the beautiful due

the last kind…

thebeautifuldue — Fri, 24 Feb 2012 18:18:54 +0000

*Beverly Kenney was a jazz singer who rose to prominence in the late 1950s…critics felt there was finally a voice to rival Billie Holiday, Sarah Vaughan, and Ella Fitzgerald…Kenney committed suicide in 1960, she was 28.

Men, women, and girl singers -

of the three kinds of humans

you were the last. You loved jazz

and the smoky little rooms

where the tunes got played. They

took note of your crusade, your

scat without scatting, your

vibrato-less gee-whizzy Fifties cool,

plus this pluperfect female shape

even George Shearing could see.

But they kept listening because

of your uninhibited phrasing,

your mad human offerings

of punctuation: semicolons where

men could breathe, commas to

put women at ease, parentheses

that gave girl singers courage.

That you always sang haunted

was widely-felt, but the ghosts were

only known by a few. Born to

be blue was always more than

a song. Then rock-n-roll invaded

our land and the loud was too

much, so you made yourself silent,

an esoteric casualty of war.

There will never be another you

is more than a song.

the sweet return…

thebeautifuldue — Wed, 22 Feb 2012 21:09:52 +0000

I posted this last year as Lent began…I doubt I’m any better at it this year, so I figured I’d repeat the post…hopefully, like grace, its sufficient.

He grew up Baptist, in the South. This doesn’t explain everything. Then again, it comes close.

Lent. He could remember hearing folks say things like ‘I’m sure I lent you that rake last fall’ or ‘look, numbnuts, I lent you $20 already.’ He couldn’t recall anyone saying ‘my, Lent is such a poignant time’ or ‘the Lenten retreat last weekend was simply cathartic!’ Of course there was always the alternate spelling - lint - and he could hear his mother’s voice: ‘still damp? check the lint filter on the dryer.’

Lent. The season leading up to Holy Week, sacred days with the cherry on top deemed Easter. Now Easter he knew, that was old stompin’ grounds – ‘up from the grave he arose (he arose), with a mighty triumph o’er his foes (he arose). Easter was the old rugged cross nailed from head to toe with lilies, choirs belting out Sandi Patti anthems and always a soloist crooning that Dallas Holm standard, sunrise services where two or three were gathered together facing east to greet the rising sun, spiraled ham and green bean casserole for lunch, and afternoon egg hunts for the kiddos.

But Lent? From what he’d observed the last few years, years where he’d been a rover among the faithful who loved to light candles and sip communion wine, Lent was quiet and still and damn near sad. You were encouraged to ponder Christ’s sufferings all decked out in the appropriate seasonal hues of contemplation and contrition. It was sorta like 40 days of hearing Jesus say ‘look, numbnuts, I lent you my blood on the cross, what have you done for me lately?’ It was sorta like that, he thought.

He did not voice these musings to his immediate circle of friends. They were, without exception, Lenters. Where he grew up, folks used to press if you’d prayed the sinner’s prayer. If you hadn’t, they were usually happy to help lead you through it, line by line, so you didn’t spend an eternity where the worm never dies and Hitler dines with Judas. These days his friends would talk about Lent with almost the same weight, sorta like it was the sinner’s season, and if you didn’t observe ‘the bright sadness’ and by chance happened to fall into a wood chipper or something, you just might be the ticker-tape in the hell parade. At the very least skipping Lent left you unprepared to truly experience all the stations of Passion Week. About the only remedy for this is slamming a case of quick-penance – watch that Mel Gibson movie three or four times to get really good and Mel-ancholy.

Lent. What to do? He pondered this in his quiet time, a residue from his Baptist youth group days. The Lenters, without exception, gave up things they enjoyed during the season. Last year his friends temporarily broke the idol-chains of coffee, chocolate, the movies, and the internet, to name a few. He didn’t give up anything and seemed to weather the season with aplomb while he watched his pleasure-denying Lenter friends get snippy and snippier and a couple of times just downright mean.

Still, Lent. What to do? Then he realized his question was too universal. He needed to get specific, local, bring it downtown; the real question was – what would a Baptist, from the South do? As soon as that thought crossed his quiet-timed mind, he heard the Sunday night special that always made him weep as a boy -
In seasons of distress and grief,
My soul has often found relief
And oft escaped the tempter’s snare
By thy return, sweet hour of prayer.

That’s it. While his friends were suffering the mortifications of the flesh and serving the least of these with justice and moodiness, he would lent his prayers to the world, both neighbor and numbnut. He purposed to write them out beginning on Ash Wednesday, not store-bought prayers addressed to the Ground Of Our Being (god help us), but word-groans hurled right into the nail-scarred mitts of Jesus. His hope? Well, he had a college prof, back in the South, who introduced him to Tennyson’s line: ‘more things are wrought by prayer than this world dreams of.’ He would lent out his prayers with the hope to wrought dreams. Yes, that’s what he’d do.

He decided on a heading for his prayers -The Sweet Return. He felt good about this decision. It fit him.

consider…

thebeautifuldue — Wed, 22 Feb 2012 04:30:48 +0000

Once you have in your bones the fundamental feasibilities of a place,

you can imagine there freely. – John Updike

*What if the rich young ruler had a poor young wife? Can you begin to imagine that? I can…

Sell all you have and give to the poor.

His rich young ears took Jesus literally,

causing a domino of shock and recoil

until finally the grievous turning away.

It was so sad. So young and so close.

Jesus thought to pursue the lost sheep

but knew if literal was the cause

literal could never be the salvation.

So with reined-compassion he chose

another way, a chance happening to

pass by the olive grove where the

poor young wife paused daily to feed

the sparrows. He stood at the edge

of her aloneness as she pitched crumbs

to the beggars. His voice still until she

had given all she had to them and only

then he dared speak: Life is a good idea.

She smiled, sensing unfamiliar patience

in him that roused the same in her.

It was merely a scrap for her but yes -

her husband might ease from striving

and seek her face once more, and

consider the birds fed without trouble.

words with friends…

thebeautifuldue — Sun, 19 Feb 2012 15:42:06 +0000

CANCER.

He looks wrung. The doctor said its gone

but the chemo needs to rage inside a

little longer, then tests, then we’ll see.

SUICIDE.

Unsuccessful, but attempted. But successful

at the attempt, so that means something,

like the dread it might be tried again.

HAPPY.

She beamed that’s how she feels these days,

so grateful because she hasn’t always felt

that way. But for now, by god, she is.

ADVENTURE.

To not resist but make a splash in life’s pool.

Such letters accumulate points on-screen but

the definition varies with your opponent.

There are games, and there’s the game.

morning…

thebeautifuldue — Sat, 18 Feb 2012 16:21:29 +0000

What if I died in my sleep and I’ve

been raised to an afterlife exactly

like my formerlife except for one

thing, a glint of vernal in my eyes

so they no longer appear brown

but green with everlastingness?

Chances are today most would

take me for yesterday’s man.

But there might be one, maybe

a middle child or possibly a birder,

to take notice of the delicacy in my

gaze accented by resurrected steps

no longer questioning, no longer

evading but taken with arrogant

benevolence, moving gradually on

a firm stage, resonant with metaphor.

the answer…

thebeautifuldue — Fri, 17 Feb 2012 13:20:04 +0000

When did all this happen?

Please tell me if you know,

for I’ve become my father

while he’s become like his

and my son resembles my

green brass yesterdays.

When did all this happen?

Please tell me if you know.

Gravely you raise the lid

off a shoebox ark releasing

sepia ghosts, harbingers of

the curse: time consumes us.

humble means…

thebeautifuldue — Wed, 15 Feb 2012 12:45:00 +0000

The bastard beat me into the men’s room by seconds,

he being half my age. A step behind, again.

As wagered my brazen foil bolted for the high urinal

leaving me the low boy. I sensed his muffled grin.

Humiliation is often crouching at the door.

I’ve heard a visit to the cave of The Nativity requires

bowing to enter through the Door of Humility.

Submission before the holy marble fits nicely in Advent

sermons, although the entry fee is never mentioned.

You younger men, God is opposed to the proud.

by and by…

thebeautifuldue — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 04:48:19 +0000

for my brother

Twin beds but we weren’t twins, we were

older and younger brothers born of a preacher

and his wife in a time that seems

prodigal now, the time of boys.

Our afternoons were ours, golden, unadorned

with today’s gaudy anxiety that boys might waste themselves

and grow into something less than extraordinary men.

We’d play up to the very borders of darkness then her

voice would rise and we’d run to supper round-tabled

nightly by our mother’s ordered fidelity.

But we knew first to bow our heads and clutch hands:

may this circle be unbroken, by and by, Lord, by and by.

Do you remember the candlestick lamp on that

cardboard table between our twin beds? It’d burn long after

they kissed us goodnight. I refuse to think we feared the dark.

I choose instead to believe like God, we so loved the world.

Brother, what we talked of in those liminal moments

I cannot say. But I can hear our twinned-laughter,

yours and mine. I hear it sometimes before I fall asleep.

On such nights I bow and reach for your hand.

pickings…

thebeautifuldue — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 12:50:32 +0000

You see its not that I don’t care.

I do just not about everything,

only some things, a chosen few -

such as three children entrusted to

my wits

and their mother who

I vowed to love to death

and the

parents worthy of a weekly call

plus the sticky friends, the ones

who eat grace from the comb.

You see then the pickings get

slim, an aggregate of judgment –

for example

the moon’s monthly striptease

and waking up early on christmas

and John Ford’s cinematic west

plus the ache when the captain sings Edelweiss.

Discernment is hard but vital,

without it your bones won’t harden,

you’ll live a flimsy-frame life.

Its the same with words, oh

my the words with their tiny

hands straining high from

their lithe lines squirming

in their oaken desks pleading

with elementary courage

pick me, pick me, pick me!

final wish…

thebeautifuldue — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 14:10:19 +0000

I wish you to chisel Latin on my headstone,

a dead phrase for a dead man but maybe

incognita enough to spur curiosity in a future

heir, to rouse wanderlust in her loins so she

returns home to rummage for its meaning

among my old books, on a page dog-eared

by me for her, her I dreamed but never met.

per freta hactenus negata -

to have negotiated a strait the very existence of which has been denied.

Chisel the words so my great granddaughter

might then live haunted by a dead man and the

cusp, and inherit courage for unknown waters.