work

this place is dark
and i have to leave early
to arrive early

to stay late

Johns aren't Joes

In the mirror you're one of a kind

An ace of spades

Silence the deck when it whispers

Speaking in tongues

Inquire first with the joker

You are a bouquet

But you see a flower

And so the gardener plucks

The wolf's season is over

Hold his breath a little longer

Just another wolf

Just another meal

Mouths remain red

At a table set for a TV dinner

This is breathing, second nature

So many before

Too many after

RIP dreams

Guilty eyes

RIP heart

Never see you

RIP beauty

It's the mundane that drove

And let us out

to view dreams, heart, beauty

love isn't found with torn seems

or dangling from teeth like a cigarette

american dream

american spirit

american nightmare

The wolf's season is over

Hold his breath a little longer

Hold it for him, and it will all be over

We’ll meet in the sunset

And flee to the sunrise

f#m

The shape of these four fingers
takes me there, to the beach house
by the sand and green waters.

Cool cement floors under bare foot
sweat and questions
a piano untuned by the hearth.

This shape has been
many other moments, but
this is the one that rises up

Like green weeds covering
the still waters of Lake Winona.

Kenny.

Kenny kept his emotions all bottled up.

A Long, Fast Night

In the midst of turning towards a six by six saga I danced on the back of a beast. When the moment struck the asphalt like a match on a book, I came alive. It all makes sense when the spark breaks the colonial darkness. Guarded shadows flee as the cherries set chase. The dried out limbs of yesterdays harvest writhe with life as water rushes forth not unlike the gushing of a head wound. It’s here that I respond in the guttural tone of old heartache and tired thoughts.

Trekking down the erroneous one-way towards disability a beggar stooped over a sign creates a rubber neck as I scream by. My mind is filled with a vast, heavy nothingness giving me all the sense of direction needed to change the plot. Hold fast as the ship changes course. Two words is all it took to find my feet travelling in a new direction. Two syllables in two words and I find myself wearing an old hat. It still fits much like the shoes at the back of your closet. Stay the course. And here I thought I knew nothing.

Wednesday last and the feast of St. Basil

You revealed words
like an exotic dancer
exposing flesh.

You uncovered mysteries
like a flasher in
the moonlight.

But men were fat
and farsighted in those days,
the women common
and complacent.

Bright words fell flat
over ages,
while we ignored them.
Like pangs
from dreaming,
silent screams
translated to
distraction.

Growing up Christian: 9 things I wish I hadn't learned, and several I'm glad I did. (Introduction)

Starting a book is hard. I have a good idea of what belongs in the middle parts of this book, but where to begin?  That is a problem.  So, I will begin with a story.

First a little background. When I was about ten or eleven years old there was a man I knew in the church that my family has always attended.  Let's call him Steve.  Steve had an extraordinarily broken life.  He was a drug addict, alcoholic, womanizer, and actively worshipped Satan.  His life was literally a car wreck.  What I mean by that is that one night when my dad and some of the others guys from the church were out trying to talk to Steve and help him he became violent and rammed his car into my family's shiny green sedan.  That was probably the nicest car we had growing up, and I think we only had it for about 5 weeks before Steve went demo-derby on it.

Fast forward 1 year.  Steve is clean. Steve is sober.  Steve is married to the woman that he is still with today (I think they have 15 kids(it might not be that many, but it's some other absurdly wonderful amount)).  If I have ever witnessed a miracle, this was it.

This story takes place at one of our many Wednesday night church meetings.  Steve was up front that night and he told us all his amazing story of how he had been pulled out of death and destruction, and into life and a group of people who loved and cared for him.  The juicy details could not have been more appreciated by anyone in the room than that 10 year old boy in the third row who was also me.  To me it was an epic adventure, and better yet the good guys had prevailed.  It was a happy wonderful ending and I soaked it up like a pasty white sponge.

After the service I quickly went up to Steve and began to gush all over him with how much I loved his story.  I remember telling him that his story was one of the best I had ever heard.  I will never forget how he frowned and stopped me, and then said, "No Josh, your story is so much better because it doesn't have all that bad stuff in it."
I was crestfallen, but something much more insidious was taking place.  You see, this was just another in a long series of reinforcements to something I was learning as I grew.  One of several things I learned growing up that I wish I hadn't, and a few I am glad I did.  This lesson was that I was better than most other people.  I belonged to a special club made up of people who God loved slightly more than everyone else.  Furthermore, since I had been born into that club I must have a leg up on new recruits. No one ever said these things to me explicitly, and I am sure it was not intended, but I was learning it nonetheless.  While I was growing up Christian.