Tough and Tender

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.


Hesitation Marks

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.


Fragile

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.


Freedom

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.


Pocket Watch

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!


From Before the Foundation

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.


Metamorphosis Hurts

Cells burning as they change
From one substance to another,
The New reacts as foreigner-strange
While all The Old gets smothered

The pain of the day’s demise
Darkening once before the morn
One black cry as the familiar dies
And the unknown gets reborn.


Bricolage

There is a wildness in me
An ocean in a bottle
With a moist cork, I see
I stand a suppressed model
Of practicality,
Revving for full throttle
But for the wake of brutality
And all forgot, all
Sacrificed to creativity,

But there is something wild in me
And still it grows, and still I thirst
For open fields, and free
Paints, and notes, and words
And time and space to feed
What be the best or worst
Or wildest escapee-
All unheard, and all unversed,
La Pensée Sauvage will be.


Let the Redeemed of The Lord Say So

How tremulous are the times,
These smooth faced crimes
We cultivate as pets
Feeding crumbled regrets
Until our hands are stained bare
Our ignorance declares
Our bloodthirsty guilt.
We are born to wilt,
Screaming wild from the womb
Against our descent to the tomb
Fascinated with all that lies beneath,
Sheep with carnivorous teeth
Tearing at the soft flesh
The crave and the thirst enmesh
And each entanglement, syrup sweet
And each digestion, a mortal defeat.
On our mounds of filth, we stand
Making worship, inherently hand in hand,
An abstraction we practice alone
Bowing at our own thrones
Bowing, but never to sit
Playing the king, but unfit
To reign.

You reign
Holy and blameless
Ever shameless
Even against our mess,
This howling failure to confess
And repent, and consent to life.
Taking the enemy for wife
Restoring order to the disjointed
Renewing Your anointed

Who were the worst of the lot.


You Again

So stuck on me
And all I am
Is the static between stations,
White noise vibrations
The matrix between cells,
The void that fell
Between occupied spaces,
Lost and lacking graces,

But for Your face turned to see me.

I make nothing
I offer nothing, I am nothing
But what I’ve always been,
A tiny bundle of blood and sin,
Crying out in the field I’m thrown,
No suckling, no home
Until You cradled me near
You – all I love, and crave, and fear

And betray, and hold dear.

I’m tossed under the night sky
And every burning star
Is a light left on for me,
To guide me home, to see
You still care
Not that I’m impaired,
But that I’m still Yours
You – setting my course

And sustaining the force of my momentum.