I have written various series of poems such as “Aging with God,” “Septuagenarian Memories,” “Lord Jesus Poems,” “Intimations,” and the newest one in progress, “Poems to God.” Months ago I began the “Poems to God” series and am about to begin working on No. 136 (I don’t know how much longer I will keep working on that series).
I thought I would include a few of the “Poems to God” poems here that deal with my experience of such things as doubt, atheism, alcoholism, addiction, recovery and the longing for God.
No. 7 focuses upon God somehow being the underlying fabric of my life, spirit and guts of my life, even when He seemed so absent.
Poems to God
No. 7
You have been my obsession,
the sacred addiction of my life
through all the desperations
& gravely madding descents
destined toward final despair,
but keeping me just beyond
drowning in its oceanic fires.
Even in my slogging doubts
that never really extinguished
themselves in my cold mind,
You silently waited for me
to totally exhaust myself
before nudging me homeward
where I could remember You
from youth to this old aging.
You have been my compulsion,
the sacred mystery of my life
through all the suffered hope
& ascending suffused love
permeating my cells & soul.
* Published in St. Austin Review
In No. 10 there is a sense that inner doubt and glimpses of atheism were present, but so was an inexorable, persevering “aching for You (God) alone.”
Poems to God
No. 10
Knowing that You know all,
I’ve been soul-clobbered
by icy asteroids of atheism
& recurrently dull doubts
descending from my mind
in tandem with death’s
chorus of silent screams
over ambiguous decades
of gnarled great longing
for Your real presence
unleased & mysterious
in ordinary innocence
beyond my tepid soul.
Now simply an aging poet
of such eccentric solitude,
I search for intimations
of You among the debris &
obscure beauty of my life
as kindling to fire my soul
always aching for You alone.
* Published in Spirit Fire Review
God’s love for each one of us leads Him to become one of us in the startling, absurd, and perfectly compelling Incarnation of the Son of God from infinite love and infinite humility. As has been said, God is crazy in love with us.
Poems to God
No. 15
They say You are crazy
in love with each of us
even ego-infested me
madly willing to abandon
Yourself to ungodly ugly
suffered compassionate
descent into grotesque
humanity without delay
in divine embarrassment
& absolutely innocent
wisdom of the heart
willingly betraying all
godliness & propriety
to be born as a blood-
throbbing baby boy
destined for pure dying
& of ungoding Yourself
in infinite humility
loving us to death
with insane sanity.
* Published in Trampoline
No. 53 leans into decades of panic & anxiety disorder that sometimes reach epic proportions leaving me alone “when only a seed of love lingered.”
Poems to God
No. 53
There were those fierce times
I swear my head would explode
leaving bits of brain & soul
running thickly down the walls,
and times of deep silent screams
followed by passionate imaginings
no one would ever understand,
part fire & panic, part grotesque
mystic & open-wounds sacrifice,
“I am flesh and blood, but my mind
is the focus of much lightning.”
A universe in a firing neuron
a world each eternal moment
new thoughts every nanosecond,
my old skull a weird crucible
for dreads & remembrance
of all too many things past,
times when hopes disappeared,
& beliefs drowned in ambiguities,
when only a seed of love lingered.
* Published in Solid Food Press
The last one for today is No. 124 about when “It was the worst of time / & most hellish of times” while in a treatment center for alcoholism in late November through January 1969 in the snows of a Minnesota winter. The focal point of the poem is my seeing a crucifix on a brick wall in the center’s chapel.
Poems to God
No. 124
It was the worst of times
& most hellish of times,
ceaseless, relentless panic
screaming bitterly alone
in a sterile-night desert,
it was a self-savagery
taken to manic madness,
a deadening addiction
circling vultures
impossible reprieve
when on a brick wall
in a treatment chapel
hung a silent crucifix
echoing for millennia
a thought escaped,
what if it’s true,
the whole story
absurd & grotesque
wildly compelling?
A genesis moment
commonly mystical
beyond even despair
squawking birds of dawn
among ancient ruins
a bare, faint momentum
for such a naked soul
towards a godly whisper
taking impossible steps
towards sacred sobriety
recovering shards of hope
longing for You at last
more than another swig.
As far as I can tell, I will keep working on the series for a while longer. That reminds me of a goal I have: Before I pass on, I would like to write at least one really good poem, one that says all I was capable of saying at that particular moment. Just one good poem. But perhaps one of my unwritten poems will be the best of all.