My superhero alarm clock
Double-dares me to suit-up
For PE’s mile hike
Up life’s strange coming-of-age,
A call to braces, acne, and puberty.
I look outside my window
And wonder why others’
Faces aren’t melting,
Feeling the nuclear devastation
Of your leaving
I felt like Icarus, whose hubris led him to fly too close to sun, which melted wax on his shoulders, causing feathers to unfasten, and thus his hope of freedom to come crashing down like one of Zeus’s lightning bolts.
“Redeem and restore
What the locusts have eaten—
O Lord—
The schemes Satan’s woven,
Our innocence … stolen.”
This poem was inspired by my friend and pastor, Matt Whitlock, and his sermon on “The Silently Simple Life.”
Mystery of Tears is about redemption and restoration. More specifically, it’s about the sufferings (“spasms”) of Jesus that “broke the curse” for our benefit (i.e., “substitutionary atonement”).
It’s time to release the kraken for Christians to look inwardly with contrition in order to love courageously.
Is your view of human nature Stevensonian or Shelleyian? Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde or Dr. Frankenstein?
A poem for a season of silence in suffering.