Tag Archives: Poetry
If chapters never ended,
And covers never closed,
If the ones who filled your hours
Were the souls alone you chose,
And no one owned each other,
You eagerly filled the day
Sharing the exuberance of children
In the purity of play
If vitality held stay amongst the stars,
And we had all the world and time
To sway together against the storms,
We’d forgive each other all our crimes
So as not to lose an eternity
Of our hand clasped in the other’s
We’d love in innocent passion
Like two strangers meeting as brothers.
We’d write each other poetry
To adore our nobler traits.
We’d love without suspicion,
In fidelity that will not abdicate.
We would defend each other
Like children in a garden
Where the threat is not the predator,
But the heart that must not harden.
I love them all this way,
Like a child who cannot understand
The demands adults will bring,
The castles made of sand
People buy with all their hours,
So there’s none left to play within,
Or why no one’s left to play with me
When they all forsake the garden
To walk amid the men.
I sit outside, alone, under the stars
Writing poetry of all the beautiful things
I think they all are,
Or will be when they get their wings.
Leave a comment | tags: Friendship, Love, Pirates, Poetry | posted in Passion
I’m a little too everything else
To be anything at all.
In the distant hills of my soul,
I kept hearing a cricket call
To come home again
To dirt and bugs and grass,
To the weather inside,
And time fit to pass.
It got so dang loud
I dropped just about everything
To try to find my home
In the meadow where the crickets sing
But only the crickets
Remember me.
Now I’m just a little
Too much of everything.
Leave a comment | tags: Cricket, Home, Life, Poetry | posted in Passion
Where shall I keep my secret thoughts?
Scrawled in ink on fallen trees
Whispered to the roving winds
Migrating on the wayward breeze
Folded thrice in covert deposit
In the cupboard hidden beneath the stair
Buried in a vacant coffee can,
Etched in ash against the night air
Swirling upward in funeral dirge
A final surge of flicker and flight
Where might I discover the habitat
To keep these little thoughts aright?
Leave a comment | tags: Hidden, Poetry, verse | posted in Passion
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.
.
.
.
.
Leave a comment | tags: broken, cross, damaged goods, fail, illness, Pain, Poetry, redemption, saved, secure in Christ, sick, sick thoughts, the damaged good | posted in Pallor, Passion, Praise
I’ve always rather looked down on me
for the varied metaphors I stir-
the barrage of dissimilar images,
a busy collage beyond absurd.
If only I were educated, I assumed,
or possessed the natural bent,
I might have the talent to condense
the fairies of perception into cement-
Sitting in straight lines and right angles
and as monochrome as I desired
Instead of skipping, sailing, soaring
through spring petals and autumnal fires.
Drawing heavy lines, like coloring pages,
filed with simple, solid shades-
Digestible activities,
Soothing for every age.
Yet the more years I observe,
Life falls in chaotic lines,
Seeming contradictions
Live together peacefully all the time,
And the metaphor stew I serve
May have less to do with how I write,
Than the detailed complexities
Inherent in my sight.
Not that it makes it right.
Leave a comment | tags: metaphor, perception, poems, Poetry, writing | posted in Passion
Is the thought gone?
Did it dissolve away
like the sudden snowflake
on the tip of a hot tongue?
And the words on the tip of my tongue
Dissolve, but are never destroyed
Piggybacking on the steel legs
of reason and wonder,
exhaustion, joy,
and the foreign wanderer
I have always been.
Not an idle word is abandoned
in the wake of new songs
How they flicker in the sun
turning, keeping time, telling stories
in wordless languages
of colors colliding, instrument strings
vibrating, resonating the songs of our souls
And I was born old
Onward I crawl, by day and year,
Towards the day of my birth:
Rewoven again in trembles and starlight.
I’m going to see Him-
All these years waiting,
traveling alone,
though I never have been.
What was the thought?
The traveler’s cloak
a defense against the cold
wrapped over the bare emotion
breathing beneath
It unravels to expose
the naked beauty
of the forgiven soul’s migration.
Leave a comment | tags: creativity, Faith, Life, migration, Poetry, ramblings, Snow, Wander, writing | posted in Passion
I have become a keyless creature.
I, even I, the inveterate locksmith, the Queen of Doors,
The custodian of moon-sized jangling rings,
Keys braided in my hair, hidden under floorboards-
Now all my keys
…are no more.
Twelve years ago, or so, some unknown day,
Gaping, ajar, a lock unclasped,
I pressed a key into another palm, giving it away
Before I could rebolt the trap
The cross-breeze lent a peaceful sway
…and I never looked back.
Leave a comment | tags: keys, locks, open, Poetry | posted in Passion
For the life of me
I can’t figure the parts
Stuck between where I’m going
And the spot I started
As anything other than
Some odd bird’s migration
North for the chill
Against the invitation
To follow the crowd, or
To just freeze
Admit some kind of defeat
But I ruffle the breezes
And walk on alone
I can’t understand
What I was supposed to do,
Was there some parcel of land
I neglected to climb?
Some trail or tour
I’m confused by the feeling
I’m a failure
When there was no clear mandate
Aside from learning
To love and be loved
To mitigate the pain and yearning
Of humanity, aware.
And I’m still here.
Leave a comment | tags: Failure, Life, Poetry, ramblings | posted in Pallor
These ebbs erode the shoreline,
Carrying the banks to build bars
For the oyster to ingest
Constructing pearl from the hard sands
I once stood upon.
Time erodes my story,
Washing away the grains
Of days and hours and potential roads
And the details are the same
But the game of charades lilts to a side
Our birth pitches us into projects
We cannot honestly complete
Like writing the ill-conceived
Autobiography
About the stranger.
All the roots I sank
And I’m still just a duffle bag
One goodbye away
From a homeless nomad
Too tired to roam
Watching the churning sea
For the bits of debris
That feel like home.
Leave a comment | tags: ebb, Home, Life, Memory, Poetry, ramblings, Sand, Tide, writing | posted in Pallor
Glad to hear you’re doing well!
I can’t complain! Doing fine,
Though I’ve got this feeling lately
Maybe it’s finally time
To pull all the words I’ve written,
Pile every piece into one tall pyre,
Every jot and every tittle,
And the light the whole damn thing on fire.
But what’s the point?
I can’t escape who I am.
If I burned every thought to earth
I’d take the ash and begin again.
Leave a comment | tags: fail, Fire, funeral, Poetry, pyre, ramblings, Remorse, sun, ungrateful, Work, writing | posted in Pallor