food & thought
At a chinese joint I've meant to stop in at for months I finally moved through the door and there were tables and when I ordered the Singapore Chow Mei Fun it was red lettered on the menu and the woman quietly told me "it's hot" and I quietly told her "good" and we smiled and I sat in the corner with all the glass walls a window to the street and that seat with that view was why I'd meant to stop all that time, really, but the food came on and it was a thick yellow curry and maybe the best I've had, though I think some better will come along and I sat thinking still of the woman the day before telling me, reminding us of how everywhere our God is, how inescapable and how good and how terrifying and how solid that truth is.
He Is
He stands in every dark room.
We forget -- then feel his breath,
remember, and speak his name.
Friday, January 19, 2007
Thursday, January 18, 2007
number 28
food & thought
Rice from a cafeteria gets made a mountain at a time and there was a small hill of it on my plate with enough jerk chicken to get me through the afternoon and I was hungry and just out of Thursday service where a woman preached with some drama that won me over, finally, and moved me when she reminded me that Jesus is everywhere, whether I like it or not, and that he laughs sometimes, and before her we prayed and we sang and a student from Ghana stood before us and recited a poem from his forthcoming book and he told us what was on his mind, and afterwards, scanning the lunch tables, I saw him with his friends and he and his poem were on my mind so I went and they cleared the last empty chair at their round table and we all introduced and they were nice to let me sit and laugh with them when I could pick out their heavy english and so I ate with these men that brought their smiles all the way from West Africa except one from Trinidad and it was good and the rice wasn't bad either.
After He Read
All their tongues thick with accents,
his strong poem, powerful
words called me to their table.
Rice from a cafeteria gets made a mountain at a time and there was a small hill of it on my plate with enough jerk chicken to get me through the afternoon and I was hungry and just out of Thursday service where a woman preached with some drama that won me over, finally, and moved me when she reminded me that Jesus is everywhere, whether I like it or not, and that he laughs sometimes, and before her we prayed and we sang and a student from Ghana stood before us and recited a poem from his forthcoming book and he told us what was on his mind, and afterwards, scanning the lunch tables, I saw him with his friends and he and his poem were on my mind so I went and they cleared the last empty chair at their round table and we all introduced and they were nice to let me sit and laugh with them when I could pick out their heavy english and so I ate with these men that brought their smiles all the way from West Africa except one from Trinidad and it was good and the rice wasn't bad either.
After He Read
All their tongues thick with accents,
his strong poem, powerful
words called me to their table.
Wednesday, January 17, 2007
number 27
food & thought
Lucky enough to have sub sandwiches with my parents around their dinner table and how I laughed with my mom when I realized I'd piled all my dad's favorite toppings on my own sandwich -- not knowing that he likes banana peppers and jalepenos and black olives and all the specific choices I had made, we laughed at how I've grown into a taste for these things that my father found a liking for years and years ago and now they find a home with me too as I quickly become the man and we ate our lunch there, warm indoors and with each other and our family laughter which is like no other: it was a respite, that meal, between me and my old man's work under the house that morning and later that afternoon, there in January with a broken hot water heater we replaced and made work in the mold and slime and dank crawlspaces we don't want to think about on hands and knees with shed snake skins all around us and our heads full of spiderwebs -- some of them made by the colony of black widows that haunts my parents' house and I chewed my bread thinking how lucky to work and talk with my dad all day like that, him still teaching, and my hands, grown now, still needing to learn from him and finally wanting to.
Day With My Father
Working all day in the dark,
skinned with muddy cobwebs, now
Dad boils water for our tea.
Lucky enough to have sub sandwiches with my parents around their dinner table and how I laughed with my mom when I realized I'd piled all my dad's favorite toppings on my own sandwich -- not knowing that he likes banana peppers and jalepenos and black olives and all the specific choices I had made, we laughed at how I've grown into a taste for these things that my father found a liking for years and years ago and now they find a home with me too as I quickly become the man and we ate our lunch there, warm indoors and with each other and our family laughter which is like no other: it was a respite, that meal, between me and my old man's work under the house that morning and later that afternoon, there in January with a broken hot water heater we replaced and made work in the mold and slime and dank crawlspaces we don't want to think about on hands and knees with shed snake skins all around us and our heads full of spiderwebs -- some of them made by the colony of black widows that haunts my parents' house and I chewed my bread thinking how lucky to work and talk with my dad all day like that, him still teaching, and my hands, grown now, still needing to learn from him and finally wanting to.
Day With My Father
Working all day in the dark,
skinned with muddy cobwebs, now
Dad boils water for our tea.
Tuesday, January 16, 2007
number 26
food & thought
They'd redone the floors (new tile) and the booths (new, unfinished plywood), but the mexican food was still thin, cheap and crap but me and my friend crammed the stale chips and watery salsa down anyway with a room full of college kids chugging beers and screaming about, well, everything, and in the middle of that it hit me that I'd asked God for something and he'd answered because the whole time we were with the men at the center tonight, I didn't think about the goddess siren from the coffee shop not one time, and my friend said "Hey, neither did I..." and we clinked glasses and thanked Jesus and went back to our dishes soaked and skinned with badly melted cheese, and it was then that thoughts of her, long-haired and quite blonde and walking by our small table with our bibles and mouths open -- those thoughts returned in a flood that covered all my earth and I bobbed along in my mind's gopherwood ark, everything stacked in her jeans reminding me of my past notions of the promised land and I had to turn both eyeballs, one at at time, with two hands each, to find something on the wall, some shadow to stare at until she passed us by, a sweet-scented ghost, and us with blood on our doorposts.
Answered Prayer
Realization spilled like
split yolk: we'd tended business,
all blonde thoughts of her banished.
They'd redone the floors (new tile) and the booths (new, unfinished plywood), but the mexican food was still thin, cheap and crap but me and my friend crammed the stale chips and watery salsa down anyway with a room full of college kids chugging beers and screaming about, well, everything, and in the middle of that it hit me that I'd asked God for something and he'd answered because the whole time we were with the men at the center tonight, I didn't think about the goddess siren from the coffee shop not one time, and my friend said "Hey, neither did I..." and we clinked glasses and thanked Jesus and went back to our dishes soaked and skinned with badly melted cheese, and it was then that thoughts of her, long-haired and quite blonde and walking by our small table with our bibles and mouths open -- those thoughts returned in a flood that covered all my earth and I bobbed along in my mind's gopherwood ark, everything stacked in her jeans reminding me of my past notions of the promised land and I had to turn both eyeballs, one at at time, with two hands each, to find something on the wall, some shadow to stare at until she passed us by, a sweet-scented ghost, and us with blood on our doorposts.
Answered Prayer
Realization spilled like
split yolk: we'd tended business,
all blonde thoughts of her banished.
Monday, January 15, 2007
number 25
food & thought
What I called lunch was something I ate out of its styrofoam container with a spork in a parking lot as my car idled and my mind turned things over and I'd just been in a church with people, maybe fifty of us, and students read things from the bible and some stood and read things that MLK had said, and one student played the piano and led us through song, he called us into his song, and he gave us that song and finally, we sang with him and all of us heard old voices today, things first said so long before us but still alive now, words that live, that move out on our new breath, alive and wrapped in the gift in our mouths from the spirit of God that hovered over the dark waters before we were when God was about to speak, himself.
Kingdom, Come
We dream too, brother, your dream
resonating in this day
we confess hate, march toward love.
What I called lunch was something I ate out of its styrofoam container with a spork in a parking lot as my car idled and my mind turned things over and I'd just been in a church with people, maybe fifty of us, and students read things from the bible and some stood and read things that MLK had said, and one student played the piano and led us through song, he called us into his song, and he gave us that song and finally, we sang with him and all of us heard old voices today, things first said so long before us but still alive now, words that live, that move out on our new breath, alive and wrapped in the gift in our mouths from the spirit of God that hovered over the dark waters before we were when God was about to speak, himself.
Kingdom, Come
We dream too, brother, your dream
resonating in this day
we confess hate, march toward love.
Sunday, January 14, 2007
number 24
food & thought
There's always so much food on chinese buffets, and never enough, and tonight the black peppered shrimp nearly sent me to the other side, but it didn't quite, and we cracked our cookies and shared our fortunes, my good friends, there, through the mountain pass and tunnels in a place called Jefferson City, and they drove me to the best chinese around, my mind and me trailing thoughts of the valley I'd just driven through, all the violence and power and cracked, sliding weight of all that stone up the shear sides of those walls, hemming in my way and the last of the afternoon's light, we ate and we laughed and it was good.
Mountain Pass
I wound through the broken rocks
where men cut us a thin road
to see you friends, break our bread.
There's always so much food on chinese buffets, and never enough, and tonight the black peppered shrimp nearly sent me to the other side, but it didn't quite, and we cracked our cookies and shared our fortunes, my good friends, there, through the mountain pass and tunnels in a place called Jefferson City, and they drove me to the best chinese around, my mind and me trailing thoughts of the valley I'd just driven through, all the violence and power and cracked, sliding weight of all that stone up the shear sides of those walls, hemming in my way and the last of the afternoon's light, we ate and we laughed and it was good.
Mountain Pass
I wound through the broken rocks
where men cut us a thin road
to see you friends, break our bread.
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