Snacking

Oh God, I despise my impatient lips!
I hate my gluttonous tongue!
I grow fat on fantasies,
On sweet morsels made of sugar and lard.
It is not even time for dinner
And yet I cannot bear another bite!
What when the meal is served?
When I no longer need to sneak sweets
Behind her back
As though I doubt she is preparing any meal at all?
When the meat is laid out in front of me,
The scent of its wafting steam storming my olfactory?
"No, thank you. I couldn't."
Teeth already rotted out.
Diabetes begging for a sweeter course.
I snack all day.
I fill my mouth to slake the pangs of boredom.
I munch.
Devour.
I shovel it in because I cannot bear patiently
The mystery growling through my guts.
With each grumble of my appetite's greed
I respond with spoon and fork,
With happy meals,
With processed, heat-lamped products
Smothered in cheap cheese
And plastic condiments.
Gritty and crunchy.
Charred edges.
Frozen centers.
I've lost my appetite
As I wait for the dinner bell to toll.

Snapshots from my silly youth

I saw a bunch of people from high school this past weekend. Seeing them brought back a whole bunch of memories. I was pleasantly surprised that the guilt of my youth didn't all come roaring back with each memory. The redeeming power of a relationship with Jesus in action.

Here are some of the memories. Snapshots from my silly youth.

I saw Jessica Schaetzke and I remembered this: The spring after my sophomore year, Jessica and I and about 30 others went on a choir trip to Europe--Germany, Czech Republic, and Poland. Our tour was two weeks long and we sang a concert, with songs like Tanguendo and Prayer of the Children in them, every day, and one day two. We sang in churches much older than any in the US. I remember they each had stunning stain glass windows--must have taken years and years just to create and build them. In one church in Ulm we climbed over 700 steps to the top of the church steeple. We saw so many castles they almost became indistinct. We toured Auschwitz and Birkenau, sang a song at the shooting wall, and held each other and wept. I remember all I wanted at that moment was family, and I grabbed my sister Anna and we found some solace from the incredible sorrow of that place.

And every night Brian, Jeff, Zack and I would go to the local discos and bars. I had my first beer in Germany. I bought my first fifth of vodka in Prague. I almost passed out on a park bench in Heidlburg. I survived the most insane taxi ride--imagine tiny, tight little European roads, traveled at ridiculously stupid high speeds, and me and Jeff in the back seat literally hanging on for dear life. Granted we were drunk--so it was probably not nearly as bad as we thought it was. I remember the chaperone parents buying us drinks--this of course struck me as incredibly ironic, but I didn't turn down their offers. I recalled some of these memories with Jessica, and she was surprised to hear that I did any of this--I was a pretty straight-laced kid. I remember I felt horribly bad that Sparky had to sit out the last concert because he had a glass of wine with the host family--he was punished for the sins of the rest of us party-ers.

I saw Dave Luchsinger and I remembered this: We wore sparkly vests in Pops Choir in Jr. High. He always did an excellent John Wayne impersonation in math class. He wanted to become a policeman. And he did.

Neither of us were sure what to think of the other growing up. I think we wanted to be friends but there were elements of each of our character that rubbed against each other in an aggravating way. He was carefree, had no problem talking to girls, and I was a hard-nosed, self-righteous goober...who wished he could talk to girls. I think we settled all that this past weekend. If given the opportunity, I would choose to spend much more time getting to know Dave. Turns out we share a love for Mumford & Sons--so we can't not be friends.

I saw John Wiger and remembered this: In seventh grade I was the new kid in school. Heck, I was the new kid in school with the weird name who had just come from being home-schooled. Recipe for social suicide. Which I committed numerous times. Randomly around the end of the year things started looking up though. I had made a friend (Greg--whose wedding we were all celebrating this past weekend), I was learning to shut my big mouth and therefore I hadn't gotten beaten up in a few weeks.

This was the year I would discover my love of theatre. It all started when I got recruited to help on the set crew for that year's musical, The Wizard of Oz. Yeah, you heard right...set crew. I wore all black. I moved with lightning speed. I made no sound. And I moved sets between scenes. This is where I met John. He was a Sr. Higher. But he got recruited to move sets too. Oddly enough some of the theatre girls started taking notice of me--I think it was all the black, which is probably why I still wear so much of it. Anyway--my lasting memory of John was this. He saw these jr. high drama queens (on many levels) trying to talk to me and he surmised this...he said, "Asa, you're the shiz."

I don't know what that is, but I think it's good.

Where's the Rand McNally Already?

They talk about weak spots in terms of chocolate cake and lottery tickets. My weak spot begins with a slow, internal sigh, a few hopeless thoughts flitting through my mind like forlorn moths bumping into screen and then a dive into a jagged hole of despairing introspection.

Where is my life going? If I grow, will I ever feel like it's enough? And, even then, will it all flop? Failure? Failure. Failure.

Weird coming from someone newly engaged, recent first home-buyer, less than one year old business starter. Yet I find my head constantly swiveling between black and white photos saluting the Statue of Liberty and Jesus returning on a horse.

I'm just saying.

I recently saw the new Alice and Wonderland. Aside from suddenly wanting cakes that say "Eat Me" to appear, there were three lines in it that stuck out in an eyebrow-furrowing, heart-thump kind of way. This was it: at three different points in the movie - three moments throughout the elaborate and adventurous and, of course, lesson-learning journey of Alice through Wonderland - the wise and mystical caterpillar (the one smoking the hookah, of course) said these things to Alice and in this order:

#1) You're hardly Alice.

#2) You're not quite Alice.

#3) You're Alice, at last.

Strangely, this helps me.

Because if I take a turn in my introspection from the gloom and despair and doubt and ask myself why I care so stinking much about where my life is heading, I realize this driving ache has been there since I was eating Gerber's and sitting in Desitin. I. want. to. become.

And then I remember this. Jesus actually knows who, as fleshy, pooping babies, we were intended to become. He knows how those few years in childhood put guilt on us we can't shake or how that relationship pumped us full of fear and worry or that we have been steeped in a culture that taught us to love and be loved conditionally.

He prods us. Pushes us. Asks for permission to change things, show us new organs he wants to put in us and does the surgery, to boot. Challenges us. Doesn't do the expected. Is painfully simple with his love. Treats us unlike the grandma or the boyfriend or the wife or the pastor or the best friend did.

We give ourselves to this and find out it's doing things to us. We. are. becoming. So much so that hope is snowballing and a part of me believes that at the end Jesus will take a drag of his hookah, exhale through his nose and say, "Jordan, at last."

Jazz Night

I am proud to follow in your footsteps. I do not speak in silly cliche or metaphor.
It is your real and blood filled foot stepping over rock and root.
When you fall I laugh and celebrate, and you laugh too because we share it.

I am proud to climb to rickety heights with you, to stand on places that Olympians have stood.
We love and tumble as men, and our grandfathers look on proudly.

Do you have such as us? Do you stake out your place in the night boldy, or
do you crawl into bed fed by gruel and television.

I will take my meat, and I will have this night and gladly give you
50 ignoble days in exchange.... and I will not let it be taken from me
by any force of man or time.

Mike's Self Portrait

I am the Viking warrior.
I am a Polish slave.
I am a German worker.
I am a Scottish king.

Through histories fog and misfortune, I have been molded, scolded and folded into this man you see before you. This blond haired, blue eyes, misfit, this lazy ass tumbling, this “I don’t wanna budge” adolescent caught between willy nilly and 80 year old windows to my soul.

I am a conniving thief, I am a miracle, I owe you more, but you wont get it from me. I am mostly lost, yet it’s finally finished, I am done, I am scared, I give up, I stand up, I fight, I am a wavering walking contemptuous contradiction. I will give much, and leave you wanting, I will try hard, yet never will I be enough.

What I want I will not have, what I crave I can not fight for, when I think of me, I think of black and red, I think of white and I think of blue, I am a grayish purple hot rod soon to go out of style.

I am a creek of culmination, I am an estuaries end, I will be used, and I will be be abused, but you’ll never have me, I am confident only when you are not around and when you are I will give you nothing more than ambiguous answers but they will be simultaneously short and to the pricks point.

Look to the sun and you will see me, I am amongst the shadows, I AM close and I am all things to all men forever and then I will be who I want to be, someday I will come together, until then I am broken and in pieces.

Confession

What am I doing here, you ask?
I've got no place left to go.

You want a confession?
Wrap your goulash around this.

I'm a murderer. I've pointed a revolver at another man's chin, cocked back the hammer, and pulled that heavy trigger until the hammer swung down and smashed into the blasting cap. I watched his face explode in slow motion, and I marveled at the lovely pattern his brains made on the powder blue wall behind him. He's still alive, but I'm a murderer all the same.

You want more?
Pull down your sequin sunglasses and take a gander at this.

I'm an adulterer. I've been in bed with hundreds of of different women in my life. I used her body, but she never saw mine. I degraded and humiliated her, and to top it all off these lovely ladies never knew my name or saw my face.

Are you sick of it yet?

I've cheated, lied, stolen, broken, beaten, coveted, slandered... I think you're starting to get the picture.

Why am I here on the bloody ground in front of this ancient torture device? I've got no other place left to go.

Approach

#1

I don't feel as You can. I can't.
Incapable as a shoe.
In some fashion
It manages to be
Simultaneously unbearable
And absolutely Right.

#2

Don't give me a second thought.
No no, you just eat and expound and caffeinate.
Why would I want your condition?
Lucky for me, it's about as contagious as a parked car.

#3

My:
A made-up
Plastic
Flammable concept.
Draw it out.
Delivered by the snake,
Accepted under skin, then
It festers
Erasing bone,
Consuming blood,
Creating lack.