I take issue
With nights like these,
Hard to please,
But even if it’s about me,
It’s not about me.
It’s all so new,
And hewn out rough
When he grows gruff
I wonder if this life’s enough,
Will I be enough?
Category Archives: Passion
The Issue
Knock Knock
Here is what I know:
There was a judge, an infraction,
And a widow who would not let go
Or succumb to distraction.
Here is what I know:
Jacob took hold, wrestling,
And would not let go
”Until” he said, “You bless me.”
Here is what I know:
You’ve told us to pray,
And I refuse to let go
Until You have Your way
In this heart,
In this family,
In Your house,
In this city,
And beyond.
Rapha
A morning lingering into day,
In waking, walking paralysis
Our finer natures overlaid
By an interlocking antithesis.
Waiting with breath abated
For any signal to divine
If affection is reinstated,
If value is reassigned.
Late afternoon I went to work
For You, to finish what I started
Not for favor, or fear of shirking,
But because the work is imparted
And I had the time to do it.
When I left, You began to speak
My fears are falsity-conduits:
I’m only in trouble if You are weak.
Then You reminded me
I’ve been gifted unspeakable devotion
A God who desires, who seeks,
Who set time in motion
To rescue me, to hold me close.
Your love rained on me all afternoon,
I saw You greater than the foe,
And somehow I’ve been hewn
In Your image,
Which is anything but hollow.
You alone set me to pilgrimage,
And equipped me thus to follow.
I began the day waiting to forget,
These frailties fading into embers,
But You reminded me You’re not done yet,
And what I need most is to remember.
Imprecise Recall
As the once closed curtain of time
Falls open, by accident, down the center
Like your lover’s blouse
Inadvertently untethered,
I stare indecently
At moments unmeasured
Illuminated by the soft glow
Of the forgotten
Or forsaken
Or forbidden.
Past Able
The unbearable weight of sadness
From the depths of humanity torn,
Where a wound to any is a wound to all,
And the blood cries out from the ground
Pooling in accumulated tragedy,
An affront to all intent of design,
And the blood and loss and anguish must be heard,
And it will be heard.
On Calling Out and Crawling Off
I measure these frailties
Against the scale
Of Your majesty:
My fears are a travesty.
An accumulation of tragedies
Becomes a bag of excuses,
A candy jar of delusions
Dampening the effusive,
Dwelling in exclusions.
The conclusion to trust
Won’t make it so, but
Baby steps make forward thrusts
In my guts
I believe and I resist
I escape and I enlist
I surrender, I sulk, I subsist
I speak and, sometimes, I listen.
Protect me in my frailties, and even in my sin,
Guard what even I can’t defend,
For You are The God, and my friend.
Resurrection Serenade
She sent me her soul,
Her song, and I sing it
In the dark I linger
Ancient sparks flowing
Lost years crooning
The vibrato rythyms we all
Tapped out on our prison walls
Our stretched voices in tune
Sing.
Sing these lost years,
Like velvet green leaves
Ripped from spring trees
The storms appear,
And we dissipate, but
We do not disappear.
We suffer loss, yes, and torn limbs,
But we live again, and
Our song is here.
Implausible Deniability
All my life I’ve heard
Who I ought to be,
What I must deserve,
And how I should believe
And believe, I do
From the core of who I am
Whatever facets I eschew
Change not the slightest gram
Of the rock that won’t erode,
And the hand that can’t release-
I know that I know that I know;
I believe what I believe.
Then why don’t I conform?
This I cannot say.
The world, to me, feels worn-
And an infantile display
Of youthful promenading
Feathers flaunting wide
Perpetual self-serenading:
A ballad of blinded pride.
I don’t have the energy,
Nor the desire,
To bow to pop-liturgy
Or lift myself higher-
All my oddities abound,
I see they keep me alone.
I wander the hard ground
Ever out of home-
Even these I speak of plainly
I do not dream as accusation
The lone state that pains me
Is of my own creation
Unwilling, or else unable,
To put aside where I am bent-
I don’t fit into the label-
Does that mean I can’t be sent?
Yet in my diminished condition-
Here am I.
Beyond trend or tradition,
I ever testify.
It all boils down to these:
I am, I exist as I, and I believe.
Whatever else they may say of me
Cannot negate these three.
Swimming Downstream
Walking again in the familiar skin
Of my own isolation.
I commence lobbing Hail Marys over the fence
Against my own common sense.
I can’t be sure what crosses over, or
What falls to the floor.
I’ve tried to resist, but I subsist
On this persistence.
Maybe I was never meant to oppose this
Maybe this silence composes
Some clarity of purpose.
Sprung
New Life, so seemingly fragile,
Blooms, stretches, yawns into existence
Her entire cycle ahead still,
As she tries on her persistence,
And sleeps off her resistance.
The beauty in the fresh blossom
Sings of hope and resurrection,
Winter left us solid, solemn,
Frozen in derelict dejection,
Seeking warmer affections.
New Life breaks like sunrise,
Like a thief into the strongman’s purse,
Bringing a swift demise
To the fallow curse:
The icy hearse.
viewingcamelot 