For those who truly listen

Messiaen paints in the air,
Flashing brilliant colors like the
lightning of your hands on the keys:
Parting the reddened form of my mouth in a love song
to the birds
and
Pushing the deeping clouds
with feathered chords across the indigo sky.

Realizing a trinity of hued love:
You, the piano and a divinely ordained synesthesia -
While the night and I race our ears to listen.
Oh how the clouds do gallop!
Propelled by some unseen force beyond my senses,
or Perhaps just as my pounding heart,
trying to keep pace with the flight of your lightening hands.

Beginning: swept up by the pulsing course
of your creation,
ever-new,
Where colors, sounds and hands
birth one holy spirit.

Faster and faster
we all dive into the sky,
until - playing and listening are so much the same -
I am the piano
on which your fingers ecstatically sparkle
beating my heart,
pressing my lips,
voicing my cries.

Spring?

When first I see the pale
grass with tender shoots
light up
I think:
Oh, I too am coming alive!

But eyes clouded with sleet
cannot grow butterflies.
And winter lingers -
heavy with ice -
While addiction poisons Newness.

Is it not better
anyway
to leave the overused field
lying fallow?

The sacrifice

Temptation is not so much a winged serpent speaking in slit tongues, but rather the fermentation of desire for love.

In laying down our lives, are we called to lay down our souls as well? How am I to lay down my life for a friend if I am to leave everything and follow You? Somewhere I am missing the freedom of this binding and seeing only the paradoxical conflict of earthly and divine loves.

"Do you love me?"

He was chasing us, and we were running. All of us, every man for himself. I knew no one. He hadn't shot anyone yet, but we knew it was coming, and yet we all obeyed in entering the open door of the house. I knew I had to hide. Grabbing a young man and woman near me, complete strangers, I threw them into a closet with me. Behind the dark wooden door, the walls of the closet were glass, and sunlight streamed through the sheer curtains. I instructed the two to lie down and be quiet. The girl kept crying and whimpering, and I lay down on top of her to silence her. She began asking repeatedly, "do you love me?" and staring into my eyes with great sadness. I assured her that I loved her.

We heard the gunshots begin, and knew that people were dying. I put my arms around the boy as well, and we were silent except for our breathing. I heard the gunman stop outside the closet door, pausing and scratching on the door before entering. He knelt down next to me and put the gun to my head, looking into my eyes. He was lonely.

As I opened my mouth to say, "please," he pulled the trigger. I don't know what happened next, because I woke up.