Unhinged again by pain, the spins
Around my ears keep me queasy,
Exhausted, broken, hyper-aware:
Loving me is never easy.
Pulsing ache and fevered throes
Cluttered breaths over shattered shards
Wracked up, wrung out, run down
I fight my own worst regards
Only one friend who writes,
Only one who values me
In the stumbling, tumbling turmoil
Of the worst that I can be-
These whispers hiss and spit
Inside my throbbing ears:
Wasted! Worthless! Naught to show
For all these tarried years.
Oh the physical weakness,
Whenever I assume
I may stand and work and run
On the thin fumes I have presumed
Were the common breaths of man.
How can I run my race
When I can barely stand?
Yet I live, and breath, and move
Inside Your pierced hand
And that’s enough for me.
.
.
.
.
Leave a comment | tags: broken, cross, damaged goods, fail, illness, Pain, Poetry, redemption, saved, secure in Christ, sick, sick thoughts, the damaged good | posted in Pallor, Passion, Praise
I’ve always rather looked down on me
for the varied metaphors I stir-
the barrage of dissimilar images,
a busy collage beyond absurd.
If only I were educated, I assumed,
or possessed the natural bent,
I might have the talent to condense
the fairies of perception into cement-
Sitting in straight lines and right angles
and as monochrome as I desired
Instead of skipping, sailing, soaring
through spring petals and autumnal fires.
Drawing heavy lines, like coloring pages,
filed with simple, solid shades-
Digestible activities,
Soothing for every age.
Yet the more years I observe,
Life falls in chaotic lines,
Seeming contradictions
Live together peacefully all the time,
And the metaphor stew I serve
May have less to do with how I write,
Than the detailed complexities
Inherent in my sight.
Not that it makes it right.
Leave a comment | tags: metaphor, perception, poems, Poetry, writing | posted in Passion
A lifetime past, he spoke,
though these syllables, preserved
have never faded, nor broken,
nor is dust or rust observed:
“Be the sun, not the moon.”
and like molten rock
runs downhill, absorbs, consumes,
it imbued with sudden shock
a missing piece, a missing trust.
I am not a lifeless entity
Dull but for the daylight.
The living Power living in me
is a wondrous, flaming sight
and we are one, as He is one
Why add layers of varnish?
It is futile work to be done
while He burns off every tarnish
to shine in the authenticity
of His work inside me.
Leave a comment | tags: Adopted, brilliance, God, Love, moon, nick, sun | posted in Passion, Praise
I miss the airports
the foreign elbows and tongues
making gestures of intonations
the bells of language unrung
slipping by on the socked toes
of non-verbal nods and smiles
of being isolated in a crowd
of traveling a thousand miles
to share what I received for free
luggage tumbling in waterfalls
inspected, measured, taped, and tossed
unnecessary to fulfill the call
their contents scanned, likewise my gut,
but I smuggle in treasure from afar
in quiet ways machines can’t see:
I carry wildfires in glass jars,
and when the time is right,
I set them free.
Leave a comment | tags: airports, feet, foreign lands, Go, missions, native truth, the gospel, tongues | posted in Passion, Praise
Sometimes
… lately…
this heavy, hazy feeling
crowding my chest
this lazy, lumbering
never at rest
wheezing when I laugh
shuddering to shout
I have an unwell ache
skin shivers as I call out
rumbles when I am still
inhaling the silence
translating the gentle air
into an invasion of violence
marching inwards mundanely
with no respite to save it
and this recalls the ghosts of a life in smoke;
In the memory, how I crave it
… lately…
Sometimes
Leave a comment | tags: cigarettes, craving, Memory, quit, sick, Smoke, smoking | posted in Pallor
And that my sense of red
may be wholly different than your own
while Red, in its being, its flesh,
exists outside what our perceptions hone
as an unseen creature, by and large
filtered by eyes and adored
for its intangible qualities.
By effect, endeared or abhorred,
but never known from the inside
by the masses in transit
along the rainbow’s slide.
In these short gestational days
we see in part, in reflections,
murmurs and heartbeats
fledgling inspections
through incomparable lenses
That your sense of red
may be tied with a thousand tethers
in loops of ideas left unsaid…
Leave a comment | tags: idea, in part, perception, point of view, POV, reality, red | posted in Passion
Is the thought gone?
Did it dissolve away
like the sudden snowflake
on the tip of a hot tongue?
And the words on the tip of my tongue
Dissolve, but are never destroyed
Piggybacking on the steel legs
of reason and wonder,
exhaustion, joy,
and the foreign wanderer
I have always been.
Not an idle word is abandoned
in the wake of new songs
How they flicker in the sun
turning, keeping time, telling stories
in wordless languages
of colors colliding, instrument strings
vibrating, resonating the songs of our souls
And I was born old
Onward I crawl, by day and year,
Towards the day of my birth:
Rewoven again in trembles and starlight.
I’m going to see Him-
All these years waiting,
traveling alone,
though I never have been.
What was the thought?
The traveler’s cloak
a defense against the cold
wrapped over the bare emotion
breathing beneath
It unravels to expose
the naked beauty
of the forgiven soul’s migration.
Leave a comment | tags: creativity, Faith, Life, migration, Poetry, ramblings, Snow, Wander, writing | posted in Passion
I have become a keyless creature.
I, even I, the inveterate locksmith, the Queen of Doors,
The custodian of moon-sized jangling rings,
Keys braided in my hair, hidden under floorboards-
Now all my keys
…are no more.
Twelve years ago, or so, some unknown day,
Gaping, ajar, a lock unclasped,
I pressed a key into another palm, giving it away
Before I could rebolt the trap
The cross-breeze lent a peaceful sway
…and I never looked back.
Leave a comment | tags: keys, locks, open, Poetry | posted in Passion
All my life, jostled between
Direct candor and stray wit
And people who hate what I have to say
But love the way I say it.
Leave a comment | tags: withholding, Women, Words, Work, working it out, writing | posted in Passion
For the life of me
I can’t figure the parts
Stuck between where I’m going
And the spot I started
As anything other than
Some odd bird’s migration
North for the chill
Against the invitation
To follow the crowd, or
To just freeze
Admit some kind of defeat
But I ruffle the breezes
And walk on alone
I can’t understand
What I was supposed to do,
Was there some parcel of land
I neglected to climb?
Some trail or tour
I’m confused by the feeling
I’m a failure
When there was no clear mandate
Aside from learning
To love and be loved
To mitigate the pain and yearning
Of humanity, aware.
And I’m still here.
Leave a comment | tags: Failure, Life, Poetry, ramblings | posted in Pallor
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