The moment I guess it all began:
They taught me the opposite of man
Is woman
And who I became was decreed
By who I could not be,
Where I could not belong.
It seemed hopeless,
Opposites, not in symbiosis,
But in diametric tasks
With some necessary exposure,
Friends close, enemies closer,
And a marriage between the two.
I’m grateful for these years I’ve spent
Finding the two complement,
Not contradict
But I still ground the definition me,
Not in who I am,
But in who I could never be.
Forgive me, friends
When silence falls
And marble walls
Again defend,
Again shut out
The broken spin,
Fatigued again,
And plagued by doubt.
Forgive me, friends
If in your lack
My lamp goes black,
Or I offend,
While my eye is bad
And only sees
All I cannot do or be,
All I can’t deserve, yet have.
What great evil is this?
I’ve contrived in my heart
Against my One Redeemer
Who scattered my slavers apart,
And tore open my path
So that I may depart
Not alone, but step by step
Tucked inside his wondrous care
Who shakes the earth with fear and awe,
Of whom the power of every age beware,
Yet He protects, as promised,
As He leads my soul from here to there.
I am a grumbling slave,
Who cannot compare to His majesty,
Who cannot deserve His intercessory,
Who offers him no loyalty,
But tastes and protests His blessed grace
With a broken tongue of blasphemy.
The call to hope, the mandate,
Which my stubborn heart resists
With accusatory fears aplenty
Under which my faith desists
Is no less than honestly acknowledging
Who He Is.
I return to You time and again
Because I wander;
Because of the hope
And the joy I have squandered.
How can this vulnerability,
This seeping, desperate trust
Clutched while falling,
Be any form of tough?
How can I reintroduce hope
Into this myopic entity
Living in the failures
Of a brief eternity?
How can I hope to be resilient
When I barely stand
As a crumbled ruin
In a forgetful land?
How, under expectation of sorrow,
Can tenderness share
The hope of joy, faith in tomorrow,
Grace that can bear
The weight of every yesterday?
I must change my vision,
And my line of sight.
Tender enough to listen;
Tough enough to fight,
To never recoil
From the pain of what’s right.
How halting these words
Come stalling their meanings,
And I fault their being.
Some of these cracks outdate me,
Others so fresh I smell the grain
Still stained by fate.
Lift the head, stay on task,
But the downpour never stops,
And I asked for it.
I have worshipped you
And no fissure was wide
Enough to threaten
Your enthroned pride.
I’m still quick to bow,
But my eyes are open
To the strength of the vessel
I’ve stored all my hope in
Wandering allegiances,
Mobilized on all fronts,
Laterally exposed,
But you stood unified once,
Or so I believed
From my prostrate view.
Was this dangerous pride born
In my exaltation of you?
To believe you can submerge
Your hand in the flame,
To remain with what burns,
But escape more the same,
And you have already changed,
But your eyes cannot see
How you flicker like flames
For and against me
Like our kingdom could never
Be destroyed by fire,
Like you are invincible
Against your own desires
And I was wrong to return,
To bow low my will,
To allow you to forget:
All that breathes is fragile.
I am waiting to breathe
Waiting to die until I can see
A watery horizon,
The layers of wizened
Peel off under the sun
I want to feel the ocean
Smell the salt water in my face,
Listen to its metered race,
Crescendo, crash and rescind,
The passion of the end
Building a new beginning
Each wave brimming with eternity,
and release.
Each night he takes him in his hands
The lump of cold, dead stone
And he winds him up, and winds him up,
So we are never alone.
And I hear him ticking, ticking, ticking
Across the empty space between us,
Like a tyrant laughing, laughing, laughing
Forever undefeated
Reminding me each second
of the victories he’s wrought
When we thought all battles ended,
And no wars again be fought
This timeless wonder in his palm
Splits seconds, so divisive.
He laughs, he ticks, he gloats
Unceasingly derisive
And I am wild to visit harm
Upon that little metal piece
To end his reign, to end his lie,
To give us some release.
Wild to pierce his skin, and smash his face,
To rip out all his sense-
Oh, the damage I could wreak
Would all be self-defense!
Curtains billowing in the breeze
Like a woman’s cotton dress
Frolicking around her knees;
Currents carried on a cool caress
To soothe the heat of day.
Green life emerging from its death,
The winter-buried clumps of sod;
Decay and rot, smothered breath,
Renewed again by the hand of God,
Working through His appointed seasons.
viewingcamelot 