Poetry: John Kinsella The Cryptic: Mungo MacCallum

Psalm 4. To the lead musician of Neginoth. Selah

Hear me plead righteousness, God; as I increase I grow out of distress via you, hear me singing this prayer.

All twists from truth when we lose good to shame, and I can but ask all that is endless against pursuit of vanity and profit, quietly

doing our own thing? Selah.

And knowing the Lord has set aside a place for those who are godly brings me hope of

recanting this unowned space.

To hear the silence singing.

Out of my sleeplessness, I yearn for the world

unfolding without intervention of greed, and converse

with this hope, curled into a question without doubt as my

distress rests in you. Selah.

To claim no special treatment in your less

impacting ways which are not less than many others – trust in

grace to lighten the tread.

And when despair overtakes and the desire for more and more sweeps in to offset a perception of lack, fill the

lost’s faces with the warmth of your face that won’t burn.

For all the temporary abundance of a

reconfigured planet the bright produce on trestles fades before

your bounty.

And shedding anxiety and flames that light

the darkness of the room I close myself into searching for

emptiness, I will let go and embrace sleep in safety of renewal

and hope, O Lord.

Psalm 13. To the lead musician

Will all time pass before you remember me,

before you reveal your face again, O Lord?

How long will the loss of the world around me

fill my soul make a forest of thoughts where there is no

forest outside me?

How many days will pass while enemies of life

offer life on a plate?

I need you to reach into the emptiness I feel

with disaster with collapse I need you to fill it with light that

grows outside,

I need to be free of the death-in-life sleep.

Otherwise, the exploiters will say they bought

my vote, the profiteers will say I have validated their

product.

But I know the wrongs of wealth and property

will be seen on the verge of calamity and I will rejoice with

others in your generosity.

I will sing long and loud silently and outwardly because there is still air to breathe and water

to drink, O Lord.

Psalm 121. A song of steps

When the valley is under stress from gun and

chainsaw

I look to the hilltops for a resetting of sunset.

Help comes to this location from all locations

all over, flowing in from the heavens over the earth.

But your foothold will never slip into the wastes of the rapacious for matter is yours and never

sleeps.

God of all the world of all peoples never

slumbers or sleeps and the message of a shared fate

echoes.

There is sanctuary in the shade from the side of house tree rock hills down through the

valley.

And there’s time to slow and stop the burden

of destruction we have imposed on the sun and the moon –

to live.

For the evil comes in so easily so readily via the consuming of illustrations to decorate our living – our souls aren’t in those objects.

Step up to praise the sun but don’t mimic it,

step down to let others climb the same steps without

manufacturing more – O Lord, forever.

Psalm 127. A song of steps

The house won’t stand without foundations

of trust and the town won’t work if people guard only

their own.

The insomnia that racks your life is a strange

greed of wakefulness so difficult to shake in the lateness where body

eats dark and light alike.

And children are the gift that is the tree of life,

O Lord, growing through wakefulness and sleep alike.

In laying down their weapons the once

powerful become more powerful in claiming no more than the rights of their own consciences, in not owning their offspring.

For the children are peacefully and strongly

marching against the violence and rapacity of those who rule over them, and

they ask for a chance to be heard.