BFF

Thank you, thank you,

Thanks Bunkfest,

For knowing that this

Was the right time to invest,

In words and people,

And all the poets were blessed

You know, Bunkfest fringe,

You're my new BFF,

At the start I wanna say thanks

Get it off of my chest

Bunkfest Fringe

You're my new BFF!

On Prayer

Kyung-Ho was a prayer warrior,

His lips made more sound than the words that came out of them,

I strained to hear, the broken English,

I could hear his tongue moving more than the breath that came over it,

A whispered supplication to the Father Almighty,

I strained to hear but the words were not for me.

This prayer was not performance, nor posturing, 

The audible weight of the words so light,

They barely grazed the air they passed through,

So gentle, if it were a wind, it would not move the pappus from a dandelion,

A blade of grass would remain unstirred.

I thought of him, as one of those hibernating creatures,

Who could slow their heartrate to untraceable pulses,

On the edge of life, itself,

Teetering almost into death.

Don't die, I thought,

Don't die.

I did not recognise the strength,

I did not perceive the passion,

For that I needed volume,

Or tears.

Some indication of power and force.

But Kyung-Ho was a warrior,

One evening, when our community gathered,

For a teaching session on prayer,

And the family of nations presented themselves there,

The teacher asked for intercession,

Prayers for the lost.

A man of experience, 

He asked the Koreans to pray in their own language, for once.


I stood under the waterfall of noise that night,

The words that poured out of  those two men,

Washed over us,

Washed over our senses in wonderous, thunderous waves,

They woke us up,

We were swept along, senseless and uncomprehending, with the force of them,

My heart stirred from it's depths,

Tears cascaded down my cheeks.

The passion was undeniable,



And Kyung-Ho was seen at last,

Revealed like the son he was,

That he'd always been,

But by me, unseen,

And reflecting on it, years later,

I concluded that this perception of mine was the real change,

Not his volume, not his passion,


Spiritually speaking,

In whispered English,

Or cacophonous Korean,

They had never changed,

Kyung-Ho was a prayer warrior,

And his soul was a mountain.