The Lost Line

American lives are on the line:
Read - We're going to have to
go overseas and, with some mustered regret,
kill some more non-Americans.

So much for the cost of freedom.

Whoever takes up his life
will loose it,
but whoever gives up his life
for my sake
will find it.

A real time game of lost and found
and, it appears, many are not winning.
Freedom for protection.

God's Green Fingers

Would it be so wrong to think of God,
again, in physical terms,
like of old?

Today, a little girl
with still new steps pranced with a
confident unassured gait back and forth

between a concrete sidewalk and
grass. And though those hired to
try to tame Earth’s green growth

to appropriate a contrived commercial
scape had obviously recently been there,
the freedom in the child drew her

to God’s small, manicured, fingers,
even as her cultured mother tried to keep her
on a fabricated foundation.

But God’s hands were still reaching,
even if they would leave a reminding
itch upon her knees should she have

fallen, even though the green grass
drew the girl into the sun, its burning
light, threatening to blemish,

as her worried mother feared, her
smooth, pale skin, plump cheeks,
with the heat of red life.

Measure

Words are good for nothing
unless they too can be spoken
with hands. Hands are good

when they touch with
mindfulness and concern,
responsibility. A loaf of bread

with too much water is
likely to not rise as much as
one hoped it would. So too

words unmeasured are flat
and depreciating, mere empty
phrasings to pass some time

on the way to dispassionate
gain. And if I do not seek to
reach out after this consideration,

again another has said nothing
with as many words.

A Sigh of a Star

Doubtless, for some, in an
explosion of music and brief words,
God made the stars, galaxies and
universes, dimensions unknown. And
now we, somewhere in between, look in

a direction we consider up, and are
astounded by the imprint of
these words on the sky. Perhaps
we look upon the works of that
abstract God with a sigh. If I lived

in a space less polluted with
incandescent light poles, I would on
clear nights—having, too, never known
electricity—stare sleepless at the pierced
darkness and story something wonderful.

But alas I’m spoiled with the knowledge
of combustion, and in flashes of keen
aloofness, the gasses of the stars, beautiful,
frighten me, for the lengths some go
to harness on our small globe celestial

energy, all the while allowing the doses
of cupcakes to finitely take residence
in what some have come to consider
deteriorating soul storage units, what some
think to be mere matter of physiology.

Stars, mind this, you are alluring,
you point to some beyond, but today
we need to hear a new song and recite
a new verse, something erupting from within
a still burning, some more final word of

creation, some silence, deep, honestly
voiced breath, quiet and open, unassuming,
conversing not informing.