Not Alone

I would scale any mountain,
Ford any cold river,
Spend any night sleepless with you
In order just to tell you in ways words cannot express
That you are not alone, that we are in this together.

But I would also leave you,
Alone,
To fight the battles you are strong enough to fight on your own
Whether you think you are strong enough or not.
I would even shove you away to make sure you still have the reflex to stand back up.

And this would be making love,
By making challenges,
Even small bouts of violence,
To train you and me for the hard moments that come
When no lover, no philosopher, no divine presence could convince us
That we are not alone.

After being forced to walk through wilderness
With no company to warm us,
We find that there are some truths which are only carried
On strong, cold winds
Which blow through the coverings we have swaddled ourselves with
And make us feel every bone, every joint we thought we had hidden deep down.

For we must know that we are hard as stone deep down inside,
As sweet as it is to nuzzle our soft parts,
Making love requires penetrating hardness,
And so complements other rigors thrust upon us.

So hold me at arm’s length
And make sure that I am still seeking
The answers I was lusting after before you came along.
For no person is a way of life,
But partnership has its merits.
For sometimes all we need to show our strength
Is someone walking beside us,
Independent but parallel,
Brushing shoulders just to tell us
You are not alone.

Hazel eyes

Hazel eyes smiling back at me
In the gray like haute couture
Hourglasses falling with the time
And dine and dine and dine on nothing
But sheer promises of smiles
Glimpses of images
Projected on the hollow
Follow me, you beg, but I can barely breathe
Beautiful
But we are weak

The light in your eyes would blind me
If it were not for your frailty
Men for ages labeled feminine
The qualities which did them in
So they could distance themselves
Like little children throw their food

Sustenance
Write me a code that guarantees
That I’ll be free under the weight
Of the inspiration you incarnate
Like leaves that gather fire
In the autumn, and quiver so
I am mourning, I am solemn
I am struck by your blow
And so fold me in my mother’s dresses
And love me weak as I am
And I will take your sweet caresses
To mean that I am more than a man
Falling all over the place
It’s just our age they say...

Time slips away,
But your smile stays,
Hazel eyes have faith.

Credo Credo

When I am standing in church and singing in harmony with an organ and a choir and all the congregation, ages zero to angels infinity, I hear a heavenly host booming beneath all the voices, minds, heads and everybody’s body with a dance beat. (drop a beat, can you hear it too?)

And I start swaying my hips as much as you can crowded into those pews and I watch the angels dance, flailing limbs from pliant supple centers, funky seraphim frolicking on ancient sound waves. Laudeum! Miserere Cordisss!

Worship is illogical joy, inexplicable salvation, unknowable creation in our incarnation, our incarnate chili con carne (snaps Gene), our hips and lips and everything below and in between. And of course the words flowing through our minds are crucial, but worship is the abstract making contact, worship is Logos with legs, worship is the breast a child rests her head upon when straining her tiny muscles to try and see the big beautiful created world is too much strain to bear.

And I think that those muscles for us “develop-ed” peoples are located in the carne in our cranium, a concentration of nervous neurons that gets too much scrutiny when the rest of you is allowed to rest, rest, and rest some more. And there is no mistake that football is played on Sunday, because we need a break, a Sabbath for our cranial cake, a communion for the body we might mistake as a cadaver if they didn’t make us stand up to sing.

Back in the day when bread was hard to come by, those little wafers sunk down in you and when Christ hit your belly you felt it in your bones. Allelujah! Amazing Grace- a free meal from a communal plate. But today we’re all eating too much already, so why don’t we burn a few in the pews? Get a little workout with our take out salvation. Maybe it will remind us how real worship is. If He could wake up Lazarus, I’m sure he could show the frozen chosen a two-step and a little thrust, to help us understand the blessings he has bestowed upon us, so don’t fuss, bust a move and soak up forgiveness.

Credo Credo
I believe God loves each one of us.
I believe She doesn’t care what side you fall on with this issue or that.
I believe She put a bitch and a saint in each of us,
And I can’t wait until the saints come marching in—
O how I long to be in that number
When all of our bitches wake up and turn, turn o man, from our bitchy ways…
I have a righteous complaint about the inequality and injustice reigning in our better intentions
And I have logs in more than just my eyes, mind you
Which means that you do too
So don’t bitch at me and I won’t bitch back
Until the spirit moves in and puts us forward on an attack against the bad forces at work in each of our lives.

It’s more like a rhythm that a singular direction
So keep remixing your inquiry
Move in and out, stay on your feet
And don’t stay still and expect the music to stop
Because if there is one thing that God’s angels love
It is the beat they drop…

So might as well roll with it
And grow with it
And feel it in your bones
Because when it comes your time,
That will be your only heartbeat
And until that time it shouldn’t have to be foreign territory
Step in to the land God has laid out for you
Step, step, left right left, right (hop) right (hop)
And turn to the left (jump)

Credo Credo
Make your belief physical