I was wrongly holding them to the standard
Of brother and fellow-heir
Instead of bringing the balm of the gospel
Into the pirate lair.
I want to hold them accountable
As equals in the faith, before You,
But I must let go and forgive them;
They know not what they do.
Help me, and deliver me
From a life of useless activity.
Help me bring everyone I know
Back to the nativity,
Through the cross,
Onward into Your ascension.
Hide me in Yourself.
Perhaps a fitting thing,
Ceteris paribus, to pray
Is for their own daughters
One distant, darker day
Who find themselves
In terrible need
To have the only ones in their corner
Be to their daughters
Exactly what they have been to me.
Every awful bit exposed;
My past, my flaws, my sins
For their own reasons, ever unknown,
They watched again and again
Now I’m waking up
From the nightmare of it all,
But the echoes of my humiliation
Resound as a migratory call.
I wasn’t valuable to them,
And that’s genuinely fine.
They didn’t ask for my devotion;
They barely paid for my time.
Nothing in our agreement
Required affection; they were clear:
Take them on their own terms
Or get the hell out of there.
If I hadn’t believed I was safe
I wouldn’t have been unguarded,
If I had been guarded,
When this thing started
I wouldn’t have been undone.
So disassembling my machine
Displaying each part to the open sun
Must hopefully be to repair and clean.
Because what is meant for evil
God means for good.
This is a place of bitter waters to me,
I’d leave now if I could.
I think I’m learning my own behaviors
Earlier I wanted to stay
Maybe because I believed abusive men
Would repent and choose Your way.
I’ve never shaken the dust off my feet,
I lick it and plead
For remorseless human beings
Who cause others to bleed
To see what they can’t see
To care where they can’t care,
But I don’t want them to care anymore
I want to get the hell out of here.
Waking up in tremors,
Looking at the wreckage
Looking at my mess, and theirs,
Through moderate eyes
And they should still be ashamed of themselves.
All this way, for what?
No one cares.
You keep reminding me to love,
To be kind, not to define man
Where I have no jurisdiction,
And I will do what I can
But God,
Be kind to me.
The wait is long.
The people were treacherous.
The disappointments throng
And seem cemented.
No one cared,
Now I’m not sure I do either.
I took my way
When we were dating
He spoke Your name
Looked close enough
But didn’t really obey
In the ways he didn’t want to
I knew it was common to man
So I hoped
I wouldn’t pay the consequence of sin.
Your Sin Will Find You.
Always.
We began by doing it our way
And rendering You lip service
Asking You to bless
Our presumption
And the meager ante
The gesture
We gave You instead of obedience
Instead of laying down our desires
And seeking You first
I’ve payed for it since.
No one should care.
What would caring look like?
Like You holding me back
From the final death
By betrayal?
I suppose, like Your men
Your earthbound friends,
I expected an earthbound answer
To an eternal, spiritual question.
Deferred Hope
There’s nowhere to turn
Ever in this life
But left or right
Farther into You
Or into destruction.
I read Your promises
And I couldn’t imagine
That kind of joy
Worth it all
But my time frame was off.
I was thinking
As one stride follows another,
As a pendulum swings
In turn
I have to alter my hope
Adjust my scope
Survive and search
The skyline
For the final resolution
Learn
To suffer in silence
Like a lamb before slaughter
Who is so very quiet.
Try to look like You
To the people who tear You apart
And rejoice
To share in Your sufferings
Which I can do
When I truly believe
I’m sharing with You.
The pain and betrayal,
The cold indifference of onlookers
The sustained injustice
Mockery and derision
From the very people
In charge of putting it right
Put me wrong.
But that was Your cross
Where You bore their sin
As they wrote it
In the carnal delights
Of Your misery.
You forgave them in it;
Help me look like You
To the ones who tear You apart
Forgive me
When I know not what I do.
Help me bear up
Until I cross over to rest in You,
Then remember me
When I wash up on the shore
Of Your kingdom
My Tender King.
I believe You still.
I am estimating ratios
To calculate the miles
I will need to forget
What the pirates defiled.
I thought the current of days
Would carry me sufficiently far
To release and forgive them
For being what they are
Remorseless, lawless,
In love with their own image.
I thought I could live and let live
Patch up, on my own, the damage
But it just doesn’t heal,
And it changed everything for worse.
They enjoy their bounty;
I am branded by their curse.
I believed they held noble virtues,
But they have no hearts
To house them in-
Ruthless to tear someone torn apart.
I know it will work-
I’ll forget them all in time.
But the wound must be deep
To be worth leaving so much behind
And risking so much ahead.
No matter how I calculate,
It is worth it.
Pirates.
I always love the wolves.
Not the ones who bear their shame,
But the ones draped in false wool
Who wear Your name
Not Your nature.
I am a fool.
Look for me on the lost hill again.
They are all the same person.
I don’t know how I didn’t see.
They aren’t the nicest I’ve met;
They were never nice to me.
No one spoke out.
No one stood.
No one defended;
No one advocated for my good.
No one broke the silence.
No one confessed.
No one was honest;
With what was I impressed?
How did I ever find such
Rogues and scoundrels charming?
None of them are worthy;
Shame on me for fawning
After bad human beings.
It’s astounding.
Everything he did to end me,
But the ones who hurt me the most
Were the ones I ran to for help.
I drift away, a wiser ghost;
I will never ask for help again,
And they will never feel remorse.
There is no hope for us all
If God doesn’t change our course.
It’s the first time in my life,
I have to hold the curse on my tongue.
I’m a breath away from praying every delight undone;
Holding it in poisons my lungs.
They have changed me,
And I can’t figure how
To restore what they vandalized,
Or if it’s even worth trying now,
But I am far worse for knowing them.
I feel like you wanted me to stay here;
I hope there’s freedom to leave.
But I want what You want
Even if it causes me to grieve,
To live in the wound I cannot heal.
Help me lay down my life
In the way You desire
And not destroy what remains
In my own foreign fire,
Be bigger than the boogeymen.
I never want to go through
That kind of pain again,
The corporate rejection and mockery
But if such tender humiliation
Speaks You, lead me.
If it is unnecessary,
Help me shake the dust off my feet.
I trace these letters
Sewn together
Like tiny constellations
Of ache
I break, but linger,
Longing fills the cracks.
I inhabit empty dimensions.
I can’t find my way back.
My friends became handless
As the ground disappeared
Acquaintances knew no kindness;
Those in authority jeered.
And the wounds I received
Still slowly bleed out,
And the nerves that got severed
Bring numbness in bouts.
I search for some hidden cleft
Where the pirates can’t go
Where, if their wounds end in my death,
They will never get to know,
Where I won’t see them on the hill,
Or their flag at constant mast
Where I may forget names and faces
And the love they cast
Into the cold water.
viewingcamelot 