expression

the way we express

what we express

in this modern era

of phones, data, and ai

is nothing short of

    fra

        gmen

            ted

oceans

my words which are but 

a trial and error description of reality

will never be like yours,

which flow into oceans of infinite, 

life-giving meaning

my words are imperfect.

yours, God, hide unending 

oceans of meaning

In the thirtieth year of my life

In the thirtieth year of my life,

After the skies were split,

And the heavens had spoken,

I followed my will out into the desert,

Where I fasted and prayed for forty days.

Alone in the wilderness with my prayers and my thoughts,

I who have existed before existence,

Thought of you my friend,

Long before you existed.

In your kindness think of me now,

Who wait for you, "a prisoner of my own love",

In the tabernacles of a million churches

Fire in the wilderness

Fire in the wilderness, and all those

Beatuous desert flowers you had looked after so carefully

Gone, incinerated, in the blazing flames.

Those verses you had strung

Equally carefully as poems,

Incinerated in the test of time

And unappreciated in the cacophony of attentions

In this modern world.

What next? What next?

Whatever are you going to do next, darling?

What does a poet do when his

Poems go unread?

Does he give up speaking to an unlistening world

Or does he carry on as a prophet,

Putting out sombre words of life and death,

Just as they are, 

Without beautifying, rhyme, or meter

For anyone who would care to listen?

Am I to blame for writing of life and death

And not of romance and roses?

For I write of Thee, God, and hopefully for Thee,

And what we Thy children truly long for

Is a life after death with Thee

Afterword:

Fire, fire, fire, in the wilderness of my heart

And after the flames of pain and suffering

Have done their work,

All that I want now

    is

        God

   

where do you call home

and they asked me,

conversationally,

where I called home

and I realised in a sudden shock,

that I did not belong here,

nor there, nor anywhere

and I whispered in reply,

as if in a dream:

"God."

the sidewalk

like the fallen, crushed autumn leaves

in the middle of the sidewalk,

trodden into dust by men of dust and clay,

before it is swept into the void -

us

before the autumn,

before we depart,

have mercy on us,

Christ Jesus,

for only in Thee we find transcendence

from this mortal frame.

have mercy

lest we allow ourselves

to be swept away from endless life

transcendence

after the night of raging winds,

in the morning I head out to the street

and see a million paper cards 

scattered everywhere by the wind 

with the word transendence written 

on each one of them.

the howling wind still races along the street

and its alleys, challenging my mortality,

my transcience, my ephemerality.

oh that I could live forever upon this earth

but I cannot, and the screaming taunt 

of approaching death haunts me.

I take a breath above the waves,

immerse myself in God,

and I am under the waters again -

ICTHUS meaning fish, swims within 

the deep waters, immersed in God -

and so I try to imitate Christ.

I immerse myself in God again,

and continue to write

cities named after me,

books written about me,

and legends spoken

in hushed whispers

about me

all this do I imagine,

in my desire to be remembered

and in my fear of being forgotten.

supposedly pulchritudinous breadcrumbs

in lettered form in these desultory

rambling poems, all leading to one

single yearning of the heart, 

to tell posterity that I was once here.

what egoism what hubris what pride

to have thought that I could have

etch my name forever on the shores of time.

by nightfall the waves of death break through

and wash my name away as if I never were here at all

we all fail the test of time even the ever famous ones,

and we will live on only by virtue of charity

if we have had any in this short day on earth.

death is imminent. every step I take 

is one step closer, to that door that leads to God's embrace.

3 billion seconds they say is all we have on average.

every second gone is one second closer to eternity.

one second, one step closer to You.

I, mortal man, terrified of oblivion

I, mortal man, trying to transcend 

transcience and time

I, mortal man. with immortal soul.

like a diamond amidst the dust

for in the evening of life like the falling autumn leaves,

I too fall, I join the soil, and 

this frail dust that I am to dust returns.

and my soul would live on 

in the fullness of life only in God's embrace

I search everywhere, without realizing,

for meaning, for power, 

for glory, for fame,

to somehow be remembered forever,

to somehow be the greatest of them all,

but my search is always in vain.

it merely deepens the emptiness.

    I can find

        transcendence 

            only in God