In the land of liars,
the honest man
must
be
crucified.

This is the story of an aching love.
A hopeless schoolgirl kind of thing.
He was a basketball star player on
The Monticello Mustangs team,
Not showy, but quiet and a little shy.
He was glorious to look at
through the lenses of my brown eyes.
I had to work to learn his name-
it was Finnish, spelled Laulainen.
I said it lots of different ways until I heard
somebody say it right-
Ed     Law lie’ nen
All the bells rang out and bluebirds sang
As I crooned and whispered that magic name
In the quiet of my room.
I never had a class with him-
he was a year ahead.  
He wasn’t part of rowdiness
when passing in the halls
from one lesson to the next.
If he walked past I turned into
A pillar of salt dyed crimson
From the blood that burst my heart.
I don’t recall now how I came to have it
But I had a small creased snapshot of him and
I slept with it under my pillow every night.
I touched it and looked at it and imagined
him touching me.  The thought of him
kissing me was far beyond my wildest dreams
I suspect my mom knew it was there,
but she never said a word
And I guarded it like my virginity.
And my best friend had no idea.
He never knew I was alive-
he didn’t know my name.
I was one of the nameless girls
That are present but unseen.
One day I was sent to the cafeteria
For something the teacher needed.
Standing by the now closed door
Was God Who Walked The Earth,
Ed Laulainen in the flesh.
The shock of standing next to him
paralyzed my tongue.
I dared not look at him
and finally only said “Is anybody there”.
Did he answer - I don’t know.
I was terrified and in paroxysms
of ecstasy. I was sharing the same air he breathed.
He left Junior High for Senior High and I lost track of him.
But I loved him with ferocious fervor and wishful longing
If desire could have made him mine, Midas would have
been poor by comparison.
OccasionallyI think of him and the plain little girl who worshipped him.
Where did he go - how did  he grow - what kind of life did he live.
In ten more years the little girl could have most anyone she wanted
but the crinkled photo stayed in a trinket box for a long,long time before
it washed away on the tides of new loves, real loves, and living.
I wish I could see him once again to tell him the story of
the little girl who chose him to love with all her soul and first flush of emotion.
                                   ljm

Each day reminds me that I am depraved

fixated, titillated still with sin

and thinking I’m smart, I’ve ranted and raved

only to wake up again in this skin

wondering if I am actually saved.

Behold the deep cesspool I find within:

unhallowed Self, to whom I am enslaved,

doomed to start over every day.  Begin

again Lord Christ, that sanctifying work

you promised to accomplish through your Word.

**** the vipers that in our garden lurk;

tell of your blood and all that it conferred.

Explain—as on the road to Emmaus;

or dull mortality may dismay us.

Rhyming verse is a woman scorned
to whom lip service must be paid.
Set free from meter, unadorned
Her lyric fury waits, delayed
as she rambles on in a free verse swoon,
oblivious to whoever's listening,
babbling to the crescent moon
illuminated, horned and glistening,
bathing her deluded mind
in lunar metaphors of doom.
Do not provoke her—treat her kind
and let her pass to a padded room
or an attic space beneath the eves
where she can rant and find release;
until her frenzied soul believes
that words have meaning...
                              and rests in peace.