Change seems inevitable.
Old sentences carry
different purposes.
Mold forms in old coffee cups
like modern paintings.
Tubas boom like thunderstorms.
Your age appears first
on the back of your hands.
A clock talks by ticking
or not at all.
The knot is not the rope.
Poets write only white lines.
Medications are altered.
The brain forgets itself.
Impatience scribbles nonsense.
We become heavier,
weighted and slower.
Playing the Sitar
becomes easy as whistling.
Tamed ostriches preen
in toy cowboy hats.
Lint tells secrets of navels.
Words float in bubbles.
The wicked become tender.
Voices ebb and echo
devoid of throats and tongues.
Speech nailed to walls
becomes the new poetry.
We burn the news
to warm ourselves.
Each dawn forms
a unique conclusion.
A moth destroys Chicago.
Vandalism is elevated
to curated folk art.
How can I be sure
these syllables are real
when everything changes
except the desire for coffee?
Please don't wake me up.
I want to remember this dream.

   ~mce

I have taken
my life apart
many times
to understand it,
but it never
fits back
together quite
the same.

Always those
few pesky parts
left over.

   ~mce

I found out today we don't always get what we expect
But we should expect to get things unexpectedly.

♪♫♫♪♪♫♪♪♫♫♪

Revelation:** three, seven – the Kingdom of Heaven

The key to unlocking both glory and shame.

Philadelphia knows He’s arriving in newness

inscribing on foreheads His city and name.

(Though it could be on tee shirts or baseball caps, true –

unless someone takes time to decipher the text…

is it Greek? Aramaic? Amharic? What next?)

Don’t be mad – it’s not me but old John who’s to blame.

Of names and on numbers of Savior and Beast

I have long been a-pondering, trembling, wondering

mushroom-cloud raptures in mind’s eye a-thundering.

How will we get to that marriage-day feast?

Will my garment be ready or filthy with fall-out?

(The song says His blood will make clean if we call out

in faith for forgiveness, in humble repentance

believing that grace will abolish the sentence.)

You may wish my rhyme to be likewise abolished.

Bear with me. Forgive me, I grant it’s not polished.

I speak what I feel and I write when I’m able;

which brings us to heavenly thoughts gastronomic:

what dishes we’ll meet as we dine at that table-

strict Jewish? Angelic? Or pre-Abrahamic?

Shall they serve us from silver or common ceramic?

Being clay to the potter, an unfinished vessel

I leave all these questions for others to wrestle.

Yet there’s still one more realm I explore in conjecture:

the sounds at that gathering.  Classical?   Rock?

Unending revivalist Christian refrains?

Shall we headbang in heaven with glorified brains?

Psychedelic/Psychotic…? or  Handel and Bach?

(Lighten up. It’s the end of my bible-school lecture.

You’ve seen a few rooms of my castle-in-air,

and we ALL know it’s reggae they’re playing up there…)