Want the backstory? Here’s my mixed tape of Love Songs.
Becoming a student of poetry in an MFA program can be like entering the thirsty immortalizing high-school halls of vampires. We drink darkness.They instill questionable senses and question all instilled ones.
Poetry has masks and blinders to wear, ancient rhythm for internal sonar, and lines to break. We each struggle with a tether, so I take in a sick empathy for ones who write.
Give me a poet knee-walking drunk. Give me a poet and his favorite nude art. Give me a poet and her window gaze. Give me her wicked sixth sense.
Seth comes home, worn from passionate writing on behalf of the mistreated muslim, and I do not care for him or his work. I have no vision for his art: to dive and puzzle, Review the Law.
So I spew and spew over a paper in accord with what I dig from graves, and Seth rests and plays guitar. What little love I have, but he works at the ashes and turns up a glow. Like years before, in a cafeteria, he glows, and I’m annoyed. I want no burning bushes, but I can’t look away. There’s a part of him, like one rushing with a blazing lantern into a scorcorer’s den, that retrieves me.
And as I follow, untethered, I grow in love for the light, and the light that is in him was the light that shone over the surface of the oldest void. This is the morning I became a better poiema. One called me Day, and so there was born a new thirst for Light.
{ 15 comments… read them below or add one }
Beautiful. Again. Just wow.
Heather of the EO’s last blog post..From the mouth of Miles
I find myself wishing I could sit with you and say, “really? what happened? tell me about it.” There is so much you have said, but so much that remains to be said. There is suffering there, friend, and my heart aches. I’m thankful you always bring the story back to God’s love, grace, and peace. But, still, I feel sad for you. Perhaps because I can relate, and I’ve felt alone in that, and I know the struggle that it is to live for God when others make it look so easy.
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I’m with Heather. Wow. Just wow. Beautifully said.
Susan in Va’s last blog post..Not Your Everyday, Pipe-Smokin’ Redneck
“There’s a part of him, like one rushing with a blazing lantern into a scorcorer’s den, that retrieves me.” I love this part. I love the picture of God sending someone in after us, someone we can touch and see. Someone to retrieve us and bring us back home to the place we forgot we loved.
Jo@Mylestones’s last blog post..Fisher Price Airlines Announces Daily Flights into Walnut Grove!
RESTORE
Almighty God
who made the
delicate field daisy and
the limitless reaches of space
who made the babe to suck
and the soul to search
thank you for being
God Available.
No, even more than available
first-for searching along
the agonizing road to Golgotha,
finding me blindly supplying nails for your Son’s hands.
And when
I finally found
You,Lord
your bleeding hand was
reaching for mine.
Written by: Susan Lenzkes
….not sure why but this poem came to mind when I read your entry….maybe His constant pursuit of us.
Jessica, I love the poem. I love when a response is poetry. Thank you so much.
Amy, I would love for you sit with me, but I’m afraid my story is old and you’ve heard it before. I just know it makes us so sick to keep our eyes on ourselves.
Heather, Susan, and Jo, thank you for encouraging me as always.
I remember that, tangentially. I don’t remember inside your story, but I remember slightly something about the outskirts. Seth was pensive on the mistreated muslim – I saw him drinking coffee at 5:30 in the morning sometimes at what was weak excuse for an institutional study room, Craig was pensive on the 8th amendment. I was pensive on how I was going to survive the next year and half and why I didn’t choose to move to Spain and be a street artist.
Love this take on this segment of your story.
Cindy’s last blog post..Look Now. Because Malaria Won’t Wait, It Kills One Million People Each Year…
this is what i love about lyrics, and poetry, and stories. the beauty is that we ‘hear’ in lyrics and poetry what is meaningful to us. this is a beautiful love story {as yours always are!}; thank-you again, for sharing it.
patty’s last blog post..Connections
i lost it somewhere in the past few months, since july. but this morning i damned it all, woke up early and read. and the coffee was black and the words were light. God in trees shaking hands with the earth. earth, in turtles and cicadas, folded in dark dens before emerging. i lost it somewhere, but i see the summer. i see something on the road this a way. and i need friends.
hamster’s last blog post..I NEED A SHOT OF TESTOTERONE STAT
“it” being poetry.
“friends” being vicious-literarians.
seriously, the note weren’t as dreadful as all that.
hamster’s last blog post..I NEED A SHOT OF TESTOTERONE STAT
I’ve been gone – out of town, out of the internet’s reach. What a wonderful delight to come home today and pull up your site. I read and re-read your post and mull it over again. Beautiful and yet, not quite enough. I can’t wait for the next installment.
BlueCastle’s last blog post..Rehabbing Old Accessories – Take Two
And now you drink Light and radiate, yes, glow.
Amber? Forgive me for whispering it again…
Please… when there are moments… keep writing. You feed souls… and, I pray, this writing feeds yours.
All’s grace,
Ann
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I just found your blog. Your words about the Word make me thirsty, and I want to come back and keep drinking.
“And as I follow, untethered, I grow in love for the light, and the light that is in him was the light that shone over the surface of the oldest void. This is the morning I became a better poiema. One called me Day, and so there was born a new thirst for Light.”
Oh, how this part makes my heart ache. I cried.
Wow, just amazing.