Where is Poetry?

by: Apostle

is it 2,000 years bookmarked between
a graveyard of trees, skull-white pages, empty
images of eye sockets praising that hillside, where
the principalities and the powers—where Pilate with
a seal of authority—where Pharisee preachers with
a seal of AUTHORITY killed life, killed death, killed
the crowds milling above ancient waters breaking
bread and quitting their jobs; killed it all
by putting it in a book in an empire in a church in a
pastor’s authorized hands; which is no place
for poetry, for poetry burns

with life, on our lips, as we die,
on all the cedar crosses
in all the camps, in all the schools, in all the missions--
all prisons—where we who dare to live are
made to die; and our poetry is cried out not
in its sacred language but new, vulgar, and
incomprehensible in our soiled, in our
savage, our burning, our avenging, our
sinful, disobedient, ungodly, our
FORSAKEN tongues; and the purple curtains
are tearing, and the gilded temples
are quaking, and our riot-god rises
from the ruins of all the marbled places, all
the moneyed places, all the millstone places where--
ELOI, ELOI, LEMA SABACHTHANI?--

we searched for God

---

Apostle

“Apostle” from the Greek apóstolos, meaning “one sent forth.” Issued into the world with the echo of the Christ beating in their hearts, the Apostles journey toward Kingdom Come in every eon. Their only hope is that the prayers aching in their chests might be encountered in the world outside their flesh. They keep faith in the hour when the Angel of History will make whole what has been broken; an hour which is always within reach.