viewingcamelot

There are lessons I’ve learned
Growing up in the unstable:
The most important cards
Never go on the table.
You must be ready at all times
To negotiate, bluff, or trash-talk,
But mostly to abandon your chips
For an opportunity to walk
When the door opens,
But know what your opponent’s got.
Win or lose,
Some will find you in the parking lot.
Watch for tells,
With hands steady and still,
To see whether they’re playing for the pot
Or for the kill.
Assume everyone playing a hand
Is part of a stable,
Has a card up their sleeve,
And a gun under the table.

Be ready to blend into a crowd.
Get quiet when they get loud.
Make yourself valuable enough to keep
But not to prize. Don’t sleep.

Never close your eyes.

And if in doubt,
Don’t eat or drink anything they hand out.

There are threats
That walk about in daylight
Breathing, scheming,
Never taking flight

Because they are never pursued.

They roam and hunt,
But they are not overtaken
They operate by appetite
Their confidence unshaken

Within the bounds of human laws

Or else hidden in shadows
Taking by tooth and morsel
What cannot be proven
All cruelty a rehearsal

For darker desires

Impeded by a taste for liberty
If Consequence took a day
Paralyzed or suspended
Rage would have its prey

Without empathy or remorse.

Maybe not immediately.
At first it might keep its cover
To enjoy its reflection
The mirage of being other

Than a void of soul.

We all walk together,
And we wait on them-
Today is their day.
We suffer their whims

We bleed to keep the peace

So they can sate their thirst
Within the confines
Of plausible deniability.
But the are no boundary lines

When we share worlds.

There is only vulnerability
And constant exposure.
You learn ground viewing
And to keep composure

When the wind changes.

Wait. Watch. Pray.
There’s no sense
Flailing in the spider’s web
Your only defense

Is to hope for a storm

To tear the doors
Off your silk prison
To wash the spider out
Into a collison

With something honorable
If you can find it.

Evil is everywhere.

We only catch a few.
God catches them all.

Father,

I’m Your child.
I came from You.
I see the ways I’m dissimilar;
Do I resemble You too?

There is no place for me here.
There is no place I belong.
Everywhere I go
I fit all wrong.

I always have to adjust my dials
Before everyone burns out.
The people who love me, stop loving me.
The ones who don’t, flout

Basic civility to expel me.
I’m easy to hate,
And I’m hard to love.
What will be my fate?

I don’t want to repeat
Painful cycles, I don’t want
To live a lie.
I am the runt;

I wasn’t supposed to survive the litter.
Yet here I stand.
I can’t be what they all are.
It’s exhausting to pretend

And there is no land
Where I am free to be me
Without being shot at.
I’m so tired of seeing

Myself
Through everyone else’s eyes.
I don’t want to hope.
I never again want to try.

Is this why You were a nomad?
Because You spoke plain
Their same language,
And they thought You were insane.

Where can I hide?
How may I escape?
It’s everyone everywhere always-
There is nothing safe.

There are no protectors.
No one speaks me.

In the back of my head
The thought insistently echoes:
“Stop now. Leave. You cannot do it.
You’ve gone as far as you can go.”

But then a smaller voice interrupts
Saying, “Probably, but you don’t have to run.
You’ve made it this far; take a single step more,
Let that be your last step, not this one,

You didn’t think you’d make it this far.
You don’t really know what you are,
Or what you are capable of doing.

Try one more round.
Get through today.
Fail and flee tomorrow.”

The seeds I’ve planted
Weren’t special to anyone,
But I believe they are to You.
I might be done.

Outside of You,
I have nothing but cut dirt.

But only You control
How a seed grows,
Or what it becomes.
No one else knows

The way the raindrop will run.

Relative Observation is Measurement.

It’s been my cumulative experience,
If I’m qualified to use the word
That no one is safe
Everyone is spurred
Into action along lines of self
That can not value others
Beyond basic posturing
Beyond reducing brothers
Into binary analysis
Based on gradations
Of derived, perceived benefit
And minimized complications-

A kind of comparative scaling
Over and against objective measures
Because no one gets off their island
And the value of their treasure

Diminishes in inverse ratio with distance and cost.

To explain the joke:
This is also hypocritical analysis.
Safe is a relational condition.

I was descended
From madness
And unto madness
I may yet descend

Whatever slope
My path may take
I purpose, I resolve
To do no harm
Along the way

As much as it depends on me.

I will try to add to, and not usurp,
People’s natural resources.

I may be a pariah,
But I will not be a parasite.

Bless them,
Not to make them cease
In a way that engorges their sin,
But weave for them true joy and peace.

Give them the best fruits You grow
Union with You,
Grace and love, patience, wisdom,
Help them live true

Whether I’m still around to see,
Bless them for me.

Give them my blessing.

Forgive me.

I have used my words
As torpedoes, to blow apart,
Because no one reads them
And I had murder in my heart,

But I am just as much to blame.
Forgive them, forgive me,
And sponge away the malice
I sowed as poisoned seeds.

Bring healing, bring hope,
Bring restoration.
Weave Your beauty with the threads
Of our failures and limitations

Like You always do.

Forgive us all.
We stand equally condemned
Of not being enough like You
To love in kind, in time, to defend,

Let Your sacrifice defend us all.

Forgive me. Over my plantings
Sow love, whose roots
Grow stronger through hate’s
And strangle its fruit.

Sow love,
Before my failures bear fruit.

You are the same God;
You are One.
What You promise in storm or stillness
Will be done.
Your signature is written in blood;
It does not run.

Forgive me for making my problems
Look bigger than Your promise.