A PARADOX IN THE PARADIGM: THE LIE OF THE MODERN ERA

The happy man only smiles insofar as his brain

encounters the right happenings of today and tomorrow

he only wields a laugh when stimulated to do so

his hope is a mountain range of emotion destined 

to erode and change after he realizes that the world

is not so much sunshine and bliss as it is hard and trying,

this man is to be pitied because he has no rock but

the faulty foothold of quicksand that he calls purpose,

imagine a life where man’s chief end is to suffer the weight

of that entire mountain held on your back and then tell me

if in the end it was worth finding your worth in the temporary,

look to nature and see that no ground remains the same forever

shift happens and quakes bring to rubble security and stability;

now the happy man is no longer smiling anymore.

The successful man is satisfied only when his pockets are full

with the right things –– stuff stacked on stuff on stuff on stuff ––

so full that he knows nothing but plenty and success and excess

he desires that which is revered by his contemporaries, like

competition and performance, outward accolades and trophies

stored in huge glass closets and display cases for the world to see

but truly that man has locked his heart in a safe somewhere

where no one can touch it but, God is that dangerous

his body is so cold without that heart, he lives for 

the future, the complexion of a looking glass while he is
weighed down by the medals hung around his neck,

forcing a downcast face, in fear that he will shatter any second

because the grades and wealth were never enough, so

he falls down the ladder and now the successful man is on the ground, broken.

The moral man finds his worth in being a good person

making it his goal to leave the planet better off than it was,

to contribute new ideas and new means of sacrifice

a presupposition that man isn’t evil and that full faith in humanity

is full faith in goodness where all are completely welcome,

this man accepts everyone, a universal bridge that leads all together

for him all roads lead to Rome, whatever you deem that yourself

but poor man he is, because poor men are his lot, war is his problem,

injustice is his agenda, tyranny is his to solve, discrimination his issue

and his back breaks as the suspension cords snap because the totality

of immorality in the world exceeds his carrying capacity,

the lie that virtue is relative yields chaotic patterns in his mind because he always

acted as if it wasn't, though he believed that it was, a paradox in the paradigm

that he called humanity self-reflected in his own vanity, altruism 

subverted in egoism, a bridge that ends from where it extends, 

from one hand to the other, a traffic circle with signs of virtue in every direction,

he cannot save the world because he cannot save himself;

now the moral man jumps off his own bridge and drowns in humanistic ecstasy.

If the meaning of life is happiness, hope you never feel depression,

if success, hope you never lose your job or face failure,

if morality, hope you can rest in the peace that you can create world peace, but

if you yearn for a joy predating this pain, then please seek the eternal,

where your identity is to be fully known and fully loved anyway,

a place where you can be weak and inadequate, where you can

be dependent and not feel discarded, wrong but not be judged,

a place where God meets man and says, “Your heart ––

I want to take it away and give you mine so that you and I

can sit at this banquet table for forever and together dine,

oh my beloved, be loved and become my invaluable son.”

CUBISM

Imagine that these words form 

a three dimensional prism

spliced onto a two dimensional surface

like the world arbitrarily

stretched into an oval.

Envision bodies that look

the same from every angle

no matter how you twist them or

how you alter the seems.

I want to see the universe re-

fracted like it’s submerged underwater,

where up is down and East is West;

where snow will be white hot and even the

trees will be made of bricks.

Let us create this puzzling place and

call the land a collage and the sea 

a paper machete.

Help me begin by fragmenting our ideas

into newly shaped blocks and together

let us wash away the order into 

newly instituted borders.

HONEST QUESTIONS

What is Christianity full of passivity?

What is community with people of complacency?

What is joy dependent upon happiness?

What is sending if it is sedentary?

What is forgiveness with forgetting?

What is love when it’s only reciprocal?

What is sacrifice when it is easy?

What is praise if it isn’t prayerful?

What is commitment along with compromise?

What is discipleship without discipline?

What is baptism when you keep breathing?

What is life without constant dying?

ROMANCE PART 2

You realize how austerely trivial it is 

to change your outfit twice and again

and so unnaturally significant that you

always have to move across the room

You hate a clock since it sometimes stops

and jumps hours at a time and time becomes

arbitrary like it does in eternity

as you compete with modernity

You want to dream out loud so that all

can hear how great it is to be awake and you

hate to sleep since it robs away

the precious banters of the day

You want to pour over two coffees

at a café and never stop speaking because 

you never have to worry that you will

become steady, bored, tired or still

You are truthfully waiting to lose your mind

because you fully embrace your folly

as you position a final stance

when you experience your first romance.

ROMANCE PART 1

When the motivation to wear your best tie

is tied to the reason you always go to sleep late

and why you gravitate to one side of the table

instead of staying where you were first able

When hours can both slow down and speed up

in your time together because you think of each

movement like the right step to a swing-dance

and every touch like an opportune chance

When dreaming is no longer a depressing topic

that you are ashamed to speak of but is that

which you must reasonably consider because

reality is no longer bitter

When you look for every common thread

to talk about despite its irrelevance and you

consistently consider competition a threat

to the attention you strive to get

When you are truthfully unaware of how to act

because you finally feel warm and happy

and are pummeling into an emotional trance,

you are finally experiencing your first romance.

UNDER-STANDING THE REAL WORLD

Belittled by rejection of 1 Timothy 4:12,

The maturity of my face weighs more heavily than

The size and nature of my heart,

Whether it has known scorn or joy seven times over for

I’ve barely turned past a few chapters and

Each momentary page is not that weathered.

In fact the years that I have passed are considered a

Prologue or skippable prelude to reality, the main story;

I have been told that they are not real, like an introduction

That’s fiction for a make-believe story that’s a biography,

Which is frightening because I thought I was the author of my life

When apparently I’m just among the stage direction.

It seems that being two or three years elder

Makes one two or three feet taller, since

Each page is not marked by my stylistic fingerprint,

But by the tread of a heavy footprint:

Staggered, jagged lines that I try to read

But must be too youthful to heed.

What is my purpose if it is solely to grow older,

To add age upon page until I’m recognized as legible or

Credible enough to beckon thought when

My spine will then tire of the weight of pages bent and

My memory will be lost like page 43,

And I simply become the epilogue?

I would rather live as a child and crawl

On all fours, smearing the ink ordained norms

And demean my image with insulting stains

Than learn to walk upright and commend the younger

For upholding the table of contents of the older.

I want to toss away these doctrines and stories and

Ask the greatest writers what the point of life is

If our hearts are only paper thin.

A TEAR IN THE PAGE

I dream of open hearts that are open journals
where imperfectly crafted thoughts are
thoughtfully transacted crofts that sit in lots
for different minds to excavate and till.

Yet today I find it hard when all I see are hills
that mask my clarity and birth disparity until
I am sure that I can never sleep because slumber
makes me stumble down the steep spiral binding
of this page off unto some incoherent writing.

For the words I publish are dismissed as rubbish
like barren land laden with weeds that fail to represent
the deeds of an overworked farmer or meticulous gardener.

Is this then the nature of collaboration -- desperation
for communication that transcends the self
unto the shelf amongst the univocal sound of other farmers?

It seems unsafe for me to think of such a harvest
because the ink on this paper is so heavy it sinks
past the brink of reason causing my eyes to water
the script I sought to author.

Now my journal is closed and my mind grows tired
from speaking dire words that remain unheard so 
I drift off and grow numb to these cold winds called 
winter.