Writing Exercises on Silence

Great Silence, while Your eyes search
Goshen's dim streets lit by moon, faint hope,
and factory smoke, I descend into the earth.

Into mystery, thin pages and intimate light
at angles off floorboards, white walls, and
cobwebs. It's You I dread despite

all reassurances, the dust that coats
my basement floor and sticks to bare socks;
it has been one with me, now brushed off

in disgust. Oh Silence that slept with me
through the dark, come close like the breath
on my pillow, like the depth of my shadow,

like the hand of my lover parting my hair,
slightly graying at tips but unnoticed
in the thin beams of the dawn. Silence

I am uniting with You, though the brief
rise and fall of my chest dismisses You,
each hold and catch in wonder summons back.

The crack of barefeet on hardwood, a cry
that inaugurates the sun. You dissipate into
my day and a gradually long for another morning.

Writing Exercises on Election

Note: This poem actually comes from Matthew's Hours, but it also worked as a writing exercise so I posted it here as well. Written in the style of Rainer Maria Rilke, expressing desire and the frustrations of not understanding everything about God.

Romans 11

i want to be the morning light,
slowly dispersing over hills to
drive the dark off the rocks.

My unbelief burns brighter,
for where You have abandoned
mountains, dug lonely caves

i wish to explore, to invade
these unelected quarries with
my oscillating flame. Underneath

i may find those uncalled by You.
i don't understand. i want to.
Lest i flare indignant, i must admit,

if there are some You do not want
then i will go, offer sorrow, apology,
and perhaps a cup of tea,

then hopelessly hope they will walk back to You
with me.

Poems for Gideon: Cups

You come swaying, as if a song
were humming through the freshly swept
oak floors beneath your innocent feet.
Your smile knows no reticence
when you sense the rushing waters.
Pushing your elbows on the tub's edge,
short legs and short laughs,
joyously struggling
to swing one short leg up over the side.
You want colander cups
to drain the warmth and spread its stream
over your shakingly bowed head,
twittering with each giggle and splash
in your careless eyes.
Like nature's rains rinsing winter off,
or the cleansing fling of hyssop,
yet drops find few fragments of dust,
no remnants of lust or other deformation.
Still, my son, seek the freshness
that is always pouring forth in creation.

Poems for Gideon: Towers

A boylike steeple, block on top of block,
grounded on green carpets, built well,
rising from the floor grandpa's still trying to sell.
A tiny totem, stacks of r's and i's,
a basswood column just your height,
cracked eggs etched on the side.

You of indelicate hands, palms clapping
over the last bite of an unsyruped waffle,
watchful and grasping of your mother's handful,
crackers of any sample, the goldfish or the animal.
Lacking building skills, when you turn you will
laugh with head thrown back, breath in gasps,

in joy and energy, you will destroy this tower.

Then you will be six foot three, hiding
underneath a tattered hoodie, something
like daddy's beard thin across smooth youth.
Dexterity of adolescence in your hands,
the choices and piles of written demands,
the pressures of pretty girls in fashionable

curls, and the speed of knowledge and sin,
building desires to become block, to fit in.
Then, encompassed by the asherahs
of entertainment, bombarded by contentment,
bound by green papers, all these idols stacked around.
Then, in infant holiness, knock them down son,

knock them down.

Writing Exercise on Becoming

Become the dawn's arm sprawled softly on my bare chest.
Become dark Kenyan beans, the fragrance that releases the sun.
Become the frigidness, the sharp intake, the negative degrees.
Become ignition keys, the hum and the din of AM radio.
Become the sweat that wets my handspun curls,
Become the coolness as it pools behind my ears and streaks down my stubbled neck.
Become the faces that walk through halls without getting out of bed.
Become joy to bowed heads, there in the midst of trivial heaviness.
Become the rest of idle hours, the silence of an ancient room,
Become the smell of cedar boards and portly doors.
Become the measure of my labor, the ink of my corrective pen.
Become the sound of second hands, mouse clicks, and then
Become the bell that brings the silence once again.
Become the afternoon headache from voices high and cracking.
Become the reprieve, the cushions that receive my tired body.
Become colors in the Midwest sky, painting shoddy maples orange and red.
Become the bread in dark and tiled kitchens, the wine that warms my weary wife.
Become the deadness of a winter night, the rumble of a locomotive reviving it.
Become the invitation to sleep, the slender love that folds me in.
Become my day and night, the moon and the sun.
Become everything as it becomes one.

Writing Exercise on Diction and Communion

A Sunday has been prepared. Eyes water,
soon lower, downfallen from lofty resolution,
weak to the sweetness, lust for the smells,

lost in gluttony. Twenty of us gather,
so the forty-five Dixie plates are strident
affectations from where we were, the places left

behind. An informal line of ex-trustees,
luxated from former communities, put out by
careless words and the lack of intentionality

in action. The symphasis of individuals becomes
a heavy cup, held by shaking hands and equally
shaky voice, for fear of poor word choice.

Broken pieces can form the most intriguing pottery,
and we have come to taste the broken One,
energized by hurt and hope, drunk with common sympathy.

Writing Exercises on a Sunday Morning

She's loosely attuned to "Air Force One"
over the shoulder of our son,
giggling as he holds tightly
to crossed leg and bouncing knee.
She's unaware we disagree.

What we did has become what we do.

Held hands across bucket seats,
a Burgundy Bonneville parked once
on a dusty road by a Crooked Lake
and once at the drive in. Made plans
for long movie nights in. Passed through
open house by popping in a DVD. Survived
without in the lounge by the smoking oven
watching football, in arms, relaxing.

Sighing, grinning, turning again
to a collection of poems, stapled and
waiting for my scolding pen.

Ease everyday, he knows what the silver button
does and why you clutch the toy with
the red, green, and yellow things to push
and watch the colors change.

In the next half hour, if he grows in
knowledge will he grow in stupor?
The stain is reaching within my oneness
and I no longer wish for separation.

Old patterns die, please, smile and laugh
and be buried.
And to the new and simple: rise.

Writing Exercises from a Chocolate Wrapper

"Trust with your heart, not
your head," adolescent sentiment,
Arms folded, puzzled, stern,
above makeshift lectern I discern
minor nods of unkempt, untended,
unused heads. Rhythmically, alongside
secrecy, written and crossed out,
community avoided with eight scribbled x's.

Icy black mechanical pencils move in angst
across the tablets of the holy and
frustrated. Tired, he writes, I'm tired
of trouble and those who do nothing and
thus compose it. Perversity? Bury it.
Fresh falling snow of January, contain it
like the frozen, bent limbs in the school courtyard,
until we give it up for Lent, I guess.

Lying beneath rippled round tables,
wrapping matted strands around lead
stained hands, and constantly reaching,
with innocence, imagination of adult desire.
Blissful depression marks this cursive that
strips the page of its pure white,
a hanging sadness of what its never known.
Live life scratched with fear,

she sits in skinny jeans and leans,
scrawny elbows against raw umber desk.
Tiny foil curls from the milk chocolate
her parents provided as Christmas tokens
of thanks cascade in reflection to the floor,
her auburn falls aside her hand and scrapes
across metallic notebook rings with no sound.
Perhaps this is the place for trite advice:

"Laugh until your heart overflows."

Writing Exercises on Board Book Editions

Written entirely of lines, phrases and words from children's books, with one exception

Behind the door, I am in bed.
Sound, like a hand on the door,
I am trying to catch a lot of growing.
I see children looking at me, a son,
munching on a crisp apple, purple grapes,
with lots of teeth. More are coming.
What do you see baby boy?
Your fingers make a fist, but
your silly side comes through and through,
so I thump my chest, you giggle,
slap your hands on your knees.
Now clap your hands, yes, you can do it!
Busy wriggling feet, chubby knees,
book-books in both hands,
If your son asks for bread...
but you ask for books instead.

Writing Exercise on Our Spiritual Condition

Pastors and parents cherish
their seeds,
small churches and children
become mustard trees.
Slowly learning addition, with luck
multiplication.
My son stutters "truck",
clarion to
a once humble father.
Emphatic and
direct, he points out our
Craftsman windows,
extending tense thumb and
forefinger, with
inquisitive eyes peeping, scarcely
seeing over the top
of a sun-worn ottoman.
He longs
for approval of knowledge,
and I approve.
Depth and detail and the words
to describe,
love and life and freedom.
Please, water,
milk, daddy, no, please, go.
Please grow,
ideas like the branches where
the sparrows
will make their rest.
But do not grow
limbs of enormous size, difficult,
not dexterous.
Large group study rooms with
songs and steeples,
and comfortable padded backs,
where everyone
is seated and satiated
but nothing
is truly in Sabbath.
Do not grow
from diminutive state,
for the gospel
calls for nimble feet, not
concrete towers
built to stay secure within the sway
of the whole reality.
Multiple souls, unless you will act,
do not seat
yourselves in my company.
There is a depth
in which your immensity will flail.
So, souls and seats,
simply fail and fail and fail.

Writing Exercises from a New Year's Drive

Northern Indiana roads
decompose and rust away
with strip mall homes;
the older the back way
the more blandly effiecient
aluminum eye sores. Bleakly
brightened by half broken
stone walls, sooty snow in the
corners of curbs, muted lawns
and a countryside sketched in dead gold.

New Year's weekend, we grew up here.
Resolutely we have been moving on,
starting new and putting our feet down.
In dullness, you drift into leathered repose;
if we were formed in these blank winters,
and even your resident parents are sprawled in our back seat,
what then unstills the un-unique?
Trite and true, I blink and smile,
the love on my tongue tastes of cream,
the crimson inside pumps of routine,
blessed, my God, the blessed unseen.

The Poetry of the Mid-Majority

Taken from the first paragraph of G!O!T!N! from www.midmajority.com, January 2, 2009. Written as a writing exercise as I read "The Complete Idiot's Guide to Writing Poetry." I know, I know, it seems trite and such... but since I don't have the money for an official poetry course, this fills in.

We don't often keep the game
of the night camera crew in one place
for any significant time,
but after the events of New Year's Eve afternoon,
we have a situation in the Valley
that requires additional monitoring.
On Wednesday, Illinois State absolutely
destroyed Evansville, a total shutdown
in every facet.
This result wouldn't have looked
very impressive, say, last year,
but the Purple Aces came in with
a legit record against a tough schedule,
and the Redbirds were looking
for validation
of an undefeated record
against one of the country's softest slates.
Immediately after the contest, Illinois State
jumped into the thirties, and its strength
climbed thirty-five spots.
So even though it was late
December in the Missouri Valley,
this was an important result.

Writing Exercises from the Junk Drawer

Coupons and keys,
my wife's practicalities and back door fears,
scissors and twisties to
keep bread fresh, the reason
we freeze communion all year.

In a white wire basket we cherish
thoughtfulness, Chile's gift cards,
one hundred dollars for Menards,
scraps of paper with once meaningful numbers,
all by this December forgotten.

But useful in this resurfacing,
sifting through needles and tape,
locks without combinations,
and scrape the rust off an orange handled
screwdriver, pointed downward,

useful in this mess
is every single thing,
removed from the place we've dumped them,
from the labels we've hung on them,
their uniqueness restored to them.