Saturday, February 5, 2011

only the beginning.


I specifically promised myself that I wouldn’t post any of my poems here as soon as I find out we were required to keep a blog for CIRCLES. Never say never, my friends. I write a lot of poetry. I love it so much, but I also deeply fear that it’s hackneyed and silly. We'll get back to that.

Every once in a while (and not often enough) a conversation gets me truly riled up, plucks me out of my apathy into a sort of…holy frustration? I don’t know if that’s the best way to articulate it, but I’m having trouble.

Late night at Del Taco (aka real church) yesterday, I sat with a few people that I would consider part of my new group of friends here at home. I was having trouble figuring out where I was going to land, being back from New Orleans, and these people feel like home to me. We talked about the church, where we find our hopes and frustrations with it, the beauty and ugliness of our hearts and our roles. I almost feel like another something snapped in me. I suddenly felt okay with needing to abandon situations and relationships and plans, in order to pursue Christ. For now, I don’t feel like I need to abandon anything specific, but it’s incredibly liberating to be okay with it.

I honestly don’t know if I’m making any sense right now. I just think there’s a lot going on inside of me, that Christ is remembering me now and weaving in and out of whatever “new thing” He’s doing in my heart.

So anyway, this is a poem that I wrote last night, attempting to articulate the inability to articulate what I’m feeling. Bear with me, circlers. Oh, and it doesn’t have a title for now.


At the entrance to your apartment,
we stand in half-light and talk about God.
Curse a little, and my skin trembles with cold.
I don’t know what to say to you.
It brings my eyebrows in, not to know,
makes my throat ache with wordlessness—
the heavy awareness that there is much to say.
Soundless lips, a weak pen;
I am no worthy vessel.
A brown spider glows behind you,
suspended back-lit in the gate and it exhausts me.
I fall short of language, but words grasp outward,
gnaw at my rib bones in a hunger that harms me.
I crave surrender, do nothing—
drive home crying, singing off-key hymns
of a heaven much too current to bear. 

7 comments:

  1. Beautiful. I, too, am a poetry enthusiast...well done. Keep writing

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  2. Thanks for the insight to your poetry. While you do not have the intention to post your poems it is nice to see a glimpse of one of your passions.

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  3. thanks so much for letting us have a glimpse of the real you. your paragraph that starts, "I honestly don't know..." well, you are blessed! I wish I could say the same thing for myself right now. keep running towards Him.

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  4. "A heaven much too current to bear."

    Those are wonderful moments, as real as real can be and more real than that.

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  5. Its funny how late nights at Del Taco can turn out to mean a lot more than we anticipate. God can use any situation =) Thanks for sharing the poem Bayley!!

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  6. Umm, LOVE it ... Poetry often expresses things I'm not able to. Please don't keep your promise not to share it here!

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  7. really beautiful. I too know the "throat ache with wordlessness."
    thank you.

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