Language warning.

My father told me, Stay awake; don’t sleep.
The world’s a lie that’s sneaking up on you:
Half-close your eyes to watch the way it creeps.
Don’t close ‘em all the way—you’re in a zoo
at feeding time, and all that you can do
is make sure you don’t ever smell like blood,
all the while it’s pumping through you like a flood.

I listened to the man.  I stay awake.
The world’s a dirty place, but I keep clean.
The poor stay poor; the rich take what they take,
and buddy, there is no one in between;
like life and death, it’s done.  Know what I mean?
Unless someone could cross over that gap,
the rich stay rich, the poor stay in a trap.

But there is still no sin upon these hands.
I wish that I could say the same of all,
but these are Cain’s own children—see their brands?
I’ve heard you crying for ‘em since the Fall,
but they don’t care, and when they hear you call
they flip the bird.  You know they won’t repent.
Just children spelling FUCK in wet cement.

And you sit there and take it, just like me.
We’re clean, O God—You give the sinners time
and let the whole menagerie run free,
but I don’t worry ‘bout ‘em.  See, Lord, I’m
a righteous man in this whole zoo of crime.
I mind my business, wash my hands, and hope,
no matter if they like the smell of soap.

But even so, you give me boils and sores
like I’m the Pharaoh, like I’m brother Job—
I know your tricks.  You want to catch my snores,
but I’m awake and clinging to your robe.
You send the dogs to try me, Lord, to probe
my pockets and the backrooms of my soul.
I keep ‘em clean, but you will make ‘em whole.

But these rich men, their souls are shattered glass;
their hands are bloody, playing with the shards.
Lord, you and I can see it.  Bold as brass
they cut their brothers, tear ‘em up like cards
and throw ‘em out.  They shit in their own yards
because they never have to clean it up.
Come on, Lord: Clean the inside of the cup.

You’ll have to scour ‘em out with Brillo pads.
Open the sores and let the sickness drain.
I know I’m mad, but not even my madness
comes with all the vileness they contain.
But there’s no room for nonsense in your reign.
You’ve got to clean ‘em out or throw ‘em away.
There’s not much time before the end of day.

I know the hour’s at hand—mine’s coming soon,
and I can’t wait to sleep.  I’m hungry, Lord.
I’m ready for the wine that you’ve been brewing.
Fill my cup.  I want to see it poured
and spilled across the table to the floor.
Let even the dogs share what you have prepared.
A pity these rich bastards won’t be there—

unless you save ‘em.  Wash ‘em.  Make ‘em clean.
If anyone can do it, Lord, it’s you.
Be ready, though: They’ll just ask what you mean.
You’ll have to make it clear that true is true
and up is up and words say what they do.
Your word is, Feed the hungry in the land,
but I eat from the trash and from your hand.

Still, nothing dirty’s ever touched these lips
because you purify.  Make us all pure
so we can join your feasting when it rips.
No one should feel the fire that endures.
Send ‘em a word, Lord; let ‘em know for sure.
And if they still won’t hear a word you said,
let me come back and tell ‘em when I’m dead.

The Rich Man and Lazarus (The Parables of Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ), print, after Sir John Everett Millais, engraved and printed by Dalziel Brothers (MET, 21.68.4(17)) – This file was donated to Wikimedia Commons as part of a project by the Metropolitan Museum of Art. See the Image and Data Resources Open Access Policy, CC0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=60858306

The kingdom is a kingdom of slow change,
of mountains wearing down to sand, to dust,
a world cocoon where atoms rearrange,
becoming something new.  Help me to trust

when all within me screams for cataclysm
and earthquake shattering our ancient chains,
but all you offer is this slow baptism,
my rust and weathering beneath your rains.

If you are patient with me, let it teach
my anxious heart some patience with your ways.
This stone heart worn to sand along your beach
will cast no shadow in your morning’s rays,

but catch the light, refract—no flaws or mars—
and all the sand that’s left will shine like stars.

Sand from Pismo Beach, California. By Wilson44691: Mark A. Wilson, Department of Geology, The College of Wooster – Own work, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=4436177

The days roll into years; the years roll on;
the efforts of a life pile up as leaves.
They leave no monument when they are gone,
and no one but the tree who lost them grieves.
Despairing of improvement, still I’m drawn
to that bright hope my heart as yet believes.

The day will come: You’ll show me mercy yet
when kindness and hard truth have finally kissed;
when peace and justice on the field have met,
not just as velvet glove and iron fist
but partners in a gentle minuet—
‘til then despair and hope must coexist.

But they will fall as autumn leaves in turn
when all things in your love at last will burn.

Lay aside your hammer—
Lord, set down the lathe.
Hang your square on the rafter;
still the rasping plane.

Loose the snares of the wicked.
Untie the tempter’s nets.
Cut through the tangled, twisted
Gordian knot of death.

Gather the threads and fragments,
saving our smallest scraps.
Weave from our fig-leaves’ tatters
glory’s robes at last.

Carpenter, turn tailor—
Pierce the needle’s eye.
Clothe in life, O Savior,
all those doomed to die.

Make us wedding garments—
Oh, let us enter in!
Dress us for the harvest
and let the feast begin!

Painting by Rubens of St James the Less clutching a try square, a symbol associated with several Christian saints. By Peter Paul Rubens – http://www.artbible.info/art/topics/rubens-apostles-series, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=32560020

Who among you would say to your servant
who has just come in from plowing or tending sheep in the field,
‘Come here immediately and take your place at table’?
Would he not rather say to him,
‘Prepare something for me to eat.
Put on your apron and wait on me while I eat and drink.
You may eat and drink when I am finished’?
Is he grateful to that servant because he did what was commanded?
So should it be with you.
When you have done all you have been commanded,
say, ‘We are unprofitable servants;
we have done what we were obliged to do.’
—Luke 17:5-10

Labor

We labor in the sowing,
in hope for all that’s grown;
in reaping, then, and mowing
we bring the harvest home.

Which one we serve would say then
when we have worked the fields,
“Sit down with me, I pray you,
and taste your labor’s yields”?

Though we are merely servants,
yet, Lord, you wash our feet,
prepare for us a banquet,
and bid us sit and eat.

For you have sown a seed here—
the root, O Christ, is you—
to grow a different kingdom
and make the old things new.

As deserts turn to vineyards
we labor through the days,
and growing here within us
new hearts for your new ways.

We labor not for markets
or profits, but for love,
so we may taste the harvest
you, Lord, have told us of.

Vincent van Gogh – Wheatfield with a reaper – Google Art Project – BgFGcS3ucZqeRA at Google Cultural Institute maximum zoom level, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=22621957

Come with me, Lord, into the night
on a road I cannot see.
I don’t expect you to be light,
but keep me company,
and even if we reach the dawn,
somehow, I think, the road goes on.

And no one else can walk this way—
how could they?  Some draw near,
but they carry still the light of day
and do not feel this fear.
The darkness is as light to them;
my light is growing yet more dim.

But you have walked the shadows, Lord;
this valley knows your name.
The river running down this gorge
devoured you when you came.
If I must go, you went there, too:
Our dark awhile was dark to you.

Then come with me, come once again—
or do I ask too much?
Those highest peaks are in your hand;
this valley knows your touch:
You will not let me walk alone.
Each step, I walk along your bones.

So you will never let me go,
not even if I climb
or sink all other worlds below.
Even there, Lord, I will find
your hands forever holding me.
Someday all this I, too, will see.

“The valley of the shadow of death” Crimean War photograph. Dirt road in ravine scattered with cannonballs. 27.6 × 34.9 cm (10 7/8 × 13 3/4 in.), salted paper print. Victoria and Albert Museum, London. By Roger Fenton Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=48284503

A temple once, and now they call it ruins,
the architect’s stark lines against the sky
still stand here like some half-forgotten blueprints
that show where offerings were meant to lie,
abandoned—none but sparrows wander through it—
but it was beautiful in days gone by.
The light comes in where windows are no more,
and stretching shadows pace the mossy floor.

The arches open to the constellations,
and swallows swoop where rafters used to be.
The only pilgrims left, they keep their station,
and each new day a miracle they see.
The Spirit still descends as dawn awakens,
and moves within the ruins, and they speak:
“O Lord, once more you open up my lips;
my apse proclaims your praise, my nave, my crypt.

“The stones you stacked are falling as the night does:
Inevitably they sink into the ground,
but still they have not fallen into silence.
These rocks behold your mercy and cry out.
I crumble, yes, I break to age and violence,
yet still you come to me. You still sink down
and kindle life here, even in my tomb,
for what is death but just another womb?”

Now where the altar was a sapling’s growing;
the sparrow finds a home there for her young,
and year by year new leaves and branches showing
weave shelters where new melodies are sung.
The temple yet resounds in twilight’s gloaming,
though no one chants the hours, no bells are rung.
Ashes to ashes, dust to dust in truth,
yet life takes root there, making all things new.

The Ruins of Holyrood Chapel (Louis Daguerre), 1824 (Google Art Project) – YwEH1vGfMtqgXw at Google Cultural Institute maximum zoom level, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=27062850

We cannot bear the sight—
a sword edge bright and keen—
and so the angels veil their light
and come to us unseen.

They blunt the sharpened point,
soften the swifter slice
between the marrow and the joint:
We’re struck, yet we survive

because they take the weight,
transmute it for our sense,
turn glory to a commonplace,
unmagnify the immense.

A note of song, a book,
a color weaves a clue,
that we may see, where we will look,
eternity break through.

The feather-tip that paints
an ordinary word
that raises seasons up and saints
was never from a bird.

The angels of the Lord
descend on every stone,
and they will lead us heavenward
to see what they have known.

Kenny Harris (American, born 1974)
Ordinary Acts, 2017
Oil on canvas
54 x 48 inches
Private collection

It always happens in the midst of things,
the house a wreck, their shoes strewn on the floor:
Your eye caught by the sudden gleam of wings
stops you dead in the middle of the chores

and you don’t watch to see the half-sink fill,
the coffee-pot in pieces in your hands.
Arrested by the sunlight as it spills
from what you do not recognize, you stand.

But it knows you.  You never had a name
until you read it written in this ink
that burns across your vision as a flame.
Enraptured, you stand frozen at the sink.

You see what had been hidden just before,
see it now welling, streaming from all things—
the spilling sink, the shoes there on the floor—
all feathers fallen from the angel’s wings.

When the poor man died,
he was carried away by angels to the bosom of Abraham.
The rich man also died and was buried,
and from the netherworld, where he was in torment,
he raised his eyes and saw Abraham far off
and Lazarus at his side.
—Luke 16:19-31

Beneath the jewels, the skin;
beneath the skin, the breath,
and all the silks we wrap us in
cannot cheat death.

Beneath the clothes, the flesh;
beneath the flesh, the bone.
We crave and gain and then oppress,
yet alms atone.

Alike we all are dust,
the rich as well as poor,
and sorrow come to one of us
makes all woe more,

but mercy come to one
is mercy meant for all.
To do as unto us was done:
This is our call.

Then come to mercy’s stream
and dip your finger in
to quell the thirst of one who needs
and cool the skin.

Does gold our freedom bind?
Oh, let the hungry eat!
And if we cannot so, then Christ
must set us free.

I’ll take what you have given, Lord,
though all things pass away,
and make what adds to no one’s hoard:
This bread is for today.

All flesh will come to what it must;
to dust we shall return.
For all creation comes to dust—
that’s all we ever were.

Let it be flour, then, reaped and ground,
that all things shall be bread.
Then dwell in it—in it be found,
as life where all was dead.

O Lord, in what you made, you lurk,
and will all things remake.
So may it be—but this my work
is here to knead and bake

no sacred gift on the altar laid
but ordinary food—
yet fashioned from the works you made,
and you had called them good.

Then may this bread be good for us,
our bodies and our souls,
and when we go, Lord, knead our dust:
Remake us to be whole.

Woman baking bread (c. 2200 BC); Louvre, Photo By Rama, CC BY-SA 3.0 fr, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=69938567

You laid a table’s bounty
in sight of your enemies,
and laid yourself upon it,
then bid us come and feast,

because this is love’s true token—
the belovèd one is fed—
and this is why we’re broken,
for we were always bread.

Born from another’s body
in tears and blood and sweat,
then nurtured, mothered, fathered,
in all our helplessness:

So you were born, O Savior;
so given, as are we,
like bread upon the table
for someone else to eat.

You kneaded us in Eden,
hands wrist-deep in the clay,
and so you must have seen then,
you would be here one day,

but you have made it holy,
this breaking, dying dust,
that we might be as you are,
for you became like us.

Genter altar, lamb adoration – Jan van Eyck – Web Gallery of Art:   Image  Info about artwork, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=56859347