Martin Jack

Red-Letter Day

Red mist leaves black bruises
on language, breathing rage in short-
hand until words turn bloody
sunrise.
  Christ's red-letters surround
the darkness with his redeeming blood's
font-type baptizing the page
of errors,
  a back catalogue of abuses
he recycles, pneuma descending
onto pulp diction until its rubble
breathes again in apologies.

Psalm

Disciple me Lord
graft your mission statement
onto my heartstrings, so they'll strain
under the weight of injustice,
which wears a child's face
tear-streaked with blood.

Tend me Lord
a young shoot still afraid
to stretch towards the sunshine,
nursery-bound to immaturity
which asks what about me
as friends mourn in open sight.

House me Lord
inside a praying church,
whose members go two by two
into dark, undiscovered corners,
driving out cobwebs with the rest of God
anointed in their hands and voices.

Send me Lord
where you will, alone and unarmed,
in partnership with faith
that guides me by its pillar
of light racing towards the prize,
New Jerusalem, your promise of home.

Martin Jack © 2008

Come

The open invitation to meet
Christ’s holiness, and be ransomed,
arrives almost unseen among
the junk mail, except by that poverty
of spirit crying for right relationship
on its death bed.

All that wearies,
historically,
Christ buries in his blood
that seals and completes each love-
letter from the Father,
born deeply in grace.

For those who open the letter,
his blood justifies as instruments
of spirit who intercede for creation;
the seeded works of committed
brothers and sisters planting laughter,
taming a slaughtered world.

'Come, to new life
healing the sting of old ways
and appetites that leeched
you dry'. So -
the invited become the inviting;
to Christ's smooth path

they witness
drawing out the near-sighted
into understanding,
ambassadors of human hearts
touched by God, testifying
with the ripe fruit of their lips.

Martin Jack © 2008