NaPoWriMo// holy week

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This week, I’ve gotten to theme some of my poetry around that week 2,000 years ago that rocked the entire cosmos — the week Jesus died.

//day 9// triumphal entry

The day the king arrived,
The crowds burst forth in cheers —
Here was he who’d save them from
Their iron-fisted fears!

Hearts stirred thick with hope;
Lips broke forth with song;
Nothing could restrain the cries
As the rider came along.

Astride the beast, a man
Who brought the dead to life —
Could he be the promised one
Who’d crush the Roman might?

Hosanna, king who comes!
Oh save us, you who ride!
Conquer the black foe who has
Our heartland occupied!

//day 10// clearing the temple

The still before the storm
Came the night before.
Now tables hit the floor
Beneath His mighty arm.

The coins and creatures sprawl,
The temple-market closed,
The den of thieves exposed
By the fearsome God of all.

//day 13// the last supper
— a sonnet

{It Was Night.}

Around the table, thirteen men gathered
To celebrate a feast of life and death.
The lamb had died that men might draw their breath
A thousand years ago, but now it matter’d
More than escaping Death’s dark blade that once.
Unlike all other nights, unlike that blood
That dried, this blood is life, this flesh is food;
This is no wool-curled sheep, but Heaven’s Prince;

He rescues not a nation, but a race;
The sacrifice is not for once, but all;
If those twelve men had known their master’s face
Would bear the death and curse of Adam’s fall,
They would have trembled at the hope fulfilled,
For yet redemption’s path was steeped in red.

//day 14// the crucifixion

A ball is spinning blue and black,
a globe shrouded
in darkness,
as the Lord
Who made it
is rent —
body from soul —
and shrouded
in the heart
of the earth.

NaPoWriMo// week 4

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The last full week of this month of poetry.  wow.  I’m not exactly sure how that makes me feel.

This week, after getting frustrated with myself for waiting until the end of the day to write my poem when I was out of inspiration (as mentioned last week 😉 ), I decided to go with an idea I’d toyed with before and write a series of poems on the different covenants/promises of God throughout history in God’s overarching story of redemption.  Simple, right?  No more messing with ‘what do I write about tonight??’  Well, I decided to actually go with a meter and rhyme scheme such that if someone were to create an appropriate tune, you could actually sing it as a hymn.  So, that meant a week of writing approximately a stanza a day of a poem with a set topic, set rhyme, and set meter.  Sometimes, it got a little frustrating, but I think it turned out tolerably in the end.

Consequently, I have but two poems to post for the week:  my lengthy one on redemptive history, and one shorter one I wrote on Thursday when I wanted a break from the rest of it.  xP

Any thoughts?  preferences?  Do you like longer or shorter?

//day 26//

Sometimes you think you know
what a year might bring.
There are days you try to guess
what joys will make you sing.

You’ve read it in books;
you can picture the plot.

But then I live out my story,
and it’s not all what I thought.

Because how could I imagine
the places, the people, the books
that would become the make of a journey
and mark each step I took?

All I can do sometimes is look back
and see, reflect, behold
the beautiful, mysterious path
in a tale I couldn’t have told.

//days 22-25, 27-28//

You had a plan to reveal Yourself,
A plan to make emptiness full,
To flood the darkness with glorious light,
And to make something formless whole.

“I will be your God,
and you will be My people.”
The Creator begins the song.

One simple rule:  “Don’t eat from this tree,”
But the battle raged deeper still.
Wholeness is not found apart from the One
Who marks between good and evil.

“I will be your God,
and you will be My people.”
The creation questioned the tune.

We bought the snake’s words, tried on our own,
And found ourselves fallen in shame,
Hiding in pieces of covenant broke.
“The serpent will be overcome.”

“I will be your God,
and you will be My people.” —
Still the promise:  “My war is won.”

The black blotted all but one man’s heart —
Year upon year, dark upon dark.
Grieved to the quick, You washed Your world clean,
Preserving the eight in Your ark.

“I will be your God,
and you will be My people.”
The words arced in colors and light.

From the eight survivors, nations began.
From the many, You called just two —
A man and his wife, not yet a family,
But staking their all on a Who.

“I will be your God,
and you will be My people:”
A story as vast as the stars.

All the start:  a pinprick of light —
In old age a promise of son.
“Through you, all nations on earth will be blessed” —
In wandering, promise of home.

“I will be your God,
and you will be My people.”
A nation — a world — from one man.

To a nation of slaves, rescue came
The Light stretched its might in the dark.
You gave them a homeland, showed them Your grace,
And they vowed to live by that mark.

“I will be your God,
and you will be My people.
I am the LORD Who broke your yoke.”

From the fields, You took a shepherd boy
Through victory, trial, and song,
Established him as the king of Your flock;
In seeking You, his reign was strong.

“I will be your God,
and you will be My people.”
You made his throne sure forever.

But all these pictures were promises,
Hints and shadows of something More.
You wrote the story we couldn’t complete,
The king, the light we’d waited for.

“I will be your God,
and you will be My people.”
You were all that we could not be.

Your perfection in place of our death,
Instead of our blackness, Your light.
You fulfilled Your justice through Your Son’s blood.
Your reversed the curse in Your might.

“I will be your God,
and you will be My people” —
The promise fulfilled evermore.

“I will be your God,
and you will be My people.”
Your triumph in glory ablaze!

Okay.  Maybe not the part about singing it.  It’s longer than I realized……

NaPoWriMo// week 3

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Week 3 already!  I honestly wasn’t sure how writing poetry for a month would go — especially since the whole novel writing month thing never really pulled together for me.  xP  But I’ve really been enjoying this overall!

This week turned out a little choppier, I feel like, just because writing poems at 10:30 at night after a long day doesn’t really foster creativity and coherent thinking. 😦

Earlier this week, though, I had a little more time and got a little more reading done. During my gap year, I’ve been doing a ‘book club’ with Mommy where we read a book a month and discuss it together.  This month is The Book That Made Your World:  How the Bible Created the Soul of Western Civilization by Vishal Mangalwadi.  It’s a thick book, but it’s actually one of the most fascinating non-fiction books I’ve ever read.  It explores the differences in mindset between Western and non-Western culture and why they produce such different results.  But specifically it looks at why they are so different and the astounding role the Bible played in making Western Civilization — its thinking, its writing, its art, its heroes, its ideas.  Like I said, it’s fascinating.  It makes you wonder and look at and appreciate the world and the God Who stepped into it so much more.  O.o

But all that to say, it inspired these first two poems.  🙂

//day 15//

How could I know night
–   unless there was a day?
How could I know blindness
–   unless someone could see?
How could I know toil
–   unless I’d once known joy?
How could I know brokenness
–   unless I’d once been whole?
How could I know death
–   unless I’d been alive?
How could I know darkness
–   unless I’d felt the light?
How could I long for something
–   that doesn’t exist?
— unless it does

also used here, but so perfect I had to…

//day 18//

Books hold something because of
a Book.
Words have meaning because of
the Word.

They say a pen is mightier than
a sabre.
But why?

Because there is truth
Because there is something
–             to know,
–             to communicate,
–             to discover.

They say words are doors.
But when they are unknown,
–                                uncommunicated,
–                                undiscovered,
They are barricades,
–         separating freedom from ignorance.

But if there is truth, there
is something to know,
and words become jars
to carry torches.

If there is truth, there
is something to tell,
something to communicate,
and pens become fountains
of a wellspring.

If there is a truth, there
is something to discover,
a reason to search,
because those who seek
will find.

Take away the truth
– and what?
– Don’t look —
It only hurts to want
–   a story
when there is no Teller.
Words are nothing
–  if there is nothing to tell.

//day 19//

Pouring out words
Over paper — just one more tribute that
Everything stems from
The mind of the Maker:
Rarest beauty in purest ecstasy.
You breathed them first,
–      and our attempts are just
–      sparks lit from Your
–           flame.