Mystery Without Rhyme or Reason. Michael Coffey

wail and woe,

      the birth of stars and the death of orbiting comets,

      the faith of the Masai and the death of Western dreams,

      the universal background B-flat hum of the holy lover.

      Your kenotic mind so full there is no room left for you, and so

      freely you let yourself go like a junkie or grey dementia,

      until having fallen gorgeously into depravity and death,

      the only thing left is for you to be exalted and praised

      and your mind to fill mine so in emptiness I am full and free.

      Impatience for Imposters

      Easter 2 A

      John 20:19–31

      But Thomas (who was called the Twin), one of the twelve, was not with them when Jesus came. So the other disciples told him, “We have seen the Lord.” But he said to them, “Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands, and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe.” (John 20:24–25)

      You can walk through walls and do spirit acrobatics

      you can come back from a day trip to death

      you can haunt us in our daydreams and nightmares

      but unless you walk wounded with oxblood scabs

      unless you return as once rejected and propagandized

      unless you hard code the memory of misery in skin

      you are to us only a half-assed matinee magic show

      a cheating MacGuffin plot device we groan at and walk out

      a Disneyfied ending to a once dark and dense fairy tale

      but come to us in your incarnate truth of suffering love