Poems: Lonely Jesus

More and more am I sensitize to how lonely Jesus must have been. 

Maybe it comes with age and warning weakness

Losing that desperation for all the distractions

Or just learning how lonesome we humans really are

A lonely Jesus

Lonely in the garden, praying alone

Friends try but they’re wrapped up in their own problems

Too frightened to be vulnerable

Go to dark Gethsemane we sing

Little aware of the pain it must have been:

How much more can I give?

Everybody wants a piece of me

Everybody wants to use me

Were you there

I cannot dare

Lonely even at the busy supper, despite the friendship around

When his words are so misunderstood

How sad to be so alone

No one really understands

So alone on the cross

Not even his Father paying attention to his hurt

How else do we face our deaths, but ultimately alone?

How else do we face life, but ultimately alone?

Facing myself is hard enough

How can I ever hope to face you too?

The outside resources fail or are too frail

Drawing only from deep within

The deepening

Facing oneself, for there is no other,

or there in those chambers of darkness, in the solitude of the soul,

sensing the breath of God upon my neck

Yet terribly elusive

Like Orpheus descending,

Desperate to hold the flesh of his love

Only to turn and find the memories are all he has

For she, his beloved, Eurydice, is gone

Lost and loss

Slipping away, sliding away,

And he is alone, once again feeling alone and dead

His fingers find it hard to play the harp again

Elusive and frustrating

Like the tears we shed that never are heard

Pillows moistened while the TV blares

For even if he is beside you, he’s somewhere else,

Us expecting others to fill me

And take away my isolation, my emptiness

Watching Lenno or the Daily Show

Filling time

Stalling time

The tears he never knew

There is something secret about dark nights

Something inescapable in the silence

Brooding on the flicker of the flame burning from thin wick

More stub and charred from the burnings before

Wicks poorly trimmed

Wicks dimly burning

But the only wick we’ve got

Would there be a wind, or a lover’s breath to raise the flame

Even at the risk that the breath might put it out

Leaving only smoke rising in twisting spirals

More and more am I aware how lonely Jesus must have been. 

Lonely in the garden, praying alone

Go to dark Gethsemane

Lonely even at the busy supper, despite the comrades and cousins around

Each scared to be vulnerable

Where his words are so misunderstood

To say things so clear

So much sense

Yet no one comprehends

Looking at him like some deaf man mouthing mute phrases

What did he say?

Did anybody hear?

Lives strewn by these little deaths

The silence of the loss

How sad to be so alone

No one really apprehends

All the voices chattering

All the noise of the needs

All the commotion of the crowds

All the shouts of crucify

All the taunts of the others

The damning silence of his friends

So alone on the cross

Except the sobs of his mother

Or did she howl the way mothers of dead children do?

Not even his Father listening to his hurt

And the wounds of all the lonely people

A wounded Jesus embracing solitude that we might know the communion of skin

Embraced by the body even as we accept our own loneliness

As he looks you into your eyes

As he looks you into your eyes

For solitude teaches us how to die, the prophets and poets write

But the darker solitude of God whispers in the dark, like a lover, wondering tonight:

Will we finally hear?

Will we finally care?

Will we finally give?

Will we finally live?

Will you now take the weakness I offer?