KC flow

This is some verse that just flowed on out about my new home. I hope its a little coherent.


Black and White, this
holstein cow-town
old Jazz-town, boulevard-town
marginal city, middle city.
this cold brick town
is a little-brother city,
a city to love and marry
this river-town is a home now
for whoever, wherever
the brick and broken sidewalk
down Troost, down Prospect
are enough carpet
and welcome mat.

That old Conestoga station
River-town
is the thrum for years
lived on top of, beside
each other.
Barbecue this Black-Brown
beef-city, Whitewash this
fountain-city
and sing me these gritty growl-songs.

because its been too long
since i've known one like you
since i've come to love you
so love me
the way real lovers do,

wine-love, dear
And we'll spill each
other out here
on the cold concretes,
your feet
rubbing mine.
so teach me, my new love,
to walk these streets.

Word

The word bites like a fish.
Shall I throw it back free
Arrowing to that sea
Where thoughts lash tail and fin?
Or shall I pull it in
To rhyme upon a dish?

from Stephen Spender, Selected Poems

I thought this poem was really excellent when I came across it. It is one of those pieces that reminds me of the core of expression, art, and the way that real expression and art is really a mode of authentic living. It also has pretty obvious parallels across poetry/writing and preaching. What do we do with the word/Word? do we tame it and kill it with forced rhyme and inauthentic structures, both literary and philosophical, or do we recognize a sort of ontological slipperiness to the whole endeavor? There is a freedom in "that sea/ Where thoughts lash tail and fin" that holds us over some existential edge of ignorance and faith. Its the edge where you let people go, let them go live their lives without our input. You watch people you have loved walk away for good or bad reasons, you watch a whole former life fade into the background, you preach the Truth with all you have and then all you can do is pray that truth landed somewhere, took seed with someone. That's not your job. you plant your garden, your fields and sometimes it rains, sometimes not. sometimes there are devastating fires and the good is not from you just as the bad is not from you. By embracing the ignorance, the faith, the edge without hedging your bets and building fences, that fishWord lives in the sea like its supposed to.

ok. this one's just about beards.

Hi, friends and strangers.

i wanted to take a minute to talk about something a little less serious than my typical fare. Its right down the pipe of all those indie hipster-but-not-hipster feelings that I have about myself, but I figure I ought to do it anyway.

I have a beard.

This gets many and sundry responses at various times and places. Mostly, older people ignore it until I make some sort of self-deprecating remark or ask them if I have food in my beard. Then they say no politely and conspicuously neglect to comment further. Some younger people really like it and tell me so, which is kind. Some babies like me despite my facial fur. Some babies (like my lovely niece Aubrial) cry and reach for their mothers as soon as they see me.*

But regardless of people's feelings about my beard, I like it. I like it big and fluffy. I've been thinking about why there has been a resurgence in beard love among the young people. Maybe its because we've just gotten to the point where we can actually grow them. But I think there might be something else to this. I think that beards have come back in part because of the closing gap in the things that women and men are socially certified to do. Women do a lot of things that men used to have exclusive access to. Men do a lot of things that used to be considered feminine. All of this is a good thing. We used to be pretty moronic about our standards. But there are a few things that are exclusive. Let's face it. I'm a dude, so I can't have babies. But I can grow a beard. I can't nurture a human life inside me and give of my very own self until it bursts forth into the outer world to its own independent (sort of) life.

But I can grow a beard. I can nurture a shape and form on my face that expresses not only my own self and the myriad uniqueness that comes with that, but I can find a solidarity with men, great and small, across the world and across time. Karl Marx, Chuck Norris, Abraham Lincoln, the Cabrillo Lighthouse guy, Ulysses S Grant, plenty of my homeless friends, N.T. Wright, Moses, Stanley Hauerwas, Adam (of Adam and Eve fame--I've never seen a picture of him with a beard, but I can't imagine that the Garden of Eden was so prepubescent. Why does Eve have all her lady parts [strategically covered, of course], but Adam looks like a nude metrosexual/15-year old?), Nate Horner circa 2008 and countless other unnamed beard heroes, just to name a few.

My point is, I can't have a baby, but my beard can be my baby. Its the one of the few things women can't do that I can. Mustaches are the same thing. And if you're a man and can't grow a beard, whatever; its not that important because you can find another way to be gender specific. You're creative people.

Meanwhile, all of you--male, female and otherwise--should examine this excellent photojournalistic effort from the 2009 World Beard and Mustache Championships in Bend, OR. Pay particular attention to photo #18. That's Jack Passion. Real name. Real beard. He's a legend, one of competitive bearding's first prodigies.

http://www.time.com/time/photogallery/0,29307,1658835_1439509,00.html

If you read this far, bless your heart.



*Sidenote: It took 2 days, but eventually my superior wit and charm overtook Aubrial and she loved me as much as she would have without our hard times. Maybe more.

**I wanted to send a shout-out to all the bearded ladies from across the years. You've been inspirational and we wouldn't know how to give our categories meaning without your sacrifice and vision into what it means to be who we are. Let's hang out sometime. But not like that.

the twenty third psalm

the Lord is
so far away, obscured is
my shepherd
in the fog, skin all a leper's
i shall not be in want.
i shall not want a damn thing.

God makes me
so confused, God breaks me
to lie down
'cause i can't run, can't fall down
in green pastures, by quiet waters
but my mouth won't open or my tongue unstick.

God restores
the life i'm living for
to my soul
to my uncaring soul
God guides me in paths
too long and full
of righteousness
for God's name's sake.

even though i walk through
i don't talk with you.
the valley of the shadow of Death
is acedia, is forgetting your next breath.
i will fear
only the absence, the vaccuum.
no evil
is unimaginable
for you are with me
and i still feel nothing.
only your rod and your staff
striking my back
i am not comforted.

a table is laid out by God
with my enemies all around
God lays me out,
covered in a banquet,
many evil men feast upon me.
at the head of the table,
the oil is overturned.
the traitor laughs and purs
out wine to follow it.
waste flows down to the floor.
i am unmoved, unfeeling, unable.

surely goodness and love will follow me
but never catch their prey
all the days of my life
will be spent waiting for the hope,
a groom without a wife
surely apathy will swallow me.
and i will dwell in the house
of mirrors, turns and confusions
bored, insecure, unclever
professing that i will stay
resigned
in the house of the Lord forever.
forever

Abide

Father, Son
Homemaker, family.
Roots and vines grow up
becoming a table
where everyone sits,
everyone who is here.

Here is a hard bench,
made by the Father
and the Son is the boards.
Those who eat here know
what this means.
"Abide,"
he said
"and we will make our home with you."
Make our home with you.
Out of you.
Now, our faces are suggested
in the knots and grains of wooden walls.
To eat at this table
is to make the same.
Father, Son,
come make your home with us.
Our homes are rotting, molding, rootless pits.
Hollow walls stuffed with
cash, with desire, with weeds.

We need you to abide,
to make your house real
We need your love
to make us the meal.

not sure if this is one or two poems.

Montana, how does your morning sun
get so big?
Its bigger than the sky
and no matter how long i roll
I am still under
that giant burning face.

Dakota, where are your clouds from?
they would crush my head
But you hold them on your shoulders
so I can wander
around your chest
looking for rest
for rest in Bismarck.