A calling to serve… shanghaied

A calling to serve…shanghaied

Three watershed poems fell out of me in Key West as fast as I could write them down.

The first came in April, 2001, when I was sleeping nights in doorways, because I had run out of money during a trip around the world and I was directed by Archangel Michael in a dream to go to the Florida Keys, and then the means were provided for me to get there. I had wanted to live in the Keys since my family vacationed on Key Largo when I was 14. As the Greyhound bus I was riding passed through Tallahassee, the Florida capital, en route to I-75 South, I dozed off and the federal judge for whom I had clerked in Birmingham came to me in a dream and said he was thinking about getting into politics, and I said I did not think that was a good idea, but knowing him, he was going to do it. I woke up in shock, because I hated politics. Behind the scenes, he had run the Democrat Party in Alabama, except for the George Wallace faction.

When the poem below came, I was typing a one-page article each morning on one of the Key West Library’s desktop computers and printing it out and making 10 copies and riding a bicycle someone had given me around town and delivering each day’s edition. One stop was the Key West mayor’s office. Each edition had this masthead, which came to me from out of the blue: “The pen is mightier than the sword, thus the sword defends the pen.†Each edition came to me as I rode my bicycle to the library and then I typed it as if taking dictation.

“The World’s Greatest Failure†

I know what it is 

to love fully,

have my heart broken by death

and by loved ones’ rejections,

Over and over again,

So I can love even more. 

I know what it is 

to be engulfed in pain,

Awash in evil,

Terrified, enraged, despaired,

Believing God has again forsaken me,

Then be given the truth

that again makes me free 

I know what it is 

to doubt,

Be lost and wandering

time and time again,

Then be rescued yet again

and my faith grows deeper. 

I know what it is 

to blindly trust,

Then be destroyed by betrayed

time and time again,

Until I trust only God. 

I know what it is

to have much

and be completely of this world,

Then have it all taken away

and be in the world but not of it. 

I know what it is 

to fail in this world,

And fail and fail and fail:

The world’s greatest failure,

I can serve only God. 

I know what it is 

to give and give and give and give;

I cannot stop giving

because giving is receiving. 

I know what it is 

to explain God

time after time after time again. 

Something demands I keep explaining:

Maybe someone will listen, 

Maybe me.

The second watershed poem came in June 2003, while I was sleeping nights in a small tent in the wetlands next to the Key West airport, just before a doctor told me I had life-threatening MRSA flesh- eating staphylococcus bacteria abscesses on either side of my penis and on my right buttock. After a local surgeon saved my life and told me I could do anything I wanted to do but go into the ocean, which I would learned from other local doctors and local divers, was full of MRSA, I moved into a homeless outreach shelter, and then I was asked by two prominent Key West men to run for mayor of Key West. After I used their money to pay the filing fee, I was told in my sleep by Archangel Michael, if I knew what was good for me, I would do everything I could to get the incumbent mayor reelected, because, I realized later, he was sympathetic to homeless people. He had upset some people, and I addressed and repaired that at candidate forums, and he was reelected without a runoff.

“I AM A MAN†

I am a man. 

I said,

I am a man! 

What means it, 

being a man?   

A man is a warrior:

he lives by a code of honor,

his word is reliable,

his actions confirm his words,

his commitment is holiness,

his enemies are welcome at his hearth,

he fears but moves forward,

he cries and gets up again,

he hates but forgives,

he loves and let’s go,

he doubts but trusts God,

he’s a good friend,

he seeks resolutions,

he demands nothing,

he risks everything,

he regrets his mistakes,

he seeks to make amends,

he puts others’ welfare first,

he accepts apologies truly made,

he expects nothing back,

he lives ready to die,

he laughs when he “should†scream,

he screams when he “should†laugh,

he sings just because,

he shrugs off insults,

he learns from misfortune,

he cusses God for making him,

he wishes he was done,

he loves children and animals,

he relishes a woman’s scent,

he smiles when he’s content,

he knows God’s his master,

he walks in rainbows,

his garden is the world,

his way is nature,

he loves fishing,

his wife is his soul,

his food is life,

his pay is whatever he receives.

Yep, he’s crazy.

The third watershed poem came in June 2004, after doctors were unable to heal me of recurring MRSA skin abscess and angels then healed me, and then they asked me in my sleep, “What do you think of the species?†I woke up, said I wished I had not been asked that, but since I was asked it, the species has lost its creativity and is spiritually cloning itself and is devolving, and yet look at the mess I am. If what was and is being done to me is done to the species, there will be very few survivors, so perhaps the kindest thing to do is to remove the species to a different place where it has a chance of moving forward, instead of backward. By then, I had blown a major spiritual assignment by pulling out of a county commission race in which I was the keynote speaker for homeless people in Key West and the Florida Keys, where I kept reminding local government officials that Jesus was homeless. Then I met a woman who asked me to house sit a rental home she owned, and the third watershed poem came as fast as I could write it.

“SHANGHAIED†

A calling to serve carries its own wisdom,

which legitimates both the calling and the serving

so that the two are one:

Only the one called to serve

can know this wisdom,

and for some who are called

the knowing comes easily,

while for others the knowing is a fiery baptism.

Each calling is different,

and while some callings can be declined,

others cannot,

and those whose calling is without repentance

know they are in it for the duration of the calling,

and while others may try to persuade them out of it,

the calling for ones such as these always prevails;

thus is it advised to all called for keeps

that they view their calling as a blessing

even when it seems at times to be a curse,

and that they try to reconcile the loss of their captain status

and allow the Spirit of God to man the helm of their ship

and be glad and willing crew members thereon,

knowing that all sailing ships of souls

need a crew as well as a captain

to maintain and navigate the ship through

seas of many tones, depths and flavors;

so consider each league sailed

as part of the overall journey

going to where the captain deigns to go

by using whatever winds and sea currents available

to navigate the ship to the experiences

this ship and crew need to have

in order to fulfill their calling and its wisdom

revealed by the journey of many leagues,

many known only to the ship and its crew,

all of whom come to know,

some sooner than others,

that once conscripted

there is no safe jumping ship.