Riding the bus to work

On my left hand rests my watch,
Ticking entropically toward oblivion

On my right rests my prayer rope,
Repentant rhythm revealing rest

Odd pairings

I combine here silence with appetite. I'm quite unsure whether it works.

May your words be charged with the hunger, hope and longing of your Silences
May your deeds overflow with the urgency of what remains undone

If you have no Silence within you, no sense of your work’s incompleteness
Then you must Stop speaking, Stop doing

Until there be “Fire shut up in your bones”
That you not become incessant busyness, a clanging cymbal

Anthropos Thanatos or Anthropos Athanatos

Thanatos
Unshaped by life
For I have refused to live
Controlled by death
For I refuse to die

Athanatos
Giving shape to life
For you have lived
Unconstrained by death
For you have embraced death

what is left?

We deconstruct everything
like milkdrop photography run amok

Freeze any frame, capture any moment
pare down life, find the empty core
We have emptied ourselves
This very paring and pixelation
has brought us down to nothing

who knew that our inward gaze
which started out so fondly
would become the basilisk's glare?

Southland of the heart

Yesterday. I felt
Today I ache
like a bad tooth has been pulled
Empty space where there was something
something poisonous, but something I knew
knew in candid, clinical terms
keeping out the grief and loss
while leaving the wound open

How do I live now without my anaesthetic pain?

For Holy Week

As Adam sought to hide his wretchedness with leaves;
So I have sought to cover my own sins by blaming others.
As in your compassion you gave to our first parents garments of skin;
So grant me, gracious Lord, the garment of repentance.
As the brothers of Joseph ruined the garment meant to rule over them, soiling it with the blood of their sins;
So I have ruined the gift of my baptism, seeking to hide my sins from my Father by presenting Him with a lie.
O most gracious Lord, who used the wickedness of Joseph's brothers for their own salvation;
Leave me not to myself, but transform the wicked passions of my flesh, that I might serve you with my whole heart.
The Roman soldiers gambled for Your garment that only one might possess it.
Grant me to receive the seamless covering of Your love which none may possess alone.
As the veil of the temple was rent at Your fulfilling of the law,
So let my fleshly thoughts be burst like an old wineskin filled with the new wine of Your love.
As You left in the grave the winding sheet, grant me to leave my love for death behind me;
That this garment of mortality might bring me to yearn for true immortality which is found only in You.
Amen.