do all these things wrong.

It’s about knowing that I am loved regardless,
not in spite of my brokenness,

but

because of it.

Because of my brokenness
Jesus came
to let me know
I’m not broken
I’m human
And it’s OK.

Poem – The way home.

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In my heart I didn’t know
what to expect
when they were stubborn.

All are not happy
about the fact
that you are going
through my fears
after all these years,

because it isn’t about making them
dependent upon you.

Grief comes from kindness,
regardless.

I’m trying not to mention
the time of year
you are going through.

I’ve heard she has been taught this time.

Never mind that.
Now I’m adrift too many years.

The way home is stuck in my heart.

Poem – home

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Here we are.
We have buildings in our childhoods
and the surest way of knowing
is this –

Once you know what the way home is
you can get to the shelter.
This line between us
is there.

Many people who don’t know
make your life
more than a little sad,
more than a lot crazy.

Even though they are hungry for a
entry, a door, a way in,
they are not allowed.

Home is a place
in your heart
and some
even though
they live
in big homes
are homeless.

(Predictive text meditation, using the letters “home” as line starters and the intention “What is home? Is it a place? How do you know when you get there?”)

Poem – friend. (predictive text)

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First of a little (there are some)
for example and I am not a lot.

Remember the old standbys?
Remember what you want and need.
Rather than being eased
really our own feelings lead.

It isn’t about making a lot of friends.
In fact you can spend the time
If you want on your own site.
I don’t think that you can be found there.

Now what?
Your note for the way home is stuck
to the side of your shoe
caked with mud.
Torn.
Unreadable.
Lost.

Don’t worry about it
Did you get the best in show?

Who cares if the result is beautiful or well groomed or well trained?

Give me a mutt any day.

—————————————–
Some thoughts on this poem/meditation.

What is a friend? Does it matter if she is popular or polite? What is more important, amount of friends or quality? I’m relearning what friendship means, and a lot of it is about being accepted for who I am and having a cheerleader for who I am becoming. Old friends who complain a lot are being cut out of my life, no matter how long I’ve known them or if they are family and I’m expected to be friends with them. People who don’t take my correspondence with them as private and discuss it with others behind my back are being cut out too. I need honesty in my life, and if it means having only a handful of people that are helpful and healing for me, then so be it. People who don’t make time for me aren’t worthy of my time either.

This started out with the letters in “friend” and then needed a little more so I free wrote the fourth stanza and the last two lines.

Poem – Stone (predictive text)

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So it seems like we are
sent to be the ones.
So what now?

They don’t want to do it.
This may sound strange.
There are many different churches
that I have been deceived by.

Then the lights came up.

On to the shelter
our bodies house

Now I’m adrift in the middle.
Note that I am sure how to do it
no matter how.

Everything else is extra.

————————————————————————————————–
I’ve started a new thing with my predictive text poems. The Kindle offers words all the time while I write. It thinks it knows what I want to write even if I’ve just put down one letter. It is kind of like that annoying friend who won’t let you finish your sentences. I decided to let it help me write poems. Previously I’d just go with the flow and let it offer whatever it wanted. At a certain point it bogs down and starts only giving me two or three letter words. This is after the first word in a sentence. Most of the words aren’t nouns or verbs either, so this gets old really fast.

I decided to start poems with a theme or a trick. I’ll pick a word, and start each section with one letter of the word. When I put the first letter down, the Kindle offers me about ten words that start with that letter and I’ll pick whichever one seems the best at the time. It is kind of random, and kind of by feel. I have input – but I can only pick the words that are there. At the end of each line, reuse the letter until I have gotten to an ending point. Then go on to the next letter as the next section. I’m trying to pick a word that has a resonance with me, and if I remember I’ll put an intention at the beginning, as a sort of prayer request. The resulting poem is either the answer to it or a further meditation on it.

I write what I can, then email it to myself and edit it on my real computer. The Kindle assumes every line starts with a capital letter, and sometimes the syntax is a little off so I have to tweak it. Sometimes in the middle of the poem I feel it has led me to a place where I need to say something that it isn’t giving me the words for and I’ll free write. But in general, when I call something a predictive text poem, the Kindle supplied around 90% of the words. I just harvested them.

I especially like the tension in this one in the line “On to the shelter/our bodies house” because is the shelter the house, or our bodies? Is the body a house? I think it points to the idea that we don’t need a church because we carry it with us. Our bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit. We no longer need to go anywhere to find God – God is always with us. Actually, this has always been the way, it is just that now we are coming to see this. We have been mislead for so long in thinking that we didn’t have any power and we had to go to someone or somewhere else to find it.

Poem – Storm in my heart

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There’s a
storm in my heart
for the first time
since he was little.

It’s different every day for supper
now that we are the same.

He’s got a call.
Others went on to the shelter
but not him.
No sir.
No how.

He hears the voice too.
I would have saved him that tug
that pull.
I would have saved him
the sleepless nights.

When they were stubborn
he had to work harder.
His time is not his own.
Not now.
Not anymore.

We are the same,
he and I

and I’m sad.

I hoped he’d be deaf to the voice,
that voice
that won’t take no for an answer.

That voice will lead him
blind and stumbling
through deserts and desolation.

But that voice will also
never let him fall
never let him fail
never get him lost
in the sea or on the shore.

It is a hard life,
this life of the listener.

I’d hoped he would be spared.

But quietly
I’m glad
to have a fellow traveler.

(About a third of this was inspired by the predictive text feature on my Kindle. It isn’t enough for me to make it a “predictive text poem” but enough that I think it is worth noting.)