Tag Archives: broken

Rolled Over

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.

.
.
.
.


Broken

How many years I’ve carried this body,
And how long its carried me-
An intrinsic facet of my existence
And my identity.

How its struggled from the womb
Targeted while tender,
A bullseye-birthmark stained through systems-
And genes- and gender.

How long pain has walked in stride,
Fingers clasped in mine,
Wracked from earliest childhood,
Constant yet, through time,

Wrecked still, the crawling pain
Shudders my skin awake,
While the cold chill grasping
Does not alleviate my ache.

Bedfellows we’ve been
Thirty-eight years to strive-
One day we both shall die,
But after, only I will come alive!


A History of Brokenness

She weeps offscreen,
Years of bruises thrive
Breaking open unseen
And she’s so strong to survive

Her brokenness.

I smile a hollow smile,
But the lantern is black
I embrace what I revile
And can never take back

My brokenness.

We survived the rocky womb
Dashed to pieces, but breathing
Hoping for a chance to bloom
Before we finished bleeding out

Our brokenness.

And we can’t stay in the lines
So we suffer the scold
For breaking the confines,
For not doing as we’re told,

For not staying broken.

We’re easy to clasp,
But impossible to keep
Because no one has surpassed
The temptation to reap

Where we’ve been broken.

Love doesn’t plunder the cleft
To feed base appetites,
And I’ve only learned this is theft
From the God who weeps at the sight

Of our brokenness.

A God who swears to fashion it for our good,
To make it better than intact
Who entered our misery and withstood
The same bitter attacks

To be broken for us.

Slowly making all things well,
But this process stings,
So we wait for the healing
Only He can bring:

Our Wounded Healer.


Fissure King

It stained everything
In the days I was shaken
Seeping from cracks
Ripped through the foundation.

Broken, I became
All ink stain and rubble.
Who pained to look on me
Invited trouble.

Days and distance
Stilled the quake
I still awake at night
Prone to shake

In the wake of the devastation
I have tasted:
The flesh and folly
Quaking wasted.

Who I am
Forever stained
Along the fissures
Carved like veins

By a mighty hand
I could not see,
Guiding these cracks
That had to be

But in the deepest chasm
Of fractured despair,
I found one small flower
Blooming fair

A fragile, fragrant blossom,
Unfamiliar to my sight,
And it’s nectar held the power
To put every fracture right.

I did not have it in me
To shut up the chasm deep,
To force the little flower
Into impotence and sleep.

So I live along these fault lines,
This open, aching earth,
So I can ever reach the little bloom
That grants broken dust rebirth.

There is a great compassion
Built into my design;
I am the gaping fissure,
But the flower, too, is mine.