Blinded heathen
Broken, bleeding
Barely breathing
Human being
Disbelieving
Root and reason
Eden’s treason
Serpent speaking
Eve is eating
Sin conceiving
Rebel scheming
Glory thieving
World is grieving
Earth is heaving
All are screaming
Desperate, needing
Heaven’s healing
Blind and bleeding
Barely breathing
Weak and wheezing
Cross is heaving
Bitter eating
Final pleading
Father’s grieving
Son is beaten
Like a demon
Who’s the heathen?
Highest treason
Satan’s seething
Satan’s ceding
Sin is leaving
Shame is fleeing
Blood is cleaning
All-redeeming
Grace is leading
Heart believing
Faith perceiving
Story weaving
All are kneeling
Raise the ceiling
Lamb’s revealing
Spirit sealing
God’s redeeming
Heaven’s beaming
No more dreaming
Life is teeming
Full of meaning
Blind are seeing
Lame are leaping
Glory speaking
Keeps repeating
For the longest time (years) I had the following lines written down in some Word document:
Broken, bleeding
Barely breathing
Ever once in a while I would come across them again and they would bounce around inside my head for awhile. At some point I think I added a line or two, but for the most part they collected dust in a folder on my computer. A couple weeks ago I happened upon them as I was organizing my random collection of digital notes. I decided to finally do something with this meager beginning of a poem. Once I got going it was not difficult to finish, although I usually have a hard time calling a poem finished – there always seems to be some improvement that can be made.
Even though I had the first few lines of the poem, I had no idea where it would end up – obviously it would be about someone who was in a bad way and facing brokenness and death. I thought maybe it was someone running away from something. Somewhere in the process my initial lines reminded me of the One who was on a cross; broken, bleeding and barely breathing. That made me revise some of the first verse to better reflect the direction of the poem. All the blood and brokenness of verse one is taken up by Jesus on the cross in verse two. But of course Jesus didn’t stay on the cross. His death redeems and transforms. And so I needed a third verse. It started out with: “faith perceiving”, and I added on from there. The heavenly scene at the end brings the poem to a satisfying conclusion.
To be honest, I’d like to let the poem sit around in a folder for awhile longer so I can tinker around with it, but alas, maybe it’s better to let it out into the open.
The Rabbi's Burrito 
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