I’m scared to stir the cesspool
But the paralysis of surface tension
Immobilizes the flow of life and
Lends rot and foul to my intentions.
You stirred a pool and troubled waters
Freely healed the one most eager.
My own arms are too short to save.
My fingerfalls are mute and meager.
Be the active voice for me
Plunge Your pure hands into my death
Stir my decay and cleanse my sin
By Your blood, and by Your breath.
I speak
My voice along my tongue
Shaping words, shaping sound
Expelled again by eager lungs,
But changes form and drifts to ground.
I sing
In wispy exhales
Turning to vapor, to cloud, to fog
Dense, frail
As it crawls silent.
I shout,
But only smoke and cough
The quiet wheeze of desperation
Falling down, blowing off
Words like trapped condensation
Wandering muted in the dim hours.
I write again; I smother.
The men who sit atop the world
Always forget it spins,
The towers whereon they perch
Seem tall enough to defend
Until the earth tilts
And top is bottom again.
The men who bear the heavy yoke
And cast their eyes to ground,
Who cannot lift the chin to see
The weight that wears them down
Must always, always remember
God made this dark earth round.
This too shall pass,
We are not bound to the whim of chance-
There is a design as a wise man defined:
God is the great reversal of human circumstance.
Conscience-stricken,
Because I’m afflicted by
My own dark thoughts,
And words, and heart
Of sin.
Walking circles again
Tracing my doubts,
But never without You
My God and companion.
I can’t fathom how
You hold on when I sell out,
Fall in my canyon,
And forget again-
You are on my side
Even when I offend.
As my friend said,
Just because I can’t see You directing,
Doesn’t mean You aren’t protecting.
Forgive my detestable behavior.
I’m pleading with You to perfect me,
To be my perfect
Savior.
Palpable shame demands a distraction
Same old reactions, and inaction allows
The ember to sear into flesh,
Toss it around to remember it less,
To arouse less suspicion
Or delay the imposition of conscience
And whatever legal terms apply.
A nonsense-binge denies the evident,
But hinges on turning a blind-eye
To the relevant and essential.
An element of dismissal
In the realm of consequential.
Half the pleasure is in the hope
The child awake on Christmas night
Envisioning some unknown heights
Of bliss, awaiting first light
To awaken their scope.
Half the agony is in the fear,
The woman on the edge of labor pains,
With everything to lose, or to gain,
On the other end of unsustained,
Unmeasured anguish drawing near.
All that we anticipate
Always becoming half our fate.
There was a time when you were near,
And our tender years unsung
All my love was in my heart,
But never on my tongue
And shadows fell on quiet thoughts
Before our years were wrung.
Many times my blood’s been hot
Deafening in my ear,
I spoke the things I never ought,
And you never ought to hear
And distance wrapped its scaly tail
Around my words severe.
Regret is grown from planted seeds,
And blooms on either side
The stream of man’s timeline
His cowardice and pride
Fertilizes his fruitful ground
Reaping woe betide
And who can say what yields more dread
The gush of malice spoken
Or the love that’s left unsaid?
The Earth, Created
Life teeming in a fetal squirm,
Holding hands in naïve connection
Calling by name, the calling confirmed
By habitual, relational perfection
Full, and proud, and round
With unbroken peace inside her womb
Until the parasite of pride unbound,
Poisoned, and consumed.
The Earth, Broken
Sustains violence,
We strike and kick and break
Her ground, her silence
Makes her grieve in quakes
Weeping in dead feathers and fur
And the decaying bones of man
Planted deep inside her
She awaits the deferred plan
To redeem her brood.
I waited for you
When the night stretched his spine,
I left a light burning
Sleepless at your shrine
Are you still mine?
Who am I
If I’m more myself without you?
All I’ve known follows me to bed,
But I’m a stranger to the view
And I’m afraid to pursue.
We don’t slough off our stories
As a snake’s skin is shed,
We are still standing
Wherever we’ve tread
And wherever lies ahead.
Velvet downpour
In minor strains, and percussion rain
Is the heartbeat under the floor.
Nonsensical words
But her soul is bare, her notes declare
A love invested and interred.
Sorrow no longer weeps
It whistles low, and coos, and flows
In the rich, deep tones from whence it steeps.
Her voice swirls like eddies
Down her chin, spilling free when
She is most unsteady.
viewingcamelot 