I’ve always thought glorifying You,
Was an act that humans do
For other humans to see,
To respond and believe,
To echo out to other men-
Setting the cycle to begin again.
Yet angels look in wonder,
Celestial beings peering under
Canopies of creation
Glorify You in jubilation
For Your work in man.
Let the drumbeats lead us to the sea-
In cool of dark and cover of blindness,
A mighty sun lashes vulnerable skin,
Foam churns the salivated-ocean
Sticky on the swollen shores
Tongues and gums and
Saltwater evaporations
Adhere the dry bed to sky
Out we must march!
In darkness, dark
Preserves our vulnerable
Sun-crisped skin
Where cold may bite,
And ice may burn,
But the drumbeats take us!
I had a mother once-
With soft flesh and ivory teeth
Singing dark songs,
Low melodic spirituals
Sundering soul from bone
Her hidden youth
Borne of blood and water and man
And the tigers’ heard her
Moonlit dirge, her mournful croon,
Her tigers’ blood pumping
Through a woman’s veins
They desired her with tooth and talons,
Mauled flesh and appetite,
And her spiritual wanders
Dry spaces, drumless paces-
But the drumbeats bear me away!
Steps and sounds mingling
Into body chanting
Pounding the ghosts from sand
To frighten what lurks
In outer darkness, lost rings
Surrounding the drums
We pound out rhythms,
Purpose, protection, toes in sand
Beating out a road to sea
Our stretched legs limber
Sinews like fingers
Stomping in strength
Answered by weakness, silence,
Pounding again in strength-
Beyond the drums the lightning flashes
Ivory teeth and slitted eyes
And my mother’s spirit
Hungry, angry, clicking teeth
I hear it beyond the drumbeats
But sun will scorch them
Drive us both to ground
We wait till darkness only falls,
The beats put distance between
Flash of tooth and sudden violence,
Retribution for the apostasy
Of being man,
Tameless, shameless man,
Of wandering arid spaces
Until the sea may save us!
The sun yawned once and rolled out young,
Full rays frolicking on green earth,
Clean air, crisp, precise,
Rollicking in the fervor of new birth.
And we were new, brash and foolish,
Reaching where we ought not,
Taking with ease the very things
We were taught not.
How weightlessly we carried
Our moments of import
Our engine of presumption
Extending over our consorts-
For now was always, and always new
The future held no portal-
Assuming the sun may never age,
And we, too, may be immortal
For bones made long and strong,
And flesh stretched firm and smooth
Could find no reason to change,
Where there is no need to improve.
We needed no fear of future
Knowing no need to mend-
How brash! How foolish the youth who believes
His delights will never end!
Oh bitter man,
Striking earth with hoe and heel,
Does mercy burn away as dross,
Compassions cool as hardened steel?
Tiny, timid, trembling hands
Upholding immortal speculations
In fingertips of frail flesh,
Ageless treasures amid ancient desolations-
Oh coarse, consuming man!
In desecration of design
Feeding ignoble appetites,
Fatted on the sublime,
Until the basest desires
Devour all
Souls stricken with sight
Pleading with these blind
To see, to receive,
To love in kind.
Scraping, struggling,
Past my reserves, past intact,
Indulgences of doubt
Seeping through cracks
And I put down my hand
I stepped back.
I sit on a bit of stoop,
The city street half-lit
By twilight clouds, passing cars-
Numb to cold, to life, sitting
Unable to eat, I lift a whispered prayer,
“Please… I feel so close to quitting.”
So simple, maybe just a falling tear or two,
Ensuing silence… then sounds of life pursue-
Sirens in the distance, some nearby conversations,
Footfalls and phonecalls out of view
But in earshot- the children call to me by name,
As does the neighbor passing through.
Gentle love fills my soul.
This house becomes my home:
A place my soul finds rest,
I love it best when I’m alone,
No one judges how I fail;
None resent its frail bones.
And prayers are heard,
and answered,
from my little stoop.
Maybe we belong
because we’re here
but we’ve linked belonging
to some intangible nostalgia,
some forgotten garden aroma
of “home”
Souls wafting similar fragrance
take the wandering vagrants
by the nose.
Those who’ve said farewell,
whose Home has retired
to either heaven or hell,
transplant their definition
beyond the earthly conditions.
Everyone feels like they’re hurting,
or working, or searching
for a place they belong-
some fantasy of found-family:
Maybe it’s all wrong.
Maybe present is accounted for,
and there’s nothing deeper to be found
than sharing the same ground,
in the same days.
Maybe we belong wherever we are,
just as much as the next dumb soul.
Maybe the concept of home, or love, or whole
merely reduces into shared ideals
when everything deconstructs
into parts we juggle.
Maybe I got stuck, and struggle
to see what’s real.
Today is the part where I sincerely,
pensively, and meticulously consider
scrapping everything.
In disparate, unique states
my two sisters struggle under heavy loads;
one walking on ageless, solid truth-
one crawling through nightmarish apparitions-
Both overwhelmed,
and I have nothing to help.
I also go it alone-
Our mantras don’t rise
higher than the gasses that comprise
our voices- our self-centered choices-
We are encaged by our eyes
Their limited field of vision
casts no farther than our own proximity.
How can any overthrow these
Fortresses of Flesh?
The timeline is an apparent infinity
of myopic grasping.
A globe of collectors:
Collecting things, collecting flattery, power, or security,
some with the audacity
to try their hand
at collecting souls.
Grand things and thrift things
are all the same-
Decaying into a mass-grave,
a landfill of spent distractions.
Flattery is deception,
doctored photos and inflated perceptions-
Drugs for the addict
Distasteful to those who are not-
Sometimes a horror.
Power and security are the other triplets,
Deceptions and addictions,
based on shared intangibles
Ideas that run humanity
like a hidden engine-
a magic machine-
some deus ex machina.
But souls?
Collecting souls cannot be
A hit-and-run endeavor.
You cannot amass more
than you can cultivate-
Knowledge and skill
to impersonate relationship
but just busy enough
to avoid it.
Our eyes keep us alone.
Island shorelines erode
changing in the absence,
confusing returned travelers,
and no soul remains
if they cannot know and be known.
The gift of our Creator,
Who strives with man
to know and be known
But we have no time for something so non-essential:
Our landfills won’t fill themselves
Our merriment takes work,
and years, and fun
is the new fortress.
When I’m with him, I feel it:
Walking blind, feigning sight
Alongside a precipice cut above
An endless abyss of night
By waters that are shallow
To everyone’s thinking
But the hidden dread and intoxication
Remembers sinking
And sinking
Sinking…
Into a torn seat
In a borrowed, busted car
That only needs to make one trip,
Never far
Just a black strip into darkness
With the cat’s eyes closing
Somewhere to end,
Or a familiar hand to offer comfort,
Or a stranger to begin again
And again
Again…
Wandering blind
In the perpetual silence that followed
The question
Wagering tomorrow to
Leverage yesterday
Waiting for reparations-
The stakes seem cheap,
When there’s nothing else to barter,
But losing the bet
Means sleeping harder,
Or forever,
And hell won’t right no wrongs.
How I’ve peered into Your creation-
Those smaller than a speck
Ecosystems, those vibrations
Too tiny for the eye to inspect-
And it’s good.
You’ve worked structure and detail
Far beyond what we could:
What our structures entail.
How I’ve glimpsed the grand-
Out beyond our farthest sight
Beyond our ability to understand
To chart the boundaries of night
And it’s good, too:
A majestic symphony
Lifting praise to You
In undulating harmony.
Here I am between the two-
Can I sparkle? Do I shine?
I was formed by You
In secret places, by design.
Galaxies inside of me,
And also years of carnage
Unlike celestial bodies,
I am formed in Your image.
Help me be the masterpiece
You intend me to be.
I don’t belong to anyone else-
I don’t even belong to me.
Complete Your work:
Protect what You desire,
And bring it into being
For You are an all-consuming fire
And I am Yours.
“There is not an atom of the universe in which you cannot see some brilliant sparks at least of His glory.”
John Calvin
I walk with wide eyes
Scrutinizing details
Minutiae in the macrocosm
Swirling activity at every scale
If I look closely enough,
No surface is solid or still-
The building blocks of life
Move about at-will
The entire teeming dynamic
Rides within a swirling sphere
Spinning in its orbit,
Which also spins and steers
Around a spinning galaxy,
That also travels alongside
Other galaxies breathing
In the vast universal tide-
Everything remains in flux,
Constant metamorphosis,
Churning, changing forces
From the dawn of genesis
But there is nothing new under the sun:
Matter can neither be
Created, nor destroyed,
Therefore everything we see
Has been churning through all organic history.
I walk with wide eyes
My breath succumbs to magnitude,
Comprehending all that is
Fully beyond my aptitude
Yet I cannot help but see
The galaxies in every soul
Opposing forces, symbiotic choices,
Exchanging properties at toll
Branded with eternity,
Touched by death and rot,
Defined by diseased perceptions
Of what we are and what we’re not.
My eyes appraising evidence equal
To either hope or else despair:
A Creator-God who bears our burdens,
Or a world in irreparable disrepair-
Hurtling through spacetime
Toward eventual extinction
Or eternal resolution:
Faith makes the distinction.
While I rely on eyes wide open
These things remain our plight,
But there’s a vision beyond vision
That sees all in time put right,
So I will walk by faith, and not by sight.
viewingcamelot 