the glass long in breaking

The Teacher said,
“Consider, children –
that noble art, the fine tradition,
of mending what is broken and not blurring out
or censoring a living thing to hide the shame of mending
Something broken does not need
to be hidden but seen
the art is in its breaking,
The human touch is that tape
propping up a botched Eden with elbow grease
“So, children, art has the type of scars,
left by the long breaking jar;
which must strive to hold itself,
the moment it is dropped.
The lines appear the time is here
the space between each shard disappears
the drinking vessel by association with us,
The Shame!
The children of Adam gave sin to the Saint!
Children, look upon the glass, the rag
The duct-tape holding shivering glass –
But I tell you, it is the human touch
To feel such empathy for a cup!

The student said,
And think, Master, then of the cup;
Are we not cared for by our Lord?
And the master smiled and nodded.
“But why his silence, Father?
No succor for the fragile,
nor heed for the hopper.
No weed for the daytripper smack for the Bopper –
Where was God when they cried out then,
Not the glass, but God’s own men?
He is a sadist, this mad potter that –
Casts with lots such things as that!

The teacher eyed the boy, a smile,
How curious thought the old man, while,
The others in the room had taken sides;
“And what is the greatest gift we could have of God?”
The master asked and waited, calm.
Shouts of “Faith!” and “Peace for all!”
Shouts of Messiah and the Fall;
“Children, please, you must believe.
The truth, how sad, but none the less correct for that,
God’s greatest gift is his absence, for glass,
may shatter beneath the most loving of Hands;
the hands that held the hells below and lifted mountains
through the snow,
would wrap around each one of us,

And in that cocoon – as safe as the womb,
as warm as a summer evening,
Our Lord brings sand and casts in hand
The long in breaking Glass;
Oh, sweet children ye are such,
A cup, nay a fount,
That yearns to be full to keep God out;
The jungle we have is not to be wrapped
In silk and kept in a case in the back
The glass is Atlas and he cracks,
But long in breaking he keeps track.
If Atlas were felled in the embrace of El
Is broken by the love that held the reserve,
the glass that’s long in breaking is the glass
that long endures.
wrapped in silk, even silk will press,
and in that cocoon as warm as the womb,
pressed sweetly and kept safe from the world,
Is broken by the love that held the reserve.
The glass is Atlas when he staggers and trips
and sad for sure but we break just as pure
the glass long in breaking endures.

The student asked, why then,
Not making the succor more milk than cement?
Is the balance of Rent in this Universe
so great that we must trudge through this desert first
Talk less of Atlas that beggar, Alas!
And more of why we must be as glass,
If we were made from sand to be loved,
Then sure,
The children can endure their maker, no?

of a glass Atlas and he staggers

And splintering like porcelains things
They burst into ash into smithereens
But the glass long in breaking
Cracks beneath embrace,
of God and ever slightly breaks
hairline fractures spread in shouts of crooked violence
The love of God is instruction through silence.

To survive it we must be the same glass that
long in breaking keeps holding that –
The space between the shards of glass
that Atlas left when he staggered left
and caught on the floor of the Universe,
To hit rock bottom beneath the Earth,
To hit such a bottom, God damn it hurts.

That’s the final break, when the space between the pieces is no longer close enough
to be held together by the attraction of the pressure which did bring
The glass from sand through magic and chant into the glass that lasts;
The glass long in breaking is not ours, after all
We must not keep our glass, sweet children,
lest we be,
fused into glass at the moment of transmutation
When in the hands of God the sand as wind trod up like a Saraband
And in that force was turned to Glass,
To break and break long but to last.

by God but slowly starts to break

Born into splinters a fissure’s spool
Sends fracture lines throughout the glass
And – image it, you fall, and land
Above a cliff, caught by a pane
of glass that breaks the moment you land.

The glass long in breaking having survived the hand of God
has dignity as one might have a scar;
And paralyzed we empathize with the Mantis who ever righteous
Bows in submission with arthritis –

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