Overdue
My parents claim
I was six weeks overdue.
I’ve always thought they miscalculated.
Then again, maybe I liked it in there,
because now every time I slide into the water–
pool or river or sea–
it feels like coming home.
Did wampum hold early man in thrall?
Was there a currency that governed him
Stronger than the sky or earth or kin?
It suits me to think not, instead of real estate,
They cherished sunrises, smoke on far mountains,
The sight of a doe with her fawn, taste of love
Given and taken under wisps of light in the night.
Mortgage, insurance, braces, medicine, tuition,
Gas, car payment, lunch money, Christmas Club,
These, all of these and more, twirl an evil dance
Around our heads in the dark when the pillow is hot
And sleep a forlorn wish, with morning offering cold
Daylight that gives no answers to how to spring the trap.
We are “to look at the lilies of the field, how they
Toil not and yet . . .” somewhere deep in me desire flickers
With temptation to take Jesus up on his beautiful promise.
Perhaps the repo man would give me some quarter when
He knows that I am spinning gold from the wild flowers
Growing in such abundance on my blue mountain.
K. Bruce Florence
Here I should be able to share my sins,
flay my soul so that
the gristle
and ugly, slick knots of vessels
are laid bare
to an unknown audience.
But the whiskey in my glass glints,
amber dark,
and I feel the nauseous roil of my self,
and I know I can’t tell even you.
A
man
once admitted
You were right,
and I was wrong. Then
vowed he’d kill if I shared with anyone.
He was big enough to acknowledge his mistake,
but too small to accept
that, in fact,
he erred
in
fact.
They sing, the two of them. They know the same hymns.
Don’t mind that one of them is always
off key. Other times they shout in gargantuan mirth,
never mind that everyone is left on the sidelines,
kicking dirt. One has hair that might be done,
or might be pulled into three wild fistfuls
with a comb left in, the start of something wonderful,
interrupted. Today, one’s hair is bleached white,
tendrils sweet against her dark skin. So tired, wiped out
by the process to clean her blood, kidneys failed,
like mine, she doesn’t smile or even focus her eyes
until you say “I love your hair!” and mean it,
so her eyes brighten, deepen, come alive. “Thanks,”
she says, her smile breaking out of hiding
like the sun above dense woods, serrated across
the back of a mountain.
1. At this point I’ve lived a third of my life or more. I can’t wait to be with Jesus
2. A Christian’s joy should only increase with age
3. I am scared of living more than dying
4. At what age do I stop getting upset at insignificant things?
5. Age does not guarantee wisdom. We may become wiser in our stupidity
6. I want my kids to learn how this imperfect 28 year old is sustained by a perfect God
7. I still want my wife to think I’m perfect (though she’s never been fooled)
8. My hips pop when I do sit-ups
9. If it takes me being 60 to realize I should have been more gentle with my family at 28, I have failed
10. Every day I realize a little more that I know very little
11. And that I am wholly dependent on Jesus
12. I hate debt more than I did at 25. And I really hated debt then.
13. I almost don’t care about winning arguments at this point, and only winning hearts. Almost
14. The work of a given day is not about task completion, but relationship building
15. I am motivated to stay in shape so I can still wrestle my kids at 80
16. I most remember it is an imperative to serve the poor and needy
17. People can be offended at others being identified as poor and needy
18. We are all poor and needy without Jesus
19. I am still needy
20. When I am an old man I hope I am still willing to be corrected on wrong, immature, and mindsets
21. And I hope my wife’s heart is in full bloom by years of careful tending by her husband
22. The more judgmental I am, the more I show my misunderstanding of the gospel
23. I don’t worry about wasting my life.
24. Working to be recognized by a crowd is hollow fulfillment
25. I don’t want my life to be one of continually seeking comfort and safety
26. If God brought me home this year, what would I be most sad about not doing?
27. Life is too short not to love people well
28. I am thankful Jesus showed me His worth and that when I live for Him I am living for my highest and most complete joy.
I pick up your metaphor
where you jump off,
we live in the same wave,
I’m a fish hooked on your string,
wriggling,
but not trying to get free.
gone from day is sight
litter glimmers light
a veil of star, a single play
there forsaken have the children
lie like a waste has meant
day worldly that all by flittering
goes moth-blue moon and night
oozing stock scent
old mirth of children wanes
clamor and pallor in palimpsest
the west dips and swallows
out of earth comes darkness
(from an exercise with D.H. Lawrence’s “Twilight”)
I sometimes feel that I am trapped
in this body and I don’t belong.
Other times, I see that I am both in and not in.
I am here doing the be a person thing but
I am also floating, transparent, slightly to the right
and behind, watching everything, weighing
the importance of every action, every decision,
noting, but not feeling any of my changing
psychological sates. He (I call him He)
has always been about twelves old in appearance,
but always my current age in consciousness.
He never speaks but his thoughts are my thoughts,
ordered and prioritized differently. He makes it clear
that he prefers fear and anxiety over joy and peace.
I am a scientist, I know that evolution
of homo sapiens sapiens stopped completely
several thousand years ago, So, here we are
all of us stuck with this almost Neanderthal
body that craves fat and fighting and promiscuous sex,
the latter prominent in but not limited to gay men,
heterosexual men, gay women, heterosexual women,
and the LGBTQ+ community, with individual exceptions.
It doesn’t take much pondering to see that fear
would have greater survival value than joy,
and fat yields nine calories per gram, carbs and protein four.
Promiscuous sex speaks for itself. These traits are fine
if you live in the stone age. But why
is my apparition clinging to these anachronistic instincts?
Steven Hawking postulates
that people with higher intellect will populate the world
by natural selection. Steven is clearly the most brilliant
physicist of our time but in biology; an abject retard.
Just look around. It doesn’t take a sociologist
to see that smart people have fewer children
or none at all. While the poor and uneducated
reproduce bountifully. Here is the twitchy
question of the ancient rain: can we genetically manipulate
our own evolution without falling prey to Übermensch
or combing the strands to find the sequences of eugenics?
I don’t want a master race, simply one that has less
appetite for fear, and fat, and fighting, fucking is complicated.
