Crimson Army

(dedicated to all of my spiritual sisters worldwide)

Did you know that Jesus has hands?

Though holey palms bear witness of our sins

(And still they cup new seeds)

Though holy, only-begotten, Papa's right-hand man

(And still they humble themselves
 that those seeds may take root)

Though wholly existing without the womb of a woman

(And still solely able to paint our fields blood red).

Is the color of a battleground 

That against all odds yields a crimson camellia army.

Her faith reach the root shoot up to the stigma,

(It is here the bees meet their match

Smothered in wax, now ready to be reborn.)

"She is clothed with strength and splendor";

Every petal and peduncle breathing testimony to this truth.

The weeds, the shovel, the creeping weevil and the hoe

All conspiring to kill

All aspiring to know:

Who would win the war,

The bomb or the bud?
Well, it's the camellia, of course.
And what's more,

The middlemist red shoots her pistil into the sky.

ABOUT: The Middlemist Red Camellia. "Surviving the twists and turns of history, climates of different continents and even bombings, these meaningful rarest camellias can definitely serve as a vivid lesson for the human race." -Arena Flowers India

Proverbs 31

Syria, My Beloved

One

There is this kid,

Maybe he's six,

Maybe he just embodies what a six-year-old

Is supposed to look like,

The point is-

He is the kind of small that could crawl into a 

Cougar's den without getting caught.

Yet, not small enough to escape the 

The manchild's draft.

Two

Draft

(Noun)

A current of cool air moving in a closed space

Three 

A current of boy army, of toy soldier, breeze in to

Enclose Damascus.

Four 

The bowels of his mother turn

(A ghost-womb belly kick

At the flashflood of her baby boy's face)

Churn into wanting,

Then rumble into waste.

At last she has emptied herself of him.

Five

Who

Really 

Is

More 

Death

Than

A

Woman 

Bereft?

Six

The soft skin inside his elbow

Is tickled by a

Smooth, round bomb:

The corner of his lips crinkle

Upward at the "touch" of her

"Fingertips".

Seven

From miles across Aleppo's rubble,

The child and his bomb

Could be confused for a 

Mother cradling her suckling infant

Until he falls asleep full of milk,

Pool of it dribbling down his chin.

Eight

There are two types of hunger:

The kind you can kill 

Or the kind that kills you.

Nine:

And so they salvage their own city,

Bullying milk from a thin bovine's breasts,

Desperate cannibal feeding off his own flesh.

The streets reek of hurt and desolation.

Ten:

Scrawny-man-with-big-anger-

But-her-little-boy's-eyes bumps her at the market.

He turns in her stomach

Yanks back her breath.

Death is a living thing

She calls it by his name.

ABOUT// A Syrian boy soldier and his mother

Isaiah 2:4- He will render judgment among the nations and set matters straight respecting many peoples. They will beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning shears. Nation will not lift up sword against nation, nor will they learn war anymore.

On Loving a Man with Trust Issues

Was it worth the ache?
Trying to tame a tiger
licking at his wounds?

Postscript// I decided to try writing out of my comfort zone; It's a haiku (5-7-5).

Fortress

The shade of her overlay turns to toasted almond

in the summertime too.

When we smile, our top front teeth jut out-

Off-white overbite stubborn in its statute.

Broody-eyed brown mud baths blink behind kink and coiled lashes-

Seeing my sights in a non-dimensional being.

My God, she even has my laugh.

Voice that sing like mine, but vacant.

Hands that hold like mine 

cannot chafe and burn abiding your burden.

Soul that shine like mine dims dull come morning.

Warning-

Do not run reckless into your own reverie-

No river of blood will surface through ruptured flesh.

No hope to quicksand your way into those brown mud baths.

She is blue velvet laughter rubbed clean and quiet at
the first sign of danger, lady stranger.

You have built an illustrious illusion and

put my name on its fortress,

But there is no woman there with a heart to call home.

ABOUT: have you ever talked to someone and realized they're more interested in the idea of you (this totally fictional character) than who you really are? It's pretty awful.

Slow Dance with Day

So you wanna know what it's like?

Imagine being suspended in thin air by 

The peach fuzz of Miles Davis' 

Blue Note recordings;

His trumpet, blaring its very bearings and bone

For the sake of my own pleasure.

Le soleil embrasse mes joues

Et le ciel me demande de danser.

And just like that:

The wind's got one palm in the small of my back,

('Neath the nook in my black).

I acquiesce,

My smile buried deep in the light of his chest;

Slow heaving breaths in rugged pine
or maple sap
perhaps hint of mahogany.

While the crystalline creek
counts our steady beat, unsteady feet-

I have never felt so loved.

Postscript// French to English translation:
Le soleil embrasse me joues, et le ciel me demande de danser.
The sun kisses my cheeks and the heavens ask me to dance.

ABOUT: I am so in love with this beautiful planet Earth.

Fencing with Night

In combat, the only barrier between the blade

and your throbbing jugular 

is the way you wield your weaponry.

Shield too quickly, your cover is blown:

Now, how will you atone for your lapse of judgement?

Strike delayed, with breath belated,

Your opponent's fate has been betrayed.

But shadows?

Shadows?

Who cower like cowards 

At the hands of what's right.

And how does one fight a mere trick of light?

Master such art as fencing with night?

Lasso the setting sun and beg him to stay.

Sway dusk with truth and reason.

My dark is tired; this body is treason.

My dark is tired, but won't let me mourn it.

To grasp this bull by both its horns,

I tell the Devil "No"

The Devil knows his death is sworn.

ABOUT: Luke 10:17, 18- "'Lord, even the demons are made subject to us by the use of your name." At that he said to them: "I see Satan already fallen like lightning from heaven."

White Sheep, White Wound

 

We stood some ways back from the bleating hordes of white cloud. 

Just distant enough to catch soft drift of their thick musk,

Too close for them to believe in our abandonment.

Most of them lay lazy fluff and warm,

Unashamed at the ease with which
their fat bodies hugged the supple earth.

So at ease, our own cheeks flush fevered with guilt;

We could not understand that freedom.

One girl, though, lingered
a few feet from the pack that stretched for miles.

You knelt nose-to-nose with her
urging with your fingertips
through the course of coarse fur
to tell you what went wrong.

She exhausted herself at your knees,

Pangs of black and white pain
jolting from her underside. 

Why aren't the others helping her?

"Well don't just stand there,"
that overease beckoned me to berate them.

Not one of us could see where a thorny branch
had torn clean through the fleece and
left her there to brave the blow alone.

ABOUT: I think maybe we've all been hurt in ways no one is aware of but God.