Undone

shatter me, God,
fracture mind's stale, provincial
orders,
stagger soul's calibrated vanity,
bruise heart's numb meat,
snap bones

.......no,
............break me like the dawn breaks
..........................................dark's vacancies:
so gently
the night is glad to die

Speak Easy

in the cathedral of Desperation
amid the lingering incense of burnt
birthrights, the ordered emptiness, the saints
of Lostness who pose in beatific depravity
or you will rape
the chaste silence of self-
knowing, defile the sacred anguish with
profane murmurs of worthiness

step easy
among the fragile souls
broken, irregular cusps: the bright
clutter of escaped promise half
buried on an abandoned, disinterested shore
or they will cut you,
not that they are cruel,
but that you are careless, an ignorant tourist
in the landscape of despair

Motion

First Law-

vital disruption maims a fatal trajectory,
a deadly rest

Second Law-

sometimes only a switch makes a switch,
a life a life

Third Law-

to fear not what they fear, fear
what they do not

The Knife of My Desire

Give me a creed that's raw
Unleavened by balance
Unbuffered by civilities
Rude to the bone

A creed that outrages me
Stuns my sensibilities
Galls my good taste
Flays my moderation

A creed that's ravenous
And implacable and scrapes
Me alive
Give me contusion

Give me a God
Who never apologizes
For anything
Ever

Who soils milky white
Orthodoxies with spit
And wild disregard
A God who has no ear

For my exceptions
Or soothing balms for
My rebellious brow
Or deals to cut

Give me a blade
To fall on
A sweet injury
that finishes me off

for good.

at first
it was easy this faith
an astringent hit of pure being
it burned its own ether

then the slow pall
faith rehearsed like lines
until there was no reason no object no fire
at all

at night now
like the vexing cry of infants
memory plagues the dreaming house
giving shape to absence

O for the terror!
O for the night of the firstborn!
O for the coming that slays these strange children
at last!

Fred Allen is a former teacher and pastor who now heads Burning Bush Ministries, a small missions organization based in Salem, Oregon. His poems have appeared in Perspectives, Sojourners, These Days, A New Song, Fireweed, Adoration, and other places. Also a cartoonist, his work has appeared in Leadership, Christianity Today, Youthworker, The Door, and are a regular feature in Christian News Northwest. His ministry has taken him to Bangladesh, Brazil, Canada, Ghana, India, Kenya, and Russia. He lives in Salem with his wife and four children.