The Winepress |
| Posted by Mark (mark) on Oct 14 2008 |
A droll and pallid drone beats percussively in my heart, sometimes;
I don’t think it’s a single voice,
but a chorus in semi-unison;
and they drone on, flowing and surging as a tide riding each beat of my heart,
then they ebb for a time;
All is well in the ebb,
except the thought, the experience, the lesson learned—the tide will come back in,
surging forth in a frothy spray of deferred hopes and deflated passion—this
revelation, this expectation, this presumption is found on many days of the ebb,
tinging the taste in my heart with a bitter hue,
though it is sweet mostly;
How I long for confrontation,
yet dread it too;
but the pallid drone does not confront, only smother and suffocate,
bit by precious bit, piece by piece snuffed out,
never breaking away, never rampaging with impulsiveness in those moments,
as I long too;
The platitudes are whispered softly through my heart;
they’ve been heard for so long,
they are etched upon my lining,
even to becoming part of that awful drone;
—just hold on a little longer, it will change, you’re right where you need to be—
bitter they are, more so in the lingering, the submission to it all;
Yet the complexities of the heart astound me,
for lost under this suffocating blanket, this deafening drone,
remains a highly flammable capacity,
which the slightest spark of hope sets to wild raging fire,
invigorating me to the root;
the blackest of nights cannot snuff out its fiery shine;
It is a conundrum;
the fire of hope burning within my bones refuels me
to endure more of the drone,
which seems to flow again,
bit by bit, little by little,
reducing the passionate fire to embers once more,
ebb and flow, ebb and flow;
This womb of paradox, of contradiction,
gives birth to hunger for change; for adventure; for solitude;
for something fresh, fresh as a rose in new bloom;
for confrontation; for battle in all its bloody euphemistic glory;
O’ God must I endure much longer?
Could I not be struck down in one grand blow,
rather than endure inch by inch?
How long must I wait?
How long to death? Real death, the kind that promises resurrection;
It is for you, O’ God, that I do not turn and strike with all my might
in fearful confrontation,
It is for you that I do not sail away upon the warm aromatic breezes
wafting from greener pastures;
It is for you I endure; but is it you who crushes me so? Or is it me?
Both?
I don’t know, but I know you, and I know you are with me—yet how long?
...Silence...
Grand declarations of faithfulness
spill out of me in the vigor of my raging inner fire;
but when the droll drone flows to high tide,
and the fire is barely alive, barely embers,
those same vivacious words devolve to hollow, pious boasts—
how the moon and sun paint the same landscape so differently I know not;
The winepress of life flows freely with my soul’s blood;
yet those words have barely escaped my clumsy lips
before they transgress my sensibility;
they are charged with pride—for who am I to wrestle with God?
Who am I to wrestle with life?
I have done nothing great;
I have suffered nothing extraordinary in history’s eyes;
I am a small man in most ways;
And so those words are convicted in my heart as
disgustingly prideful boasts—woe as me, I’m so hard done by!
Would I stand next to Job and look him in the eye,
knowing those words were formed in my heart
before they rolled from my tongue?
I am stained deeply by them, to the root;
And I would melt under their weight in Job’s company;
Yet I persist in wrestling with life—I Persist!
I cannot let go of the fight;
It is my only fight—surrender, submission;
Though I long for bloody battle,
I’m here in this fight, this enduring;
It is the only fight I have, and so I will take it;
I lust for that bloody battle or even a swift death—
and that is why I cannot have them;
So crush me; crush me to pebbles; and crush the pebbles to dust.
I will fight bitterly;
It is not in me to truly surrender (though I can feign it),
but it is in me to want to surrender,
to know I must surrender my life to find it;
So crush me; it is the only way.
It is the only loving thing to do;
It is mercy and grace to my soul;
I would expect nothing less from you, O’ God.
...Silence...
O’ Mercy how you wound me in your compassion!
How you tear me strip by strip,
limb from limb;
O’ Grace how you pulverize my soul!
How you grind me down to nothing;
Why does healing come from desolation? Life from death?
Why must I enter your sufferings,
tasting them with bitter gall?
They choke me now,
drinking this cup to the knotted dregs;
Can it not be one swift blow?
No! I suppose it cannot, I know the fight in me;
It is not in me to surrender,
but it is not beyond me to want it,
to know it is the only way to life;
It is a conundrum—to know I need it, yet know I cannot produce it;
It crushes me; It smothers me; and I hate it, yet I love it.
You slay me, yet heal me;
You crush me to fine dust, yet let me soar on the wind;
The chorus is sounding its fearful drone once more,
and how can I say but—sing on, sing on you terrible song;
Sing on, sing on you healing song,
my flesh abhors you but my soul adores you;
O’ God, if you can unite my heart to love you, do it swiftly!
This bitter confrontation simmers within but never breaks
into bloody glorious battle—only bloody undignified battle,
and it kills me softly, quietly;
It filets me;
opening my innards for my own eyes to see,
and I’m abhorrent in those eyes; yet you love me.
How I know this I know not—but I know it.
In this process which pulls me in all directions,
I somehow know it; or is it just the fire set ablaze anew,
raging unchecked in the heart of an ebb?
No! I know it.
I know it in the ebb, but I breathe it in the flow—
a difficult labored breath; a wheezing hacking breath;
yet I know it!
The thickest, most stifling and suffocating dark drone
cannot erase it from the lining of my soul
—and that is everything;
For what else is there?
It is easy to live and love in the ebb,
but in the blackness of the flow, that is everything;
And as the crushing burrows me deeper into your heart, and you in mine,
and as my hair thins and crowns me with grey,
as my skin sags and my body grows listless like a hot summer night,
my eyes will flood with light and life;
and the tides will not hold much bite; the flow will wain and weaken,
but I will know that in them I found life;
I found everything in the last place I desired to look;
I will know that in them I found the one thing;
ebb and flow, ebb and flow;
Last changed: Oct 14 2008 at 4:38 PM
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