The Poetry of Mark Daniel Milbocker 
Oh Holy Eucharist

Every beat of the earth throbs for you, 
from its hidings and dark entombments,
in a vicious striving to run from your light.

Words are like mere oily stones falling short
of truth, darts into the cloudy abyss of 
not-knowing-you -- 
how else can the world convulse not being in
your bosom?, it babbles forth not knowing...

You are like the blackest hole of all purposes,
the strongest tide of human emotions against
which all the poles of the earth pull.

Where shall I run when the aims of my body
lust against you, when the images in my mind
are vicious lies, my conscience so perplexed
allowing no rest or direction for the mind to function...

In time, all bones melt from sin, and the weak
synapses of the mind corrode into chaos, leaving 
the harsh din of conflicting loves - all scorned and wanting.

To not know You, to hide from Your Face, is
to live such a happy, little life, to feel neither 
pain nor pleasure, to only hear the faint reflections of 
life echoing in the charade of the many-layered 
characters we parade across the theater of our
minds, a constant string of comedies upon tragedies
to entertain the appetites that rule us.  

Why, then, do I look beyond this staged acrobatics?
When I am neither pressed forth by a cruel poverty
nor bored by the satiation of wealth...I am young and the
fever still rages so strongly within me, who could
expect eyes to function in the illness of youth?

And shall we speak of love?  Though I may have some
academic remembrance that it is my very life-breath,
though I may romantically walk upon this soil-of-the-earth
upon which and from which all is built and given meaning
in the great love play of the Passion, how shall I find
direction and order?, what power have the feeble-minded
to grasp onto what they do not understand?  And is it
even sane to want to pursue truth when it only draws
the heart into the insane passion that seeks infinite love,
a love not found on earth that drives us to wars and
violence against impurity, ripping the friend from his
family, the soul from its own body, until it knows nothing
of its what it was, and has destroyed its self-vice into the new
beginning of heaven?

But who am I kidding?  Its either this violence of love or
the annulment of life...shall we call hell, sanity?

I guess, I enjoy the quiet mouse-life that sees not even the stars
above, not distracting itself with the beauty of the clouds, but
concentrating on the next step after step, until it hits a wall,
and sniffing for cheese and cursing the sky, it retreats to enter the 
next dead-end.  At least, then, in those grand moments of delusion
when the world is no larger than the eyes, ignorance protects the
soul from the distress of what is real.  Protects it, that is, until 
truth breaks through like the talon of an eagle piercing a small,
atrophied, rodent-heart.

Knowledge and passion...
How slyly You sit there before us in the bread...
The object of all human striving sitting on the table.
I guess if you were to become the flesh that you are for
us, our rodent-hearts would burst.

Forgive my irreverence -- that pain you constantly suffer
in holding Yourself back for our sakes.  Never has patience
and urgency been so intermingled, for no matter how much you
Desire us, you Know we cannot withstand your Love as we are.

So, there is really only one prayer...transform us...we are no
good as we are: little mice crawling through the Red Sea of 
the world’s tensions which you hold apart from crushing us...
In your eyes, we are esteemed above what we even know to
value within ourselves, ignorance seeking bliss, don’t put up
with us...teach us how to wake up from whatever we think
we know, from whatever we think we desire.  Stir up within
us the embers of your heart within us, so that when we do
rise, we will have learned from those faint dreamings in which
you were touching us where we could not see.
■





©1996 Mark Daniel Milbocker  All rights reserved.