Tag Archives: Poetry

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.


End Game

Am I fundamentally the same I have been?
If this is the wind-down into the end,
What has remained, and what has been changed,
And what should be changed again?

Have I done all that I could do,
All that only I could do?
Or do I pass the flame, less my name,
Along to someone new?

Am I a pitcher pulled from mound,
Or did I make the final inning?
There are a thousand ways to stop a race,
But only one of them is winning.


Cold as the Grave

Break, oh endless winter
Flaunting your precipitous splendor
Freezing the skeletal soul of man
Excessively boasting beyond your span
Bringing your brutal fist to ground
So ice and snow and sleet abound
You have tarried too long in this land,
And we are bowed low under your heavy hand
Watching our fleeing breath dissolve
As our prayers, the sticking point of our resolve,
Waiting still, for the thaw to save
While you turn our meadows into graves.


Only the Lonely

Nothing to offer,
So little to give,
Overextended by every
Last day I have lived
And would you forgive me
If I sank in deep?

Latching on secure
Where there is no clasp,
Belittling the future
To exploit the past
And I cannot grasp the reason
I remain another season

I wait for a beacon to guide me.


Nary Go Round

Finite are the times
The carousel goes round
A painted horse is deaf and blind
It can neither hear the sounds,
Nor cast the vigilant eye
Along the sky, nor ground.

It cannot twirl forevermore,
Each ride has a start and stop.
Once you climb aboard,
And once you climb atop,
Ups and downs are sure,
And nary a rider may swap.


Playmates

These verses were never written
To impress, to stand on display
On their own two legs,
Nor extend their limbs, nor stay.
They were born as companions
To drink my imaginary tea,
Or brush my hair, or whisper secrets
In the dark, to sing to me.
They were never meant for fancy dress
For beards to appraise their structure
They were never woven
To resist such puncture,
But just to keep me company
Just to tell the truth,
When honesty became something
More than I could do.

Ill-prepared for such critique,
Such stringent demands,
But they have fulfilled their calling;
We have grown together, hand in hand.


The Greater Good

In all my days of wandering,
Wending through water and wood,
For every move I made I
Mustered what courage I could,
Closing my eyes, and holding my breath
Putting foot, by foot, to ground
And while my fear was never lost,
Some little bravery was found.
On the outskirts of each town,
I buried my farewells.
Just enough courage to leave them,
But never enough to tell
And once I left a city,
I cut it from my map,
Because there was never any forward,
If there was ever any back.
All the friends I found along the way,
I left littered on every street,
Because the brave are always advancing,
The brave do not retreat
But each friend spoke into my heart,
And all their words remained,
And all my tiny footfalls
Left the echoed words unchanged.
And every word begged me
To change my wandering ways,
And every time they welcomed me
To make a home- to Stay.
Still I continued headway,
Step, by step, by step,
Until, in shock and wonder,
I found those who could accept
All my failed goodbyes,
And the worst I can be.
Friends who superseded,
Who survived as family.

Now in all my many travels,
And ever did I roam,
Nothing took more courage
Than learning to come home.


All Washed Up

How blessed I’ve been to live this life,
Constant as the ocean swells,
And churns, and ebbs as well
Eroding the sands of time.

What happy collisions I’ve had
Inside these currents
With propellants and deterrents
Who swim alongside.

In these frothy waters,
This soup-bowl of brine,
I’ve breathed the divine
And swallowed the rest.

When these mighty waves of salt
Wash me upon the great white shore,
When I can eat the sands no more,
I will leave behind my shell,

And, oh, the stories it could tell.


Standing

Desperate for The Fount again,
Always unhinged, and swinging wide
My pride gets crushed in my own disdain
By all in life I can’t sustain.

Treading in the shallow pool of thought and activity,
Lost in the flow of humanity, weighted with a surface view
By failure, like a heavy noose, I see all cloud and wave
With no desire to cry out to be saved.

My shrouded sky is split by sudden light
Cracking through my night, my hopelessness
Unable to cope with this; these expectations
That decay into hesitations embedded.

Under the weight of dread, but hope
Is no frail concept.

It is the ground beneath us.


Rain Torn

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.