Rain pelts the old girl,
The tin roof and cold world
That once hailed home.
Late for a roam,
And my brother’s guitar.
We live wherever we are,
But home is a woodstove burning hot,
And songs belted out over a boiling pot
Of cheap, simmering stew
Climbing the stairs when we were through
Sleeping with freezing fingers and toes,
The only warmth anyone knows
Is whatever we can bring
Whatever we can love, or be, or sing.
Monthly Archives: August 2013
precipitating nostalgia
Just Geography
We’ve been following old roads,
Carrying old loads,
Passed from hands to hands and
Shouldering demands
We can’t understand.
We’ve been drinking elixirs,
Looking for fixers,
Someone who’s handy with some spackle
Someone to tackle
Our old rusted shackles.
We’ve been roving all night,
Packing light,
A coin in the cap
And no home on the map,
For a return lap.
We’ve been getting older,
But never bolder,
Never bold enough to turn around,
To stare the years down,
To drive a stake in a piece of ground.
The wanderer is a language,
A song of anguish
That passes through trees,
Gets heard, gets forgotten, leaves
Before the next breeze
Reminds of whats and whens
Without the whys.
Icy Fear
Laughter subsides,
Takes a nip,
But does not slip
Asleep under bribes-
And the dark of silhouette
Falls along the inner walls
The hunt, the calls,
The fears aren’t fallow yet
And they haven’t found me
Not for years, but a moment alone
A glance, a shadow, and I’m known
Again seen, again to flee.
I came with my head high,
No blood in your water.
You smell the martyr
And I didn’t want to die.
You taught me this language,
And I recognize the strains,
Echoing what remains
Doesn’t flow under the bridge,
But in your veins.
Stargrazing
I pluck the star from swirling deeps
The burn, the flameless fire creeps
like an epitaph unsung
across my lips, along my tongue
Scouring, devouring, I swallow it
down my gullet to my hollow bits
There, the swimming fever roils,
my pulse screams in my ears and boils
all the quiet, saner thoughts to death
With light and fire on my breath
I exhale and beg for rest, beg for time,
to digest the star I ate as mine
And when these tremors still, all slaked,
when I am well, when I awake,
I will gaze back to the sky
and wonder which star next to try.
Tides and Toils
I want to write all all day.
Instead, I pull myself free
sideways, out of the riptide
that would release me
into an ocean of words,
images, ideas; the vast
wilds and winds of Wonder
wherein each poem is cast,
and forms, and floats,
and gets washed back.
Christian Fellowship
Can I
Swallow the past?
We laughed
As brothers who disagree,
But long to see
The same Father.
Can I bother
Myself to change
Or somehow rearrange
These well-detailed
Biases I’ve hailed
As defenses-
The body come to its senses.
Can I drop my hesitancy
To embrace residency
Under an enemy
Who is now my friend?
Is this an end
Or another beginning,
and Can I?
Can I?
Perfection is He
Where nothing is relative,
You see the flaws inherent.
Since perfection exists,
Its absence is apparent
In varying degrees,
But any separation
Is in some form
An absolute negation.
If perfection is beauty,
Then the closer you reach
Toward the standard
Across the breach,
The greater the emanation
Of undiluted splendor
Illuminates the vile
Unto knowledge and surrender.
And perhaps, per hopes,
You bear a greater reflection,
Of the unattainable,
Unavoidable perfection
That radiates all light,
Encompasses all flame,
Breathes all life,
And speaks your name.
Hope
I have feared hope.
Always preparing to be interred,
I have treated hope
As the brother long deferred.
I have smothered hope,
Guarded him as a trickster
A monkey’s paw in gifts
And nothing is a fixture.
I have glimpsed hope,
And even now my spirit trembles.
I have seen the truth,
Which in no way resembles
My fearful musings,
Or the dread I keep looming
To flood or suppress
The hope that keeps blooming.
Holy, Holy, Holy
More than romance or rescue,
Or the grandeur of what You do,
More than the tragedy of our insurrection,
Or the compassion in Your affection,
You are Holy, Holy, Holy.
More than a savior, more than The Source
Replacing stony hatred with warm remorse
And weaving sorrow into joy complete-
Washing the creatures’ dirty feet
You are Holy, Holy, Holy.
Before all time began, and on beyond
Before the stars bowed to respond
To the voice of their Architect-
Before the death You resurrect
You are Holy, Holy, Holy.
Before I learned to bow the knee,
Or grasp You as my guarantee,
Or see the Truth in everything-
Before I ever learned to sing
You are Holy, Holy, Holy.
Homecoming
Over the bridge I thought I burned;
Has this trip home been decades late?
Yet I remember every turn,
And every smell, and every taste.
Memories scattered by the road
As wild poppies on the highway,
Past each new bend an old bloom grows;
And not one has died away.
Following the flow of paint and tar;
Headway through the pain and loss.
Sorrow never stretched so far,
Nor was a greater ocean crossed.
I pursue my childish apparition
And the smell of salt in the air-
Have I forgotten my root system?
I am from somewhere.
I reach the end of land,
The end of me, the end of running
Chanting waves on cluttered sand
Sing the forgotten into forthcoming.
All these years of mourning
A land that never died.
A sudden break in storming;
Nothing is lost. We are alive.
Staring into the waves and wind,
Until the sea stares into me.
I remember who I’ve been,
And who I may still be.
viewingcamelot 