Cauterization #IamJob

* Jesus pray for me
* Job pray for me
* Dedicated to TCAT

+-----Cauterization

Sometimes at night, reaching
to snuff out my candle,
Im entranced by visions of
burning flames my memory
tried so earnestly to elide,
and my anguish smolders.
Fires of God descend
burning flesh
and kin, flesh and kin,
sad ashes and sullen soot
secrete slowly from my black
heart, puffs of smoke billowing
from its darkened eyelids
in lieu of tears, and I hear
the piercing rage of barbarians
(Sabeans and Chaldeans with
harvested crops
in bags blotted with blood
of oxen spilling from their swords),
obscuring sounds of my sons
and daughters dying.
Whenever I toss and turn,
my skin now healed of
the boils and scabs that once
plagued it, cursed winds howl
carrying past chatter of internecine
celestial feuding for the rights to my life.
Let the day perish when I was born
I protest,
and the night in which it was said,
there is a man child conceived.
My conscience quixotic,
three misguided friends- Eliphaz,
Bildad, and Zophar- tries to make
sense of it all apportioning some
sort of self-blame, they
celebrate, ideologically, the debasement
and shame for my past sin
to pave future paths for
rewards of righteousness,
sacred spoils to be savored
when I return to innocence.
But I have come realize these
episodic phantoms,
both vestigial and inopportune
in their hauntings, are ghosts
I must entertain whenever they
manifest, welcoming these surly guests
 as metaphors
for Divine mystery. I did nothing to
deserve what I received as punishment,
but I didn’t lay earth’s massive
foundations either, arranging
mountains and skies like loaves of
unleavened bread at table,
nor was I born then.
What God has done, God has done –
the nightmares will pass
and eventually dissipate
in the brightness of Trust. My Faith
in His goodness will shine
radiantly and chase away all shadows
of past sufferings as the Sunrise.  
Afterwards, awakened from trauma
as one who once died, always on
my lips:
“The Lord gives, and the Lord
takes away”


---Job 1:20-22; 42:1-6
Then Job arose, and rent his mantle, and shaved his head, and fell down upon the ground, and worshipped, And said, Naked came I out of my mother's womb, and naked shall I return thither: the Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord. In all this Job sinned not, nor charged God foolishly. Then Job answered the Lord, and said, I know that thou canst do every thing, and that no thought can be withholden from thee. Who is he that hideth counsel without knowledge? therefore have I uttered that I understood not; things too wonderful for me, which I knew not. Hear, I beseech thee, and I will speak: I will demand of thee, and declare thou unto me. I have heard of thee by the hearing of the ear: but now mine eye seeth thee. Wherefore I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes.