Sometimes I go down to the water
And I plunge myself underneath
Where the noises won’t follow
And I won’t speak
To see what will die,
And what can’t.
Category Archives: Passion
Flotsam
Abandonment
It isn’t fair of frame.
There must have been a day
You wiped drool from my face
And I’m not there to do the same.
It isn’t sound.
You must have stooped to ground
When I toddled down
Below the crowds.
It stands askew.
Before I ate solid foods,
I subsisted off you
And who leads you through?
It’s enough cost:
The years we’ve lost
After the bottles were tossed
And before your vigor exhausted.
It totters in the wind.
Inequalities sting like sin-
Yours or mine, I can’t defend-
But I see all that’s bent
And bowed low.
On Giants and Galaxies
These small things
Do not dissolve
In Your Great Hands.
I’m commissioned to sing
All I’ve seen,
All I can understand
An open witness- this I am.
Sharing where I’ve been:
My mistakes, my sins,
My redemption
My emotion-
And there are a million facets to what I feel,
Every surface is real
And solid.
Because we’re giants, we see
Only two sides to the coin,
But the smaller we can be
How much more
Spreads like a galaxy
In every direction.
Migraines
Blind I wait against my will
For the fury to build
Unleashing silent impenitence and
Over-compensatory sycophancy
Waiting for the blood to thin,
The vessels to expand, or perhaps
Contract to emend
This current course-
Pain coursing as vascular regret or disillusionment.
Salve
Arrested in step
At the sudden lightness
Of curtains caressed
By an unexpected breeze
In the midst of an otherwise stifling heat-
Dancing in waves,
Touching my face,
Friction giving way
To cool… to calm…
To quiet relief as comfort.
Beauty hiding in the whispers
Wrinkling the curtains.
Obscene Strength
An unexcavated strength,
Veins extracting their toll,
Forms in the deepest, darkest holes,
The abandoned mines of broken-down souls
Possessed by the weakest parts of the whole-
Strength that screams
With foamy lips never dry
At unseen ghosts in black skies,
Weeping for the strangers hobbling by,
Dreaming of consciousness as a closing eye-
Strength still, that looks,
And in looking, sees
All that is and should not be,
The kind of madness compelling, “Flee!”
And all perceived chants agreement-
And in the sweat, the sorrow, and the mud,
The hunger, the loss, the burn of chains,
In thirst, in isolation, in condemnation
The strength tarries-
The soul remains.
Potential Energy
These grinding bones
Have ground me down
Weighted still,
Full and round,
With future endeavors.
Please forgive
These heavy days,
Moping, groping,
To find my way
Back to passionate.
It doesn’t matter-
My changing positions
Because You are the God
Of every transition,
And even in this twisted state,
I am still Yours.
Proximity
I called on You last night,
And You were there.
Closer than a brother, fairer
Than ten thousand- mighty,
And tender.
They tell me how to speak,
How You would have me,
All reverence, or all intimacy,
As the King, or the Seeker,
Or the Savior
Narrow forms of appeal
And I quake with fear,
But You play no Lear
To my clumsy Cordelia
Or my calls,
Through all their intimidation,
I cannot remain unspoken-
I call on You as one broken
In childlike trembles of desperation
Looking for a Father
And You’ve never waxed pernicious
In my improprieties,
So patient with all of these,
And ever the God with us-
With me.
I called on You last night
As just me to only You,
As with all else we’ve been through
You showed up and made it right,
Looking at me through You
That I may be lovely in Your sight.
Pass the Time
Passing time
Like the proverbial buck,
Down in the mouth,
Down on my luck,
And checked out.
Passing time
Onto someone else’s shoulders,
Easier still than making the most
Of growing older,
And numbering my days.
Passing time
Like a passerby,
Wasting smiles, wasting miles,
Wasting the days until I die
Working so hard to pass the time
As though it exists in endless supply.
Late September
A skipped beat- so swiftly I remember
That rotted stump of tree
Felled in late September
Amid the pale anemones.
It’s stature carted, splintered, stacked,
And now reduced to ash,
Taken by a sudden attack-
A severing metal clash
There, the stump sat in grief
Impotent roots clutching dirt-
Rotting in its disbelief,
Nothing but scars relived its worth.
There, its secret hacked to earth,
It made a room for yours
Within the pulp of inner girth,
It contained its tragic stores.
How long the days have pressed to pass,
Wild adventuring laid to rest,
And I’ve neglected your crevasse
That rots now in my chest.
I haven’t called on you, old friend,
In the many lives I’ve borne
While the one that would not mend
Stays ever hidden through the storm
In the rotted husk akin,
Weak and weatherworn,
To all that might have been!
viewingcamelot 