User:Joe Spencer/(This,) the face of my father: Peniel

  (This,) the face of my father: Peniel

  he: shut and none shall open;
  no key remains to hope in;
  spurning bath, disdaining unction,
  ignoring mantle: fails to function
  my calling word;
  my calling, third.					
  so I strain to riddle sounds
  from my own mouth; my eardrum pounds
  a rhythm such that heartbeats die;
  hearing me, though?  only I
  
  beholden to him, yet unseen,
  is the here of my here-being;
  for my here and there rose black--
  an apple--out of the lack
  that iris is;
  that iris, his.
  so I blink and, thus, retain
  both the sacred and profane
  and hold them to, then sigh:
  witness to them?  only I
  
  two holes he drilled in me,
  filled them up with my to-be;
  but with a count so low, I shake
  for trembling fear; all logics break
  on rocks of breath;
  on rocks of death.
  so I long for sweet smell past,
  breathing stink, now, by contrast;
  breathed as slave though not smelled by:
  the breathless one?  still only I
  
  worded, told, bespoken,
  almost sung, laid out, betokened,
  though never mouthed: a tongue lacks he
  to speak the name he gave to me
  in choral shout;
  in choral doubt.
  so I weave, in different play,
  all I never heard him say:
  woe is me (and undone: my
  most unclean lips): still only I
  
  though he faces not, as such, 
  yet he holds me with his touch, 
  keeping me in token; freezing
  all my flesh in seizing
  beneath the sky;
  beneath the thigh.
  so I grip his hand in token
  of what still remains unspoken
  not to breathe, to hear, to see--
  his touch: therein find I me

• The scripture that inspired this poem: Isa 22:22.
• Other scriptures engaged in this poem: Isa 6:3, Isa 6:9-10, Deut 32:10, Facsimile no. 2, Isa 2:22, Matt 21:44, Isa 3:24, D&C 130:11, Isa 6:5, Gen 32:25.