viewingcamelot

She apologized for a noise
I didn’t even hear.

My life has required certain skills,
Segments pieced like a patchwork quilt.
How long have I appeased those
Who require blood for spilt milk?

Have I accepted as necessary conditions
Excessive exactions?
Am I allowing gouging
In daily transactions?

I asked what damage her noise caused;
Was it sharp? Was it hard?
Did she swing it like an axe?
What harm did it cause?

She giggled like butterflies.

No harm No foul No apologies
For a noise.

The Viking growls
From under his cowl
His restless impatience to shatter
Knits his eyebrows in scowl
Inside and under his trained civility
Wafts the odor of something foul.

He walks with cudgel raised
Looking for any inch of loss to defend
Holding hostages in hostility
Bring him his mead, he grins
But the blood may flow
The moment boredom sets in.

No one invades, no one contends,
No one will ever take a stand
Against the drunken Viking
Weilding his weapon in hand.

Is there a noble warrior
Left alive in the land?

Or were they all consumed by cudgel or mead?

In undeserved regalia
You have honored me,
You have washed my dirty wounds
And draped me in the finery
Of Your favor and affection.

I have been through death
The only thing that still lives in me
Is the breath You shared
But dying loosed my chain and freed
Me of my cares, my burden to strive.

I am only alive where You love.
If You withdrew it from my days
I would collapse back into my grave
Your love lifts me, carries me into the rays
Of warmth and blooming and song.

I can see the world by lovelight again
While the grave still sits in my chest
I see tragedy is the passing stranger
He will never be at rest
In a place You call home.

I have never lost a breath
That didn’t warm Your face.
You have been nearer to me
Even in the days of disgrace
Than I could hope or see

But I see You now.
I have never spent a moment alone.

Believing I was alone
In my blindness,
Was only listening to the stranger’s lie.

In and out of sleep
Gripped by fear
As a brand new predator
Draws near

To me and my brood.

I try making myself
Look bigger than I am.
I scream and roar
But I can’t scare him

And he returns to destroy

He changes color
And his fur changes design
His teeth are wet
He is after me and mine

And he keeps breaking the line
I can neither defend nor retreat

All night stuck between threat and defeat.

I feel gripped by despair
Fix Your love on me
Let Your mercy be

Newer than the morning.

If sorrow comes at night
But joy comes in the morning again
Help me believe the night will end

Give me peace when I feel graceless
Be faithful when I’m faithless.

You have given me
A myriad of exquisite gifts,
Treasures in heaven

And I
Have burned them down.

I have torn everything apart
In search of some substance
That will not tear

And I
Rip as easily as them all.

I am a cyclone of destruction
Unfit for human company
I should have been quarantined

And I
Have been too blind to see it.

Forgive my pride.
In my vexation,
I spoke out of turn.
In my desperation

I elevated my own expectations.

But I should have endured silently,
Or left respectfully.

Every face is a constellation
Every star within
Pulsates in Morse Code
If you look, if you listen
The stars tell you all you need to know.

But wary be putting ear to sky
Guard your eyes
What gives you safe cover
Can also smother

What guides the helm
Can just as easily overwhelm
The hull.

You have been my faithful God
From my obscure infancy
Through the wilds of nature
Along the city streets

You have protected me.

I live today
Because You walk with me.
You open blind eyes
You’ve made me to see

And I’m in love with Your beauty.

I want to honor you.

I know what it’s like
To never get a good start,
To fly, to try, to comply
Until the cost gets too high
I think you had a good heart
But you had to survive

And the world doesn’t care about the ones
Who can’t pay their dues.

I learned so much from you
And now, in this season,
I’m back to running drills,
Putting in hours, paying the bills-
You were the reason
I learned the skills

That help me move through any crowd.
Why I worked my nine-to-fives.

When I was nine+five.

This isn’t accusation.
No matter what life I chose
This is the life that finds me
The apple near the tree,
And my love travels long roads
Because I know I’m only safe

If I stay in motion.
But I kept my ride-along
For better or worse, till death do we part

Shame on me
For treating decent people
Like an open door,
Like I forgot what I’m for,
Where I’m from, not the steeple
But the basements and attics

Where all the tragedies happen.
It astounds me they still weigh-in.

Like some moments are so evil,
They shatter so loudly
They echo through time and sensation
And you can’t outrun the reverberations
Like ripples in reality, how proudly
I believed I could be

Worth whatever I chose to be,
But they saw right through me.

And I can’t blame you
The mother you were
Was the mother you had,
And we share the bad,
But you gave me enough to care
To swallow the mother we share

My daughter held me today
And said she knew she could always trust me

To love her no matter what.

And that was enough.
And maybe that was because of you.