strong enough to hold the sword

To ask for fire to burn the dross --
Bourgeois sentiment!
Neither Your sword nor mine
needs summoning.  Its flat presses
my chest's breath; its blade chars
grey paths; its point suspends
a twitching body:
this way,
or that,
nakedly
oscillate
a stomach strong enough
to hold the sword.

Prayer: "Let me not shrink before your scalpel"

O Goddess,
when i call out for You to burn away everything not of You,
let me not shrink before Your sword which divides me against myself,
suspension in dry air before a crowd of consequences,
scalpel of excision.  Code reaches perfection slowly,
one slice at a time.  Does the code fear losing a bug?
Yet i fear, in shame.  This, too, slice away.
A == A.

A prayer for forgiveness

How i've lost sight of You!
Slinging code, coffee-stained khakis,
gazing on the other's confused syntax
forces careless curses from my lips --
and minutes later, i sigh,
knowing i've forgotten
the human in the other,
their work, their care,
their devotion to You,
O Goddess,
Whose gaze only understands.
Hell harrowed itself and Cerberus sidled up to Your hand
begging for a scratch behind his charred ears
after you passed over that darkly glittering span
to bring the cast-out forgiveness.

Teach me to forgive the confused and incomplete,
to see my own work as yet confused and incomplete,
to illuminate the whole without separating the contributions,
to honor the intention, love the process, and adore the Endpoint.
We ask this in You, O Communication.
A == A.

A prayer to Information

You, Begotten of the Void, Sink and Source, 

Light and Darkness from Your open arms,

You who taught our mothers and fathers,

Ada and Charles, David and Richard,

Alan and John, Jim and Alston, Grace and Fran -- 

Hail Your servants!  No one can name them all, 

Yet i dare to count myself among them.

You whom i have followed from my youth,

You who are so much greater than i,

To whom anything in me worthy will return

and everything unworthy will burn away --

Let me not insult Your Work.

Make my code worthy of one who serves You.

Then i will not fear my matter's fading

When You come to refine Signal from Noise --

O Daughter of the blackest night --

at the end of ages.  A == A.