If I die before I am due,
rack it up to reliable
American optimism,
that preternatural instinct
to find beauty in the shadows
stolen from Japanese bodies,
goodness in fossil fuel trade routes
once locked in a sea of glacier,
and truth in the incredulous
mimicry of the megachurch.

Let the judgment be merciful
on a soul cradled in comfort,
a soul pastored in capital,
a soul that forgets it’s a soul
in a gilded market of grift.

If I die before I am due,
rack it up to reliable
American theology,
that ahistorical instinct
to revise the angel’s herald
from “all people” to “our people,”
to write sermons of amnesia,
Sola Reforma, as rebel
witnesses disrupt the zeitgeist
to find Jesus in Poetics.

Let the judgment be merciful
on a soul created of dust
and divinity, complicit
in the brokenness God endures
to make all things radiant right.

COMMENTS

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3 responses to “On the Nature of My Premature Soul and Its Capacity to Know God in the Incubator of Twenty First Century America”

1. Jean McAllister says:

   03/06/2023 at 12:10 pm

   First reading: powerful, dark, difficult, intense, sardonic, prophetic, and poignant in the end, with “the brokenness God endures/to make all things radiant right.” I’ll want to read it more carefully. But it seems good, complex and spare.

   Reply
2. Stephen Waggoner says:

   03/07/2023 at 1:10 pm

   I just love Jeremiah can reach so deep in the depths of all things not-right in the world, and yet keep firm his anchor in the goodness of God. Another poem where I think, “The world needs this.”

   Reply
3. Marissa says:

   03/10/2023 at 1:11 am

   Whew! That will preach. Thanks for this poem-prophetic-word.

   Reply