These are Godless times.
We write Him out of His own history,
Condemn Him for our crimes
And celebrate His mystery
As our innovation.
We are a Godless people
Who do not work the field,
But eat our bellies full
Of everything that appeals
To our wandering wisdoms
And desires.
If you can see
Past parting clouds and lowered masks,
Don’t wait for the lull to pass-
Speak quickly.
Weather patterns
Repeat forever, blow in and out,
And sever the lines of communication
A seasoned eye discerns
A word rightly spoken
Can lift the fog of interaction
And expectation to wind;
To see what’s broken
Is to mend.
Hope is the flower that never blooms
Relentless rain drenches the roots,
Thick stalks reach the heavens
While leaves unfurl and flute
The petals wait in a fetal cocoon.
Pluck it, or tend it, anticipate
In a breathless storm
Defending the defenseless
Awaiting the vivid and worn
To bloom, to justify the eternal wait.
When did this first begin
The sleepless nights?
The restless thoughts?
I opened the Book again,
I read about men of might,
The wars they fought
Waged against their Maker
A brief desire to lend the ear,
But hubris on their faces
Urged them to forsake, or
Attack with no fear
Of their creaturely places
Before the God of all fury and graces.
See me
Wrapped in this black shroud,
A wandering, whistling cloud
Free me
To some purpose, some passion
Or keep me in this bastion
Secure
Only thin the haze that blinds me
Spill kindness, the kind that reminds me
To endure.
How dark the struggle, the sorrow,
The dim days of man’s persistence
Born in blood and water
To a pathless existence,
A rocky ascent through
Briars and thorns,
Fists and the forgotten
Sorrow numbed, joy mourned,
Dumb when questioned,
Deaf when told
The blessing of life is
Growing old.
Wrinkle and fade,
Ebb away, but time
Is all the gift of man.
Death, our crime,
Weighs heavy on our histories.
How dank our intentions,
Turned inward, turned downward,
Too lurid to mention
But never unknown
Until love interrupts.
How sharp the contrast
The breath of God
From now, from ages past
In deep elixir swallows
To soothe the wounds
The fears and fallows
Of fate and faithlessness.
Sounds of summer lingering
Though day is fading fast
Leap chirping through my window
As wild as they are vast,
Perfect days of teeming life
Unmuted and unmasked,
But silence falls too soon,
Too soon the heat is passed
And another winter’s cast.
I’m scared to stir the cesspool
But the paralysis of surface tension
Immobilizes the flow of life and
Lends rot and foul to my intentions.
You stirred a pool and troubled waters
Freely healed the one most eager.
My own arms are too short to save.
My fingerfalls are mute and meager.
Be the active voice for me
Plunge Your pure hands into my death
Stir my decay and cleanse my sin
By Your blood, and by Your breath.
I speak
My voice along my tongue
Shaping words, shaping sound
Expelled again by eager lungs,
But changes form and drifts to ground.
I sing
In wispy exhales
Turning to vapor, to cloud, to fog
Dense, frail
As it crawls silent.
I shout,
But only smoke and cough
The quiet wheeze of desperation
Falling down, blowing off
Words like trapped condensation
Wandering muted in the dim hours.
I write again; I smother.
The men who sit atop the world
Always forget it spins,
The towers whereon they perch
Seem tall enough to defend
Until the earth tilts
And top is bottom again.
The men who bear the heavy yoke
And cast their eyes to ground,
Who cannot lift the chin to see
The weight that wears them down
Must always, always remember
God made this dark earth round.
This too shall pass,
We are not bound to the whim of chance-
There is a design as a wise man defined:
God is the great reversal of human circumstance.
viewingcamelot 