Jesus Talken
1.
Jesus, talking the green fields,
talking the red fox, talking birds,
talking old stories in young words,
talking freshness into mysteries of soul—
words that flowed like green rivers through the people,
hanging all heavy about them
like a Presence they longed for,
like a love they feared — talking to open people's hearts
unto a God they never dreamt was so beautiful and free.
2.
Bruised by thorns and stones,
lost in the rag-tagged life of forests,
lost in yellow fields; lost in feathers,
shells and stones, loving the flashing forms of fishes,
walking through the rain that bedazzles birds
— water dripping from his hair,
soaking through his herb-fragrant clothes
to the wet warmth of his skin...
He stood amidst the rhythmic lapping
of water in the reeds as they clacked
in the wind on the shore,
and tasted God.
3.
He listened to a wind voice
whispering words longing to be spoken,
lime-green words old as earth
— flaming words gone wild in his head.
And alone beneath the star’s white fields of infinity,
with streams of holy powers splashing through
he screamed: "My open body flows with sacred fire;
empty is the feel of ecstatic freedom."
And his heart trembled in the pleasure of God,
like a lamb's lips quiver as it nuzzles grass.
4.
And in many mornings, as the Galilean sun
streamed through forests,
shattering its yellow body amidst the leaves,
he sat, observant, silent as the Buddha he never knew,
his heart a painless flame amidst the bones
and burdens of his body
which would be shattered too,
by the reckless energies of grief
to burden us with the legacy of deconstruction.
5.
Nothing would satisfy him
except his passion to be free
to make a better Yah
according to his true name:
to speak as limitless Love would speak
if it had lips.
He lost himself in dappled streams
as stories were birthed in his brain
by the amazement of flowers and leaves.
And he flowered and filled until Life spilled over
and taught.
6.
"Do not dream the dead dream
that life is less than a miracle,”
He would say in the marketplace and village square.
”Behold, you see the face of God this instant,
in the eyes of your neighbor, in the face of these children,
in the onions and sweet melons in your hands,
yet Life’s radiant laughter is dimmed in your brains
and it’s holy voice whimpers away in your soul's secret shrivel."
They had to kill him. Truth disturbs!
7.
And he would wait, lean in the silence,
for soft clouds of words,
like lovers soothing and sighing,
or for a rant of words like birds scolding in canticles
amidst streaks of straw.
And the people scratched their heads,
saying, ‘he must be mad!’
and went back to buying and selling,
complaining about the Romans and the weather.
8.
Jesus talking to fishermen
that tended the patched sail’s billowing,
looping nets with sun-soaked, salty hands:
hard boned, tenacious men
with hearts as simple as milk.
Jesus creating destiny:
making peasants famous with God:
transfixing and transforming
with a dream so beautiful
only children would believe.
“Heaven is happening now,” he whispered,
“Come and follow me.”
9.
They felt the cloud of Presence he stood in
and their brains were stunned:
his eyes were so clear, his face so beautiful with Light
he must be real.
In God’s shock they mumbled yes.
What else was there to do?
Drop it all, boats, nets, friends, family,
follow him into drunken clarity,
into nothing,
into death’s dark flame for Love…
10.
Jesus standing in a boat,
talking to angry winds
until they twirl child-like
and careless through the sky.
Jesus, talking to the green thrash of sea
until she lays down all silky
and longs for his body to ease into her,
to sink into her wet dark.
Look! Light shines in her womb;
fish are radiantly happy;
cold currents swirl around his thighs,
warmed by the fire of his fingers.
11.
They came, hungry for innocence,
hungry for laughter,
hungry to forget the shadows of crosses
in fields of grieved emotions,
and they lapped his words of Light
until their bodies cried for bread.
And seven loaves became thousands
and water wine as Life lifted her skirts
and out of her loins of freedom
came the child they were together.
12.
Jesus touching eyes, light-starved
and dark-shriveled: sun streamed
through his fingers into blind brains,
exploding light.
Don’t whisper a thing about me,
he said, but shout of the Love
that opened you.
And the blind danced with the lame,
while the deaf made music with sticks
on their beggar’s bowls
as dogs howled hallelujahs.
13.
A father stumbles in the electric pain
of passion for his little girl’s presence
weeping over the cold body of her grief.
Someone says, the Master has come,
and the man turns dumbly as spring
spills through an open door in the wall of winter.
Jesus sees the small gray face and feels for flame.
“Alaha, you who birth light into form,” he sighs,
“may Your complete dance
that is here be now.” A tear forms in a dead eye,
then a flick of fire passes through the tear
and the little girl arises.
With that, the father is reborn.
14.
Jesus dancing wildly,
his body moving in bounds and murmurs,
lost in the music's incessant beat.
He spins as he relishes Wisdom's fluvial words rippling
through his movement:
that mother of Creation gone wild with love of form
in which to pour the naked radiance of God.
Wisdom, feminine innocence,
joyous in the moist petals of her body,
ecstatically yielding
to a thrust of creative heat
that illuminates blind wishes of prayer
— until her imagination, thick with color,
embraces the world’s disjointed dance
to reveal love’s interwoven forms,
dancing like celebrative gleams
of song in the night.
15.
How he loved his naked bride,
clothed with all things,
hiding behind the eyes of those
who dreamt a sad delirium of dreams.
She was the one beauty who enchanted him.
The many lives of his soul smiled
with each glimpse of her light
in a human eye: and when he touched her,
sky spilled through him like silk,
and flowers turned to flames about his feet.
16.
Jesus, talking to the blind who hunched together
in green shadows of the eastern wall,
and the maimed standing on their knees,
their feet warped skyward.
"Cry your heart's desires, now,”
he spoke, “in this clean Presence!."
Most mumbled the common mantra:
"Money... money for my broken body;
money, for my shrunken soul.
Have mercy! God. Money!”
Someone's crying, "My eyes!
I will chance the change! Let me see!"
And another! "My eyes. Yes!
Eyes for my brain and body!"
Light burnt in the Nazarene.
Flame leapt from his eyes into theirs.
That's why they killed Him.
Contagion is dangerous!
17.
Jesus saying words to seep,
hot and honeyed, into the urine-soaked sheets
of the homeless, blathering purblind
purulence of the beef-brained,
blunt, heavy thick, chowder-fuddled,
addled and muddled defective ones
—society's shame—despised by the patriarchs
and matriarchs of social propriety:
those empty shadows of the gleaming,
glory-guzzling, grasping, great gapping
glutted and mellifluous, florid and grandiloquent,
now shrunken, mere pompous and turgid,
flowery and flatulent, advocates of social assistance
for those they demean and trammel.
18.
Lazarus stinks. The flies are feasting
on sausage legs and arms,
swollen eyes swarm with maggots.
The people cry for the agony
of the stench and all that breeds it.
“Abwoon d’bwash maya,”
Jesus shouts to focus the crowd.
The warrior holds a dangerous sword of flowers
only angels can see. “Lazarus, Live!”
is the audacity he speaks.
His words pierce grave clothes
stiff with rancid oils.
Taunt skin spits as the body oozes light.
A dead man moves…
This deed is too terrible to behold!
The world is being undone.
Who is ever ready to melt into heaven?
19.
Donkey ridden and driven with hosannas,
the lame prince enters a city of soiled dreams
and brass that was once gold.
Already the legend worked to inspire.
“Tell us the story again. A dead man arisen!
Praise be to God… we were not there.
Such reality is too harsh to bare nakedly,”
they whispered in the back alleys of their hallelujahs
where Death lurked in black garments,
slipping through the crowds,
holding a bleeding pig like a child.
20.
The temple walls still echoed with countless “I ams,”
as outside the healed wandered
ecstatically in the streets.
Money clinks and disturbs sacred meditations.
Innocent lambs and doves bleed
and no one’s heart melts.
Jesus makes a whip and beats down commerce.
He crosses the line.
21.
Tossed like dice in a wild game of chance,
they decide to flay him until flesh hangs like rags on his bones.
Pilate admires Jesus’ dangerous crown of roses
then shutters in the dark as Jesus pierces
his power with silence.
“This man will undo the world,”
cry the long-beards in priestly gowns.
Pilate suddenly recognizes the situation.
“Give us the murderer but kill this sedition before it undoes us,”
the religious powers plead. Pilate sees the stakes are high
and washes his hands of reality.
Returning to his organized madness
he throws God’s Christ into the hands of chaos.
22.
Jesus crying to thunder in dark clouds,
talking to the shadowed crowds,
stammering forgiveness, stuttering God,
pouring love's fragrance on soldier's heads
until his lips dried shut with thirst and blood.
Gasping, death-gurgling, his body spasmed
on spikes that tore soft wrists and shattered his feet,
He looses all control. “My God, my God,
why have you abandoned me?”
“That's why they’re killing Him”, the crowd cried,
“Look at the madness in his eyes!”
In dirt and sweat, reeking of blood,
muscles torn loose and tweaking, face contorted,
gone wild with pain, his heart explodes!
23.
Jesus dead.
Death smirking in the dark void where he was.
Everyone slinks around depressed. Jerusalem is afraid.
Everyone knew, in the empty terror of themselves,
all of us killed him! Everything seems stuck.
Pharisees eat meaningless meals
and don’t even speak of their triumph.
Gray sky goes grieving, heavy and hanging,
banging tears in dirty tin buckets
for the lost flowers of nature's heart.
The earth spins three times in a trance,
trying to conjure a dance of miracle.
*
24.
First morning of a new world!
Jesus moves like music through the tomb,
shining like a feather in moonlight,
then rolls back the stone as sun spills gold into the gloom.
Jesus, whispering, "Mary... don't cling to me,"
speaking the ecstasy in His belly,
laughing with the poetry of Paradise,
showing her the shine of his torn hands and feet;
asking for his friends;
being an innocent God talking new wisdom,
a Love-born freedom
singing our deathless destiny.
25.
Once resurrection seeps through
and your soul feels the beauty of Light,
then religion doesn't fool you anymore;
Life can't blind you,
disillusionment is meaningless,
for Life is bread and Love is wine;
the deep heart is not afraid,
even when it's afraid,
for the mystery your are
wakes up and knows,
we are all dancing blind
on a sea of laughter.
Poem © Blake Steele 2008
Image © Blake Steele 2010
Image © Blake Steele 2010