Category: Poetry/Prose

What if Thy Will is Done

Every time I pray Thy will be done on Earth as in Heaven
I stop and pause and think…Really? Do I mean this?
Do I really want God’s will done on Earth?
The stories and mythologies
forming the backbone of the tradition
speak of radical events of upheaval and chaos
when God makes divine footfalls on terra firma,
when God beckons humans to reconsider,
to look elsewhere, to hear anew.
The vibration from Divine steps and voice renders
pre-existing structures rubble and dust–
removing ground from under feet once sure;
plummeting confident human beings into doubt
flirting with despair, terror breading fear and panic.
Divine presence returns full grown adults
to infancy: fleshy, helpless heaps needy, and desperate.
But my pause is rather ironic as I consider
the damage of divine entrance:
Haven’t we done just fine with that on our own?

We kill black and brown people in streets and on borders
We declare war on nations and people groups, supposed enemies
We steal land and then demand payment from people we stole it from
We strip dignity from human beings determining
who they can and cannot be, whom they can and cannot love
We render humans without homes as blights on our quaint Main Streets
We perpetuate the starvation of the Hungry while feeding dumpsters
We make water undrinkable for the Thirsty but at least we have our enterprises
We make life a thing to be earned, baited with the carrot of healthcare
We throw people in cages while retirement accounts and mutual funds soar
We sell lies of security to people through the idolatry of Militarization
We put all of our hope in science and then turn our backs on it
when it threatens to restrain our liberty and freedom for others
We grow isolated and alienated, packed in below the earth,
safe in our bunkers from the enemies outside;
but the irony is… aren’t we our own enemies, the very thing we fear most?

So, what if praying fervently, Thy will be done on Earth as in Heaven,
Means comfort and solidarity rather than chaos and loneliness?
What if it means solid ground rather than groundlessness?
What if it means right side up rather than upside down?
What if it means breathing deep rather than holding breath?
What if it means mutuality into community rather than competition unto isolation?
What if it means rest in loving warmth rather than productivity in chilling indifference?
What if it means surety of divine presence in love with the neighbor
rather than the surety of loveless doctrines and dogmas, those cold relics?
What if it means collapsing into the divine embrace of a loving Elder Ancestor
rather than being left standing alone held by no one but the boney arms of Grim.
What if it means life rather than death?

Posted on by laurenlarkin 0

words like blood

words flow through me like the very blood that flows and moves through my veins and arteries in opposing directions through various delicate tubes weaving and wending throughout my body so everything I write comes from me not merely my mind or my heart but both and my body too and that flow and fluidity is a stream of my own being leaving me and entering the world but that old and over used analogy that this written thing is a begotten baby whose cord must now be cut so that the baby may live in the world falls flat because it is a lie nothing written has ever felt like it is not still connected to me in some form whether bad or good and should I point out that such an analogy is they way men view birth and child rearing because I am mom and there is no way that simply cutting the cord of the human I just birthed means that it is now detached from and not a part of me on its own and of its own through nourishing and encouraging and training and walking along side I grow more attached to the very child that I once held in my body and then strapped to my breast by cloth tied about my body and who now walks beside me and towers above me larger than I and so I cannot help but think that as maternally defensive as I am over my babies turned young adults due to profound and deep attachment that the same thing would occur with the other product that my body produces through herself because this thing that I have written bears in likeness to me and carries with it my genetic material even if merely collections of letters and shapes forming places to pause in various forms it is an animated thing not a cold product like a can or a shovel or a thing to be kicked about purchased sold used as a means to an end it is a line from me to the one who reads it an intimate momentary bond that holds for however many minutes it takes to walk together from the beginning to the end and I think the sooner we come to terms with the interconnectedness of art from the artist to the one who is engaged and encountered by the art the sooner we will be made aware that we are not stoic producers in a world demanding product and material but co-creators divinely inspired swirled up and spun about in the divine delight of begetting and creating living breathing things in the world that tie us to us in a beautiful silvery spiritual and mystical thread spun by the divine light of heaven dropped by spinning spools releasing their brilliant and delicate and thin string and material into eager hands of listening and watching creatures ready to participate in this thing called humanity and willing to step thread in hand curious enough to pick up the stray end of another and allow heart beats and blood flows and intimate connectivity to bond risking exposure and rejection and still feeling deep awareness of self and union because these words have flown through me like the very blood that flows and moves through my veins and arteries…

***

inspired by Dorothee Sölle’s discussion of “Co-Creator” in To work and to Love: A Theology of Creation

Posted on by laurenlarkin 1

useful in uselessness

Upon what do I stand?
Is it the shifting sand
of perpetual demand
from time’s command?

This substance is so elusive;
material utterly seducive,
luring things unconducive
that trap me in the illusive.

I can fight if I want—
offer flagrant taunt—
against Chaos’s flaunt-
ing—meager chalant.

But fighting seems dumb—
like voiceless and numb—
like the smallest crumb
against a large bass drum.

I would like to retreat,
run fast, use my feet,
cross this 4-lane street,
to old comfort—remeet.

Things of the past
never seem to last
despite holding fast
in ideological cast.

That which is gone
cannot be redrawn
like the rising dawn:
lifts and then: upgone.

But yet it seems too nice
to repeat things twice;
“Come Back!” (old entice).
But it’s only melted ice.

What was is not a cover,
isn’t my steadying lover;
just a flimsier dustcover
hiding nothing to recover.

I must try to slow and grow steady—
cease being desperately heady,
stop flailing and grasping: sit ready—
dogma has become useless, too thready.

Let my body flow
let limbs grow
into the hollow
of chasmic swallow.

Letting go to be once more born—
like proceeding through flesh torn—
but emerging through darkness worn
summoned to by love’s divine horn.

Finding life in lifelessness
Finding the light in darkness
Finding beloved in wretchedness
Finding ground in groundlessness.

Surrendering useful in uselessness.

Posted on by laurenlarkin 0

Dear Charlotte…

The exchanges of words built by a love so sublime

of two people placed and locked in quondam time;

love seemingly capturing you both by such surprise,

caught by shock …Suddenly!… I can only surmise.

In any other time and place, under another circumstance…

If things were even a bit different…what a splendid dance!

Yet had that been the case,

would you now be in my space?

Would you then be speaking to me of this difficulty?

Unknowingly provoking profound emotional faculty!

Had it just been so run of the mill—

falling in love and having your fill—

would you catch so many gazing eyes,

asking their human hearts to recognize

the difficulty of the complexity of being

human, one to one, supple hearts beating?

This story that I read, of you two,

renders the concept of Love anew.

Love is not bound by signed contract and written pledge,

or bound tightly by the unyielding thread of its selvedge.

Love refuses cessation in its fervent active liquidity,

flowing where it will and can with liquid rapidity—

never stopping, never ceasing,

always growing, always increasing.

(Like a mother bearing into life not one child but two

her love did not split and halve but doubled and grew.)

Love is more than a choice, and seizes us sudden,

ignoring our blind-eyes and claims of “forbidden!”

There is no way that Love as a force can be hemmed in,

not even by vows uttered within marriage’s fencing-in.

Through you two I see that love renders us utterly human,

unable to control and choose where love anchors in union.

There’s so little that I get to know

of the depth of the dialogue, the low

of frustration of burgeoning isolation

in the small distance of separation

existing between two bodies of flesh,

never to mingle, never to mesh.

The ache of desire streaming out from your heart,

taking what you had—could get—but still, the smart

of the pain of that ever very small distance

erecting profound walls enforcing resistance…

But again, there’s so little I can know about

what happened in the times not written out…

did the ethic of love you two crafted and wrote down

keep in place—holding—when you were out of town?

Please forgive my audacity of this intrusive interrogation;

it’s not mine to voyeuristically solve the remnant equation.

I know more the emotional trials and tribulations he went through,

but little I’m given of the extent of what his decisions did to you.

The idea, his mostly, dropped as from divine lip,

and into it assumed you would simply fit and slip.

Dictums masquerading as choices for your consent…

Never minding the environment of potential discontent?

The threat of loss, of heart broken, his presence never again held…

reduced apparent selections to one, options were withheld.

When in love one does what one has to do to stay near

to the one whom one loves and considers so dear.

How often did your heart secretly confess in the middle of the night

that none of this was the way it should be, that you should take flight?

Did you ever script a “Dear Karl” letter only to tear it from piece to piece?

Did you muster courage for “Goodbye” but stumbled over the first griece?

Love’s great venomous bite renders hearts, minds, and bodies paralyzed,

forcing yield to the warm toxin flowing causing action to be unrealized.

Navigating the path you walked—trying again and again to make the best

of a situation that shouldn’t have been but yet it was…the distinctest—

was never going to be without great discomfort for all three hearts involved.

(She Loved him, he loved her and Loved you, you Loved him, nothing solved.)

Not to mention the tension and frustration existing between Nelly and you,

even in times of relative ease and tranquility, the triangle would never do.

My modern eyes gaze upon her situation and swear she should have just

left him, packed up, moved, walked on claiming new ground to readjust

and be with one who could love her in the way she so deserved

rather than sit and watch him keep his love only for you reserved.

But it is unfair of me to cast such an out of context gaze and sling

my hypothetical expectations for a woman of whom I know nothing.

I wonder about those momentary quiet times between you and her,

how often you saw—deep within—the pain she had to quietly endure.

You were the chosen one, the desired, the beloved,

and she the left, the deserted, haunted with unloved.

So many roam the earth swept by the wind of love’s door reclose’

even those wedded and coupled feel that lonely and cold repose.

But you had that true love, the stuff of wishes and prayers, dream and desire

The kind of love that ignites all the senses, sets the entire body ablaze like fire.

You were never his worst mistake, his regret, and never his shame;

you were his joy, his pleasure and love, in substance and in name.

The two of you stumbled into something of profound transcendence

the divine substance poured out through Love’s supreme eminence.

The ease you moved about each other, the fluidity of words

spilled forth, the vibrant energy between each body towards

the other, and the depth of comfort with each other you both found

is the divine knot of love’s string tying hearts together forever bound.

Even if these meager lines are styled so simplistically,

organized and written to you, Charlotte, anachronistically,

I want to (wish to?) say thank you for your humble witness

to Love’s rupture drawing us in to its radical subversiveness.

Inspired by Christiane Tietz’s biography, Karl Barth: A Life in Conflict.

Posted on by laurenlarkin 0

There’s a Structure.

There’s a structure;

It exists it’s on its own.

It exists. Trust me.

It exists.

I wish you could see…

…The pain inside me.

…The structure…

The Structure is a number

A number is a symbol; which

Represents a substance;

And Substance provides for need.

But…

I am me

What provision meets need?

A substance clear and thick?

Something against you can kick?

A challenge and a crisis?

(What rhymes with crisis?)

Won’t anyone take the time to see…

What’s slowly consuming me?

Substance as a weapon

Used to abuse and to shame;

Stealing your reputation and your name.

The very thing that smiles as you kneel

Naked in the disgrace you feel.

I’ll never forget that look,

You never fucking forsook.

Substance as nothing and absence.

That silence and that smirk,

That “I’m-not-seeing-this” look.

Brings the most violent blow

Rendering substance to flow.

I cringe at your name and your mention

Just the mere thought is mental detention.

Take this for what it’s worth

There’s a structure, it exists.

On its own, it definitely exists.

Trust me, it exists, I wish you’d understand;

You’re nothing but a pawn in its capable hand.

There’s a structure; it exists on its very own;

It exists. I know you see it; to you it’s known.

Posted on by laurenlarkin 0

Insecurity

This beast knows no limits.

it can penetrate anything and

From anywhere. Debilitating.

Everything is fine and then none of it is.

Here I am

there I am

There I went

Here it is

Ravaging over my mind and my body

Doing what it wants with me; no regard…

Tossing and turning me about with control;

Mind burdened with plaguing toxic thoughts. Deadly

It becomes something beyond me.

Demanding, yearning, reaching,…striving.

Caught in the trap of itself, over and over…

Pulled in to its vortex, the black-hole consuming me.

Relentlessness is this scene, in this place all just is.

Then in the quiet there is this:

The differentiation of quiet.

All is in this indefinable infinite space

In this place there is and there is not.

Insecurity knows no siblings; knows no friends.

The sentence of doom falls heavy on this fragile

Being of flesh and bone lacking the will to fight.

Too exhausted to fight against this reality of mine,

Which is this beast, the reality of insecurity.

It haunts me and cloaks me, like some medical

reprotective procedure, a reverse circumcision…

Insecurity; youareitsanditisyours.

 

 

 

 

 

Posted on by laurenlarkin 2

The Big Engine Who Thought She Could Not

There was once a big engine that could, so she thought.

Until, one day, she decided she definitely could not.

Her eyes traveled along the track up the great, big hill.

The daunting task engulfed her; steam puffs went still.

She grit her teeth and tried to gather from inside,

But the biggest problem was that her fire had died.

All alone on her track and without support to be found,

Her momentum slowed, then her wheels made no sound.

They stopped rolling forward; they went completely dead on the track.

All the work and the fight had worn her thin; she felt her morale slack.

An incredible exhaustion seized upon her tired frame fast

Until she started rolling backward, her forward-part last.

Anxious panic set in. What should I do? Where should even I start?

The bend was nearing, so she gripped the track with all her heart.

She caught herself in time before hitting the deadly, sharp turn;

But, man, did that friction between wheel and rail begin to burn.

She held still and began to regain her steely, metal composure,

When something caught her eye down below the steep shoulder.

Up the steep climb a small engine came huffing,

Wheels slowly turning and steam clouds puffing.

The small engine stopped to take a quick needed breather,

And the bigger engine turned so she could clearly see her.

Then their eyes met and locked together in knowing;

The smaller was following where the bigger was going.

“You shouldn’t proceed…” the big one said. “This path is quite frightful.”

The smaller smiled and replied, “But I hear the view is quite delightful.”

“Plus,” the small train started then stopped and then continued to speak,

“I never knew an engine built like us could even consider going to the peak;

Then I watched you start climbing higher and higher!”

Silence fell; the big engine felt something stir inside her.

The little one to the big spoke again, words fast embolding;

The big one leaned in toward the little she was beholding.

“And it’s not just me who has been inspired by your acts…”

Just then more chugging was heard below on the tracks.

More engines were weaving and wending up the treacherous mountainside.

She watched these little trains climb, inspired by how they worked and tried.

“I’ve been at this all wrong….” The thought began to grow in her mind.

“I’ve been looking for help from the side and ahead and not from behind.”

Her gaze returned to the tracks she was desperately clinging upon,

“Maybe…” she thought to herself. “Maybe for them I can climb on?

Even if it’s only an inch or two farther that I can offer,

It’ll be one less inch or two they will have to fight for.

She closed her eyes and gathered up her remaining bits of strength.

“For them…” She grit her teeth, bore down, and powered a length.

“For her…” and she went forward…covering more distance!

What had begun to stir was a full-fledged fire in an instance!

And on the train chugged and huffed,

Engine strong and steam clouds puffed.

There once was a big engine that gave into thinking that she could not;

Until one day a smaller engine reminded her she could, so she fought.

Posted on by laurenlarkin 2

Curves

I hold the curve of your face in the curve
Of my hands.
My course skin against yours young;
Yang’s coarse to soft yin,
Yin’s aged bronze to yang’s nascent tin.

I hold the curve of your face in the curve
Of my hands,
And I explore the unchartered territory of your eyes;
Wisdom searches among youthful vivacity,
Sorrow and regret met by innocence and tenacity.

I hold the curve of your face in the curve
Of my hands,
Look at me: I pray you never know the pain I do;
Energetic eyes bounce back, they sparkle and prance,
The eyes that know too much slow the dance.

I hold the curve of your face in the curve
Of my hands,
I know you’ll hide pain deep, away, and aside;
I’ve witnessed other teens who sit at my tables and chairs
Making me false promises of being aloof and without cares.

I hold the curve of your face in the curve
Of my hands,
Your face reflects to me what I hope: contentment;
A smile to cover the fear and confusion
Able to create, cause, and confirm the illusion.

I hold the curve of your face in the curve
Of my hands,
I never want to let you have your own suffering;
But what is the journey without the dark side of life,
How would wisdom ever be formed without the fire of strife?

I hold the curve of your face in the curve
Of my hands,
One more caressing moment before death pulls me completely in;
Fingers weak and frail, merely bones skin covered,
Recall the first day you they held and tenderly, nimbly mothered.

You hold the curve of her face in the curve
Of your hands,
Your course skin against hers young;
Yang’s coarse to soft yin,
Yin’s aged bronze to yang’s nascent tin.

Posted on by laurenlarkin 0

Into the Abyss

Poem by William Brien

The following poetry was sent to me by someone I know to be very in touch with the underbelly of human existence, the crisis of self, the pull of the darkness that threatens. These things in their rich darkness are beautiful, for it’s here, paradoxically, where we experience life, the vibrancy of our heart’s beat, the reality of existence. Threatened by the gulf of unknown and lured to release into that which calls to us but of that which we cannot see the bottom, here is life abundant. But he says it better than I do. I give you Albert Warner and his poem: Into the Abyss. Enjoy.

Into the Abyss

To be, or not to be, that is the question [1]

I stare at a sharp corner
With precise blind vision,
Tracing the broad rigid line
Then the two U-shaped humps
Which ride along the letter’s origin.
Magnificent tsunamis reach an eerie calm.
Distant shapes become blurred puddles,
Then swallow each other,
Part into a dark cone of vision,
Hiding their insignificance behind black shadows,
Leaving only pointy corners and laborious curves in perception.

The world evades us because it becomes itself again [2]

Comforting words pass through me as a hand swipes through air,
Compassionate embraces as a knife through warm butter.
Laughter no different than breath,
Smiles the same as frowns.
Red veins creep like vines
In already tired eyes.
Names appear not as old comrades,
But bundles of sharp-sided letters
With exhausting round lumps.

When you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss also gazes into you [3]

I hold not hope,
I feel not passion,
I see not reason.
I am not dead,
I am not alive.
I am naught.

 

Posted on by laurenlarkin 0

Intertwined

Our legs are intertwined Your right leg drapes heavy over my upper left inner thigh There is no movement It just rests as you sleep a deep peaceful sleep Skin to skin thigh to thigh like it was meant to be there since the beginning of time as if these two were created for each other I rest on my back experiencing the weight of your leg resting across mine Love Gratitude Thankfulness emotions that overcome my mind I turn I roll over bringing my right leg parallel to my left My thighs press  together in symphony with gravity not resisting with fight not pressing with intentionality just turning and rolling and resting my thigh on top of yours on top of mine In the process I feel your weight press against me more I pause and take in the wonderful sensation Union You and me intertwined My arm sleepily shifts with me and extends beyond me to embrace you You are fast asleep on my left arm pressed up against my breast and my right sweeps to grasp your back and pull you closer to me Closer to me than you already are if that is possible Your forehead meets my lips as I bring my head down to kiss you and I pause and inhale you You are the smell that I have fallen in love with the moment you first came into my world I am grateful for you So grateful I didn’t expect you I didn’t see you becoming intertwined with me but you did and here we are in my bed draped mutually across each other intertwined mutually with each other like lovers Lovers of the truest meaning of the word lovers Lovers Sensual sensual in the safest sense of the word sensual Skin touching skin Comfort and safety Freedom thus mutuality There is no fear here The love I feel for you is real love I love you and would lay my life down for you I let my lips linger over you enjoying this silent moment this moment you don’t know about This moment you are unaware of where I can love you with no reciprocal action Just love you from the bottom of me to the top of me toward the bottom of you to the top of you Love The warmth of your body radiates over mine as I have you in my embrace You stir I subtly and slowly pull back to give you space intending not to wake you up Lest I lose this moment forever I gently and slowly lean in one more time for one more kiss and risk letting relaxed fingertips of my right hand run gently, lovingly, and sensually over your hair all the way to the nape of your neck I smile I love you I steal one more kiss I love you I roll away and lay upon my back to let sleep take me over once again.

 

 

Posted on by laurenlarkin 0