Oh how we strive
Within this realm of God and men
And all the while
The ivy climbs the wall and blooms again.
We build, we shape
And we destroy with fervent hands and yet
The dead seed underground
Will live again and not forget
Where to sink its roots
Or to the surface stretch.
You, my usual haven in dream,
Came rushing in after your brood
Speaking sharp words, like breaking sticks
Like shattering my childlike mood.
Now, when I’m already weak
And the thing that lives inside my brain
Crawls and chews and leaves
A tunnel system of pain
Why, when I have stayed loyal
Swimming against the tide,
Why do you stand against me
Withholding kindness already denied
Just to cast me aside?
I stare beyond civility with closed eyes
Because the dancing flickers of light wound them
I chase you free through sticky grass fields
The air is clean and does not yet burn my chest
We run to where the storm loomed
I see you kneel;
This is the moment I learned your secret.
And I return after you have gone to
Wander through the smell of rain on hyacinth
Slowly, now my lungs are wrong and the air’s so thick,
But I find your abandoned crevice of hidden treasures
And now I kneel.
The sun is gone adventuring when I get home
My sweater is shrunk and stuck to my skin
I’m in bed three days with fever and sweat and dreams
Sitting on my chest and taunting me,
But I have been out to see you again
At the place I know you will always be.
Oh God of the smiling moon
Who watches me these many nights,
While swimming in my mother’s womb,
And blind in my first cries
You cradled me with tune
And steadied me upright.
Oh God of the dancing stars
Who stands guard over my bed,
Who sought me from afar
And resurrected all my dead
Who gently dressed my scars
and kissed my fevered head.
Oh God of the cloudless deep,
Who framed the soul of man
In flesh of day and bone of sleep
Who weaves our purposes to plan
All that is inside Your keep,
And all I am with all I can
Lifting muddy hands
Cry out Hallelujah
Holy, Holy, Holy!
Hallelujah
Holy, Holy, Holy!
My brother slashed his canvases
His scenes of earth in motion
Were layers thick in paint
Every coating represented commotion
So in the tumult of self-condemnation
He succumbed to but one emotion.
I dump my words upon my words
Hoping a new layer somehow conceals
The best in me, the worst in me,
The passion I’m ashamed I still feel;
Instead of smothering my inadequacies
Each word finds a new piece of me to reveal.
Letting your best go off to greet the day
Requires the skill to forgive
Perhaps there comes a decisive moment
When you have given all you have to give
And you must decide to slash your darlings
Or let them leave to let them live.
My waffle iron is an old man
who groans as he bestows
dried parcels and dark stories
from breakfasts long ago.
My waffle iron is an old man,
whose joints creak and shake
and every lifting of his head
is another threat of break.
My waffle iron is an old man
though my children leap with vim
and run and dance along their way;
He can’t keep up with them.
I should always
occasionally
write a poem on death
While mirth still dances in
my gut
and laughter kisses me
I should form a stanza or two
Of death riding in on
A pale horse to reap
So when the fellow offers me a ride
those waiting on foot
can read the crumbs left behind,
and say ‘she knew it all the time.’
Black branches stretch your limbs
Before the sore and swell of time
Ages you against the wind,
Against the bend that shapes these crimes.
Blackest limbs, embrace the sky
Before growing in the crevice
Of fiercest pressures to bow or die
And forget the flowing heavens
Somewhere above your crooked frame
Take one last look at flaming stars,
Before the wind has made you tame,
And you’ve forgotten who you are.
Sorrow used to come at me
With a sharp drawn in its hand
And stab and swing and sever
And I was naught to understand.
Then it knocked upon my door,
But I scarce would let it in
Until it crept off in the dark
It’s blade to whet again.
Now we meet as strangers,
Who recognize the other’s face
But can’t remember if in a dream,
Or in this wicked place
We once fought as enemies
Dealing mortal blows;
Sorrow’s, to teach me misery,
And mine, to cease to know.
Does the magnificent butterfly
Shedding her chrysalis
Shed also tears -to cry
Or reminisce
Of caterpillar feet,
Big lazy days,
Big leaves to eat,
Simpler, unsightlier ways?
Or does the pain
Of breaking free
Erase the stain
Of all that used to be?
viewingcamelot 