viewingcamelot

If chapters never ended,
And covers never closed,
If the ones who filled your hours
Were the souls alone you chose,
And no one owned each other,
You eagerly filled the day
Sharing the exuberance of children
In the purity of play
If vitality held stay amongst the stars,
And we had all the world and time
To sway together against the storms,
We’d forgive each other all our crimes
So as not to lose an eternity
Of our hand clasped in the other’s
We’d love in innocent passion
Like two strangers meeting as brothers.
We’d write each other poetry
To adore our nobler traits.
We’d love without suspicion,
In fidelity that will not abdicate.
We would defend each other
Like children in a garden
Where the threat is not the predator,
But the heart that must not harden.

I love them all this way,
Like a child who cannot understand
The demands adults will bring,
The castles made of sand
People buy with all their hours,
So there’s none left to play within,
Or why no one’s left to play with me
When they all forsake the garden

To walk amid the men.

I sit outside, alone, under the stars
Writing poetry of all the beautiful things
I think they all are,
Or will be when they get their wings.

God of attention-to-detail,
You see us derail
Before we can see the attack,
The hindrance on the tracks.
You know what will pass or be,
And You prevent the catastrophe,

Or else You hold us and work it
For a higher good.

I trust You.
I believe You.
I expect in You.

I keep processing this in waves;
I say I forgive. I say I will bless.
Then I’m a mess
And don’t want You to save
Ninevah.

So I’m embarrassed to say:
We all fail. We all sin.
I choose to forgive again.
More resentment dissolves away.
I trust You

To chasten Yours,
And chastise rebels
In Your timing.

Let me be Yours.

One thing I miscalculated:
I thought of idealistic men as protectors
Even though, if it was once in their design,
The first man was the first defector.
I have read too much of chivalry,
The gallant appeals of noble knighthood.
In fairy tales, men defend all women,
But in Iife, they only do what’s also for their good

As humans generally behave.
Only One lays down His life to save
Even the unwantables.

P.S.

Although it all works together
For some kind of redemption.
I’m lucky now that no one cared;
I guess it’s no longer worth the mention

Just the recalibration.

My friend has shut her doors.
In this place averse to candor
I can’t know if it is me, or her,
Or more of the local slander.
I keep trying alone, by hand,
To force roots in this ground.
Am I stubborn or stupid?
What a wasps’ nest I found.

I have taken seriously
All vengeance is Yours.
I have kept to myself,
My heart behind doors,
My hands limp at my sides

Do not tarry any more
Than what is in Your plan.
Their corruption broke the weakest
They knew couldn’t stand,
Their coldness couldn’t care

Or look with humble concern.
For their pride,
Their lack of empathy,
Their demeaning and snide
Derision and refusals,

For the foolish ears
That preferred flattery
To honesty
Endorsing their own battery
While judging all others

For the vulnerable loss
Of the tender petals
You formed in me
For gilding in cold metal
My once soft soul

I ask again,
Remember my case against them.

I am not taking it into my own hands.
I wait on You.

Luke 18:1-8

Now He was telling them a parable to show that at all times they ought to pray and not to lose heart, 2 saying, “In a certain city there was a judge who did not fear God and did not respect man. 3 There was a widow in that city, and she kept coming to him, saying, ‘Give me justice against my adversary.’ 4 For a while he was unwilling; but afterward he said to himself, ‘Even though I do not fear God nor respect man, 5 yet because this widow bothers me, I will give her justice, otherwise by continually coming she will wear me out.’” 6 And the Lord said, “Hear what the unrighteous judge *said; 7 now, will not God bring about justice for His elect who cry to Him day and night, and will He delay long over them? 8 I tell you that He will bring about justice for them quickly. However, when the Son of Man comes, will He find faith on the earth?”

It’s funny.

When I was trying to get away from him
The company hobbled my knees,
But now I’m grateful for him here
I tuck myself inside his hands and pray that he
Can help me get farther away

From the pirate company.

I was thinking about
Chocolate chip cookies
All over the toddlers ‘ faces
Pretending they aren’t eating them still:

All men are born liars.

I came so many miles
Looking for an echo of home,
Following the aroma of wood fires,
Threshed grass, and turned earth;
The trip was worth all I owned:
All I’d built. All I’d earned.
I landed first in a place
Wearing the face of all I remembered,
But underneath the disguise,
Corruption, coldness, lies, suspicion
Dismembered the little bit
I had left to hold
Before I got away.

This place became the grave marker
For my last belief in home,
Or decent men,
Or my tender treasures of soul.

I am becoming something different now
The kind of thing they abused and tossed aside,

A thing surviving,

Wiser, but I find myself
Wishing I’d saved myself;

I wish I’d kept on driving.

I wonder how many men
Build their world on others’ bones?

Probably all the ones who build.
Can any structure survive time
Standing on such wicked foundations?

I hope not.
I hope, in time, they receive their bill.

God knows.

I reached for You just now,
But Your service looked overrun
By some pressing affairs
Humans need done

Maybe a wedding or a funeral.

I’ll try again tomorrow.
Remember Your maidservant

In the meantime.