"Poems to God"

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.