Sometimes a hallelujah is the best poem I can write.

Life’s upward struggle
is gentler than I make it
pain ain’t holiness

I oft forget I’m built upon a Rock:
my tremors are not earthquakes, they are shivers.
He is the major fixer of distress:
He melts the kind of cold not warmed by sweaters.

To have a day is to trust someone
or something
or to even trust the nothing
because there is only a push and a pull
someone pushing, someone pulling
sometimes against each other
but there is never a lack of force
our lives never live in a vacuum
things keep happening, even if we hate it
we can’t put life on pause
we cannot stop the flow
someone is moving something
moving someone, somewhere
Nothing doesn’t do anything.
Nothing isn’t. Something is.
and we are trusting something
some people know what it is.
some people don’t care.
but something moving something
is all there really is
for we cannot stop life
or cease to be
for even if we tried to cease
we’d have to do an act to get there
Or stop doing an act,
which is an action,
because stop is a verb.
There is always someone doing something.
Cosmically, personally, magazines periodically
if we are moving, we trust a mover
If we breathe, we trust a breather
for life moves and moves and moves
because it’s someone moving something
and I want to trust Him moving me.

Some days it is enough to be;
there is nothing crying out to be released.
Some days living is all I need to say.

Humbled by the bitter betters
and corresponding wetter weathers
emptied, pride comes down in sheets
It’s all so sudden when you catch a bad beat

The disorganized way that I make it better
looks much more like tornado weather
I can fix this, make neat my sheets
Knowing in twelve hours, progress is beat

I know the Greater who is better
Who speaks the storms I’m forced to weather
His life set down for me in sheets
That I ignore, end of day: “I’m beat.”

Having the answer is little better
when my spirit tumbles in the weather
I want to be stable, not white as sheets
God’s band stays steady on a complex beat

So I, broken I, will not get better
’til I come out of hiding into the weather
Not to clean my soul, hang dry like sheets
But to cling to the metronome of God each beat.

life like champagne
celebratory chaos
wine glasses, banjo strum
rocking chair and Avett hum
here and there and everywhere
and I wouldn’t change a second.

and the rest
of the glee
I will keep
in my soul.

Grace returns are hard
God’s customer service desk
does not accept them

The Gospel is this:
the only man who ever had the right to be proud
humbled himself to the lowest depths possible

so we wouldn’t have to.

hallelujah!

amen.

I have been mesmerized by dance
fluid motion in a measured pattern
distilling the chaos of life into arms
into legs, into shifting and whirling
and everything bright; all things go
to the absence of mind, to the focus
of soul, where an idea meets ignoble
bodies doing their best to get by with
all that is left in our tank, daily grind
stripping us of the root: we are dancing
an interpretive dance all our days.
and before you can ask what we sing
with our arms and our legs aflutter
remember that your motions portray
who you are, what you are, how you are
all of the many things you really are.

you are your own interpretive dance
do not deprive the world of your steps