poetry – Page 4 – nathanael.ink

January 23, 2024

directions to mattering’s house

mattering’s house is present
it can feel elusive but isn’t

you’ll pass every tombstone and birth certificate

look for its window toward the future
that’s where mattering sometimes sits for breakfast

if you pass the moment you have gone too far
but carry on if you still see anything behind you

mattering’s house is present
they can’t live anywhere else

look for the mayfly or dandelion seed in the air
they aren’t exactly there but at least you’ll know you’re near

we’ve passed the house I think a thousand times while reading this
but don’t worry it is still there

oh, and their house has everything in it
you will love being, well,
here

Poetry

meaning, philosophy, poem, poetry, Taoism
January 3, 2024

feel awake

i want to feel awake
i like to be baptized
so that a man’s hand on my back can shoot me up from the water
you forget
there is a last time you’ll swim with your father
in a plastic pool or city lake
and even if he mostly held you under
sometimes still
he shot you up from the water
and the water looking on
and us awake
i keep pulling the sheets off of my head
but it’s not the same

Poetry

childhood, loss, meaning, poem, poetry
November 7, 2023

The Corkboard in the Church Kitchen

PREPARATION

4 TRAYS FOR JUICE AND BREAD

Crackers in cabinet by window as is extra juice

     Put about 20 to 25 crackers per tray

     If we have the gluten free 2 go in center

          Of each tray

There is a gadget that is used to fill the juice

     And fill at least up to ring of the silver tray

The glass vase is filled about 1/2 full

Refrigerator has the bread to go on plate. (if you

do not see plate look in cabinet above sink)

The goblet will be up there also.

Put bread and juice on piano and organ please.

CLEAN UP

Off the communion table bring the communion

     Items to the kitchen to be washed.

You need to go thru the church and pick up the

     Cups and paper left behind.

Fill the communion trays with cups every other

     One and put down in the cabinet with the

     Bread trays.

Make sure kitchen is neat and turn light off.

Volunteers
Volunteers are unpaid…
Not because they are
Worthless…
But because they are
Priceless !!

Conceptual Poetry

poem, poetry
September 24, 2023

christ in mind

if it turns out that GOD
is legible
to my mind
then where are the words located
with respect to me
if GOD is a voice I hear
in my head
did Jesus hear it too? and if Jesus is Christ and Christ is GOD
does GOD hear the same voice that we do?
(even if it’s just the way I hear my voice in my head)

Do GODs thoughts run in trains like mine
or are they somehow all at once
the closest thing I know to that
is a panic attack
when all the windows into my conscious mind quickly close
and even I can’t get access back
it looks like when two trains collide
that’s why I wonder if it happens when too many thoughts overlap

I want a faith so strong it doesn’t matter how the facts turn out
If GOD is a voice to me the way that Judah has become
does that at least mean GOD was once alive? like Judah once was?

I don’t want to be afraid of finding things out about the world
maybe it’s like how some people say
that people change
but we can’t know for sure if they change
or if we just learn more about them
or they learn more about them

whatever GOD is like
with or just a voice or not
I hope that GOD
will stay.

Art, Poetry

christianity, faith, meaning, philosophy, poem, poetry
September 21, 2023

does my body know

why am I in so much pain
my body aches
does my body know
what my heart’s been through?

I want an algorithm to stitch me in a sonnet
I want to be pretty but my mind and words I think are ruined

my esophagus keeps closing
it is hard to breathe
& hard to breathe
and my esophagus is closing

it’s like my body wants to shut me up
but I find other ways
to say my peace
and ruin things

I want to be pretty & grieve
and lie and cheat and steal for good reasons
I want to be so transcendentally things
that everything I know and believe translates into me
I could read their mind and know
they heard me out and understood
and there would be no judgement
when I am everything
because knowing all the good reasons we got here
would get us all the good will we’d need to leave

leave suffering
and ecstasies
and everything
in between

so that every experience takes on equal incandescent degrees and specificity
takes on all the meaning an experience could ever be

it is not a game of raising up
or thinking more highly of
it is to dispose of scales completely
it is not a flattening
it is where no two things have any two points of comparison
where each experience takes on its own complete dimensionality

better and worse lose application

I know this is just the sort of thing one might expect to find in poetry…
it’s just… I’m sick and throbbing and all I want is to stop wishing I wasn’t

Blog, Poetry

death, depression, faith, god, grief, loss, meaning, philosophy, poem, poetry, Taoism
September 15, 2023

why is it so painful to watch children grow?

as you grow
I grow

the two will never meet
as you grow
I grow

into more of you & out of present me
the two will never meet

Poetry

childhood, children, grief, meaning, poem, poetry, Preschool
September 12, 2023

oh that was before the end

oh that was before the end
a whirl dies down
my family and them at some event
some picture I’m not in
I can’t recall the final time
& dates don’t help
forever
I said
eternity in my heart I meant
I heard GOD’s present moment is big
so big my past and future fit in it
I hate GOD
or
I hate being GOD
I hate having back the present moments I passed
I cannot know whoever they are now
I hate how when I am GOD I already know where this is going
I hate being GOD and sitting on my hands to keep from putting the world I want together

I don’t want them free
I don’t like knowing someone said they loved me and will never say it again

the only thing I like about GOD might be not changing
if I cut my hair I am another person
the old is passing and the new still becoming

all of this before the end
one which I still cannot tell is ever coming

Poetry

death, faith, god, grief, meaning, philosophy, poem, poetry, Taoism, theology
August 29, 2023

it is the concrete we made

the flower picked at seven
is dead by eleven
& no fear
they pick another
picked for mother

i don’t think humans were made
to walk single file

they reach for flowers
they run and trip
it is the concrete we made
that scrapes their knees

i don’t think humans were made
to walk single file

Poetry

childhood, children, poem, poetry, Preschool
August 24, 2023

his name on the lease
where she takes me in
she takes the same steps
to get to it

i’m guessing my keys
used to be his

and even in my bed
his name slips

she wishes
she never… though

his name on the lease
& their anniversary is the wi-fi password
and she wants to move to Portland
and she wonders why she hates it here
where I am

& I watched his name renew
on their anniversary
on the new lease
in the city
where I live

and she hates it here
she says

Poetry

grief, loss, love, poem, poetry
August 16, 2023

historical now

do you feel haunted?
can you forgive
when you notice
how unlikely it is
that anything we currently believe
is correct

are you petrified?
can you feel
free of dreaming of knowing anything

i know we are primitive
to eight thousand years from now
& on our evolutionary scale
that might as well be the same
time as me
even existing

what would it mean
to enjoy living
& noticing
you, like me, are every living thing

Poetry

faith, grief, meaning, philosophy, poem, poetry, Taoism, theology

Tag: poetry