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Dancers: fleeting green 'midst breeze,
Worth but the spoils man perverts.
Lions dance on concrete paths;
How pure their roots, O Son of Man?

I measure death with every glimpse.
How fallen to perceive in't life
When left for refuse, iron parks,
Vacation summers, "Golden Years."

Come, 'nigh, O righteous Father! As the
Butterfly from hanging womb,
Appropriate the paths gold!

-Tod Kreider

Seeker

I wrote this just now, about my experience last Sunday afternoon, and since Lindsey has been bugging me to post, I thought I would.

Seeker

Wondering
Wandering
Far far away –
Except not far.
Because I can’t get there.
Just walking down a road
Past beauty I can’t touch because it’s trespassing
And no one else seems to see.
Feeling like I’m off to seek my fortune
And wishing it was true
And my car wasn’t parked a block away on a little dirt road off of Pettis.
My backpack holds everything I need to survive: a Bible, notebook, toothbrush and toothpaste, my cell phone.
Cell phone doesn’t belong on that list.
But I’d feel guilty if I didn’t have it.
I have to concede a little to safety.
And my car keys.
Keys to a car that I’ll have to walk back to, my anchor to the world I’m trying to leave.
The road is on before me all golden in the afternoon light and unfamiliar
So that it asks me to come on and seek adventure.
Does reading books do this to everyone?
Am I the only one that hasn’t grown out of this pretending?
“What do you want to do?” they are always asking me.
I want to go out into the wide world and seek my fortune.
What would they say if I said that, I wonder?
“So you are going to be a teacher.”
It’s a statement, not a question.
The answer is no.
I’m not going to be a teacher. Not how they mean.
I’m not going to be job hunting in the next year, interviewing for a teaching position.
I’m not going to wear a business casual suit.
I’m where I belong, right here, right now.
I turn down a road and find the entrance to a fancy subdivision, Beautiful and forbidding.
I walk past the “Private Drive Residents Only” sign,
Feeling like a vagabond walking into town.
If I kept walking people would peek out their windows,
Watching the wanderer in strange clothing entering their street unbidden,
Suspicious of this shiftless roving vagrant.
When they ask me, I will say,

“I am Joanna, Seeker of Dragons, and I am going to seek my fortune.”

Past Redemption

Lindsey Renée

I have declared myself divine.
And what’s the crime in that?
I tasted, I shared, I fell away
To the paradise of my making.

Twice enlightened doesn’t happen.
It’s impossible – or so I hear.

My Faith committed suicide.
Slit her wrists in a porcelain tub,
Died in water and blood.
I tasted, I shared, I turned away
To the purgatory of my choice.

Twice enlightened doesn’t happen.
It’s impossible – or so I hear.

Fidelity’s not one of my virtues.
Woke up entangled in silk sheets,
Caught in the arms of my prostitute.
I get bored too easy.
I taste, I share, I run away
To the inferno of my desires.

Twice enlightened doesn’t happen.
It’s impossible – or so I hear.


The above poem was an assignment for Creative Writing. The prof has asked us to write a psalm or hymn. I ended up writing a sort of anti-psalm inspired by the voice of “Ballad of a New God” and Mark Jarman’s poem “Question for Ecclesiastes.” I also drew on Hebrews 6:4-6 and Ezekiel 16. Please, understand that it is not to be taken as my own statement of faith. In a sense it is ironic. That stated, what are your thought?