Catholic Poetry---Please Read Other's Poetry, Submit Your Own Poetry and Share at the Jesus, Rose of Jesse website. To submit, Email ivorytowergroup@gmail.com. The Cabin of Jesus I have reached out into the darkness Of that home where a person finds solace where he has never laid eyes. It's where Jesus lives in all of us Hearkening to our primal need Arresting Him with hot, heart-wrenching cries. I have stepped in the dust of that cabin With spirit feet and trembling soul Having found nothing on earth of worth Hearing nothing but humanity's toll It tolls, even to the untrained ear Love or die---release or fear Having not the strength or substance To answer yes or no I stumbled desperate to His door A mass of tangled, blinded woe He greeted me quietly with fireplace and tea And offered me His Soul to lean upon His Mother in the shadows of my sadness-quiet hope Had led me to His House of breaking dawn Oh anyone can visit, who searching---nothing find His Heart's afire with tender Love for each. When you see Him you will know He has only love for you And with Burning love for JUST YOU He will reach. JMJ Haiku Mary, a calming flawless seabreeze producing unceasing healing. ----------------------------------- The step of Jesus Perfection makes His footprint Who dares not follow? The Face of Jesus I search in perpetuity for Jesus' radiant face For His tabernacle of Love to confer it's grace Upon the graceless visage of me of Eve's race Sometimes I find Him on the pages of my soul I stare and He shimmers and exposes my role As a glistening diamond when I'm a piece of coal Sometimes I find Him in an hour of darkest dread His glow soothes the night away and puts the hour to bed For He is the Light of the World as once He truly said Sometimes I find Him with His face a whit apart From my face in an alarming gesture of unencumbered love Lifting my heart from base solitude to blind ecstasy above On the Assumption of Our Lady When they sought her, She was not where they'd lain her For she'd boarded the heavn'ly train there The angels soared her silently And so saintly was she She was flown by the wings Of the most brilliant we--- The ones in the Heart Of His sheer Majesty Then like a period on the sentence of life, They settled her down in the arms of her Son. He enfolded her fleetly in the depth of His Love, To confirm her life sentence was done. And now she's the Queen of all Heaven And thus safe in His Hold Seventy times seven--- An endless time In Biblical rhyme She's come to a most perfect pity Of the young she'd left down In the imperfect city A mother whose love Is most solemnly whole--- Having pleaded her Lord Sundry times untold To lay His Loving Hand On this child or that man So they'll yet understand The Sacred Heart's The Promised Land. Blood of Christ, sanctify me. When I close my eyes I see, feel and hear a drop of Blood fall It is the most hopeful sight of my soul The most refreshing touch like a hitherto unperceived balm And I look up and it is Christ Crucified hanging like wysteria on the dome of my brain Dropping the dew of His Ancient everlasting Love into the very fibers of my being Filling the aching chasms which acid sin has carved with renewed hope For the angels are wont to fly around the chasms now to be near Him especially where His Precious Blood doth fall into His created beings in order to love them. In the Sepulchre of Christ, the second day The universe in still repose All is life here Though nothing life here A shroud silhouetting our God Every thing bows and waits Though nothing seeming abates We are on a watch---suspended The whole earth upended Into the waistcoat pocket of God Whose fingers will only wind to start time With His Son's Resurrection at dawn prime Hail Glorious Father of Old Hail Glorious Son Renewed Easter breaks forth the enlightened life With the Holy Ghost imbued. JMJ Mary at the Cross Will noone see her? She is a wraith, a ghost, a holy phantom. She doth not cry out or wring her solemn hands She stands Will noone love her? In her hour of greatest need, she is a worthless reed Mother of a criminal of the Hebrew and Roman states She waits Will she see noone? With the dignity of Wisdom, though laden with sorrow's aching And a nod from the Savior's Heart, She's our Mother in the making Will she love noone? She has pinned her heart to the infamous tree which tortures her Son Her path's sacrifice starting with two turtle doves She loves JMJ The Immaculate Heart of Mary When presuming to pass the veil of Her soul To reverence Her most pure Heart I'm confounded by billions of veils of light Of which millions---none's able to part. Her Heart more than precious, so cherished by God Will never by God be laid bare As when soil from the wings of chaste angels depart Is too much for the Virgin to bear. Therein is a clue to the Burden she Bore As her feet trod steps on Calvary Hill--- Her human heart melted dead to its core And the Host is replacing it still! JMJ On Becoming a Cloistered Nun When Jesus clasps my little hand The one attached to my nursling soul All is love, all is warmth, all is tender night All is heat, all is fire, all is passion's height All is death that I need to face All's not about me but the human race All's laying bare each discomfitting fault All's laying me up in His fortressed vault Now, not a touch of man can reach Not a ray of light, nor a child to teach Not a single blessed God-given joy Save JOY Himself---Babe, Man and Boy JMJ Spent Mother Dear wearied mothers of the indwelling God When you've finally plied your bicep of patience to its trembling, broken conclusion--- The purport of your path seeming mere delusion And the iron weight has fallen at your feet And you can go on no longer And you cry and you sink in your chair Crestfallen and fencing with despair It is the time that Jesus is there Wiping your sweat and combing your hair Preparing a place of no compare As with His own Mother you share The love of spent mothers---so rare. On recognizing a saint There is a face that's deep and weathered No matter the outward look of it. It has acquired a peace through constant inner struggle and turmoil A peace that cannot be combatted by war As war is a constant with this kind of peace. It is a person at peace with his own demise With all of his heart's desires ripped from his soul's fingers It is a person who has been beaten by the enemy so many times that it is a ridiculous thing that he still will rise to take another beating He is victorious over all just because he perseveres in unrequitted love forever He can only persevere in love forever because he is no longer himself but Christ He has only become Christ because Jesus has heard him beg to love through the Heart of Mary And it has sounded something like the tinkling bell at Consecration And has moved Him to come and live in this person in the same way as in Holy Communion, however not briefly but forever. Amen. JMJ At Mass It is ground zero of the storm of the LOVE of God but I am a kneeling un---lightning rod As there's no fit place for His Love to fill--- All atoms replete with my own self will. I repair to Mary to impart my plight And passing her hand so refulgent and white Over the offal filling each atom's cup She disguises my sin and dresses me up She presents me with love before the throne of Her Son Who, in disbelief that her job is done--- Softens---deeming dire need And comes to clean my soul, indeed. JMJ Our Sorrowful Mother---Her Later Life In grief, she'd lost her grip After they'd lain Him In her arms Which caused our Lord to slip She placed her arm then Over his chest To say she still possessed Her Son, Though half-hanging and surely dead She was in grief, In terror of present loss And loss claimed her whole being--- A tyrannical boss Creating a state of blank unrelieving--- Ne'er after---a place To rest her plaintive head Still in grief After years separated Them She coveted Calvary's sundry spots With heavy heart and muddied hem Musing the most miraculous thoughts And then pressing fair flowers To her breast And then with fingers To each sacred ground Unwitting, then and now Of the angels, high and low Who watched with admiration all around In grief, she died--it made her die She prayed fervently for worn-out life to end In love, She passed on And God's passion for His Dawn Caused His Mother's sacred body to ascend In Holy Hour before the Tabernacle of Jesus My whole heart wraps itself around The little house of God It stays there and breathes there and beats there. It does not move for fear It's movement will alert God to it's unworthy, stolen presence And like a vagabond in a sheltered corner of an opulent palace it will be asked to move along now. No, it waits in silent, studied and purposeful stillness Waits to see, sense, hear or feel anything it can from the little house But in feeling naught but nothing It is content to obtain a great deal of unsensed something Utterly confident that its dear Jesus Is communicating massive amounts of mercy and love to it. And sublimely gratified to be so near its Shining Savior! One Holy Tear One holy tear To grace The Italian marble floor Of one of the halls of the Vatican Just one and no more Cried by Mary Over the sins Of her Son's resplendent Church Would cause the demons to flee And Lucifer to lurch Would lay the bedrock bare Which he'd hard built there And let the marble ring once more With footseps of saints Upon the floor One holy tear Dropped Upon the USA Through Mary's grim And dire dismay Would shatter its tabernacles of infant death Lucifer'd polluted With sick-sweet breath Deposing this infecund king ---Exposing his stench of foul murdering But God is possessive of His Mother's tears Not allowing them beyond the fields of heaven For knowing their worth could allay our fears His justice prevents our receiving Her leaven Let us pray then to Our grieving Mother To send a sainted victim of our sin To run the gamut of those shining fields And let drop A tear Of Mary's ancient, pressing sorrow To save the world For our descendent's morrow A priest A true priest is a vagrant on God's Elbe---earth Living hand to mouth from death to birth His life---a living model of the Lily flower---Christ His death---a seeming monument To his half or unlived life. But go beyond the mystic veil Of death's rank tomb You'll find his paradise of life--- a million bloom More than the less he'd had in exile When pagan's child had mocked him all the while But those in their fine coats and shoes Hath mocked Our Savior, too---in whose--- Eyes---eternal heaven doth always shine ---If first, here--- In His sphere---last in line. To Anthony and Grace, my children who could not stop at the doorstep of my love, so anxious were they for Sweet Jesus' Arms---all my love and devotion Mary, rock my child asleep tonight In the age-old cotton clouds Who missed my heart and fell into nomadic angel crowds Who swiftly take these precious ones So little and so dear And wrap them tight in feathered wings To Mary's heart each year Dear Mary, my babies Anthony and Grace Are exceptional, you see Because they're mine and though wee They weigh like gold to me Countless gold, as starfish which roam thy celestial sea So, sweet Mary only your unceasing care will do For the ones whose hugs I never felt For the ones who belong to you. The Bride of Christ Who is the bride of Christ? The person who is like: Rose fell off bouquet Crushed by passers by the way Simple bell that wouldn't ring Because the child who heard it sing Broke it's voice by tinkering Heart who lost her cherished son In a battle never won Souls of creatures such as these Having nothing left So are left With Him Thus ne'er bereft The creature who will gaze on its Lord With love at this its rawest time Will grab His attention--- nay His ring Though aeons past its prime. Mary, at the Scourging of Jesus I looked on her in the Jerusalem of my mind For she had fainted in my arms. Her Son---tied, tortured and blind And enduring still more soldier's harms She came to---there With a wave of pure fear That the horrors she thought She'd dreamed of Had been real and nauseant and near For Her Son was truly this A child of great civility And gentle kiss A child who soothed The smallest ache of His Mother Or sore knee, or bleak day Or hurting heart of another Yet enduring ever In His Being The excruciating pain Of being a God of infinite Love Ever spurned by our disdain She came to, Thinking of His Honor Her face--- A consummate Madonna Betraying her devastation With but a single tear--- A dewdrop On the prizest rose Of the Prince's bier Although not red rose But ghastly white For she had newly witnessed Her Son's blackest plight She came to, And found her feet Though she leaned on me For half a moment--- It was less from need Then to pause and say, She is solaced By our stopping To share her pain this day. Mary's Yes Mary in Nazareth was a life-altering wind Upon the aeons of spiritual stillness Causing ripples in the waters of the world's lethargy Through her simple, most humble will---yes She affirmed the Love of All Mighty God To shatter the sentence of Eva's sin And restore the souls of her imperilled kin By sending the Body of Her Own Son in She rocked Him to sleep in the olive-laden breeze He shared all our loves, all our joys and our tears He welcomes our yes through the Heart of His Mother Who muses His dolors of thirty-three years: A God in exile upon His own creation A God of great Love and Self-Immolation Who in the final stretch Had pinned all His hopes for His loves to His tree Which he died on but once but would do endlessy If He knew it would set ALL our souls free But it wasn't to be For the still-echoing most proud---no Eternally flings the poor souls of fools To the foulest place a poor soul can go A place where Christ's Love can never soothe woe I pray this privation will never be mine For He's heard my proud nos and simpering whine God's Love and Justice being ever so pure I, a poor sinner, would never endure Without the love of my tender Mother Whose plea for me being ever so nigh Draws forth His lambent sun of Mercy Over the night of my guilty sky The Holy Family Jesus is a baby in Sacramento In a tiny room settled by three With bare bulb---the Star of Bethlehem And beaming bride---a mild Mary Fond Joseph is not far away He labors at his simple ware Tonight he's crafting cradle and chair For his baby and wife's comfort there They've fashioned a place Though chaos rages round Of life and love On humble ground If you visit, you will see She smiles at him to end his day She labors with their baby boy--- He labors making meager pay Tonight over cookie and tea--- A miracle of luxury They talk and laugh And hold Jesus tight 'Neath bulb of Bethlehem Burning bright On The Passion of Jesus We've never felt no escape Like the God of Jesse's kin Who loved and suffered infinitely Enclosed in human skin You know, as the dark matter of space Becomes entrapped and dense A smidgeon of this cosmic stuff Can lure a planet hence Thus walks He towards Gethsemane Magnetizing Massive sin Violent in it's anxious rush To clamber and to cling to Him Infinite, Ancient Intelligence Fighting total implosion Of His Body, a mere human shell Not meant for bearing vast, vile motion And a fight it was for Him Holding together a Body never formed to suffer unbounded ache He held it thus with unending love Till Death for all our sake Gethsemane Looking through the walls of Gethsemane I see Our Lord collapsed upon the ground--- His breathing---rapid, pained, unsound And now, opening, rising Ne'er setting In spiritual skies The twin suns Of His sorrowful eyes Causing souls to bear fruit And scores of saints to rise Past the white-washed walls of Gethsemane I see Sweat-drenched face and matted hair Tortured, living, gnarled Soul there And forming now Ever stemming the tide Of marching sin A hallowed red dew, Dropping in On souls Who as wheatfields Are thriving Due His seeing suns And Now This Blood, Increased by priests Will sanctify His every one They're taking Him away From Gethsemane Tying His hands So tight--- They're blue Pushlng Him He relents and falls Failing thus For me and you In agonizing Love Until God's trial Is through. Jesus Jesus, I've wanted to love you To paste my heart to Your Heart So all the healing can take place Jesus, I've wanted to hug you Until the sin and darkness Leaves my haggard soul and face My dearest Jesus, I know you are the King And I should ne'er approach you thus I pray God, though, Your Forgiveness--- I'm in agony without your touch Dearest Jesus and Dearest Mother I'm a wild and errant child Teach me to be good and holy Charitable, fervent and mild. Dearest JESUS, I know your dilemna--- I must show such tolerance too To Your other unfit children Before there's a me with You.