Asleep in the Garden

How do I tell a story I don't understand

How do I grasp at a shadow

I know why they slept

Because I can't even think of you with the lights on

I want to paint buildings with the sight of you

I want to stand naked in store fronts so people can say - I see God in you

And when people see that we are beautiful

I want to be rubber to your glue so every praise would bounce off of me and stick to you

But I can barely think of you with the lights on

So I know why they slept

Because naked is not beautiful in storefronts

And different is just undesirable

Words of praise feel so rare some days that I can't help but steal them from you

You who have seen this world

Came into it curled in a fetal position in your mother's womb

Spent months building rivers of blood

Just to kneel in the shadow of Calvary

Vulnerable You might be brave

but vulnerable Me

How do I tell a story I don't understand

How do I grasp at a shadow - tie it to a tent stake and make room for the world under it

How do I dare ask for words that would reveal your reality

when I'm not really sure I want to see me in the light of you

In the light of truth

Because sometimes I still doubt its up to you

Your purity

Your vulnerability

Your unmasked humanity leaves me stunned, breathless

Courageous and ageless

Born of place less than perfect

But you are perfect

How do I tell what I don't understand

How do I grasp at a shadow

I am a modern-day Pharisee

and you stand there feeding me upside-down stories of revolutionary reality

Soaking the ground of Gethsemane

Why would you kneel for me

offer to heal me

come into this world and even be for me

My mouth has been sewn shut out of envy

Jealous of the one and only man who was his own savior

I don't want you to see me, to free me, to leave me

open to this new life

because I am not worthy

So I carry this envy

And I try every day on my own to save me

But you - you sweat blood for me

How do I tell what I don't understand

How do I grasp at a shadow

So how do I dare ask for words

that would reveal your reality

when I'm not really sure I want to see me in the light of you

In the light of truth

Because sometimes

I doubt if its up to you

Thirsting

I have been hung dry
Wrung out by sweat-soaked parade palms

I am cracked canvas of creation
Raped of resource, of consequence, of circumstance

I am but a memory of ancient waterways
I float, flakes of white ash in the wind
Burned up, burnt out
Blazing remains of apathy

ignorance

arrogance

Fleeting fancies of fire bugs

I am the long black train crossing heroin tracks
I am the twisted spine riding sweatshop backs
I am thirsty

I am the empty shell of man-hurled mortar rounds
I am the piercing smell of mass grave undergrounds
I am thirsty

I am the spaces within skin-lined sidewalks
Flash bulb imprint on a black and white portrait
Low hanging fruit of a Polish prisoner camp
A face forgotten

I am the sun-soaked pavement under whittled down stiletto heels
Stuck to a concrete corner
Lap dancing for dogs

I am the dehydrated souls of children sold across borders
Stolen childhoods, hung to wither in back pages of magazines

I am dry
I am deeply dry

Desperate for a day of harvest, for a reaping of the vineyard
I thirst for the wine of foot-crushed grapes
For the stain on a new community
Forged not in blood but in Living Water

I am the Living Water
And I am so thirsty