Immortal souls traveling
In decaying flesh,
Breaking us down, taking us down
To an inevitable grave
No force may save from
Final goodbyes: weak or strong
We all die
We seek the long delay
Trading moments for days,
Breaths to barter or borrow
But the pride of life
Is toil and sorrow.
Tag Archives: Poetry
Pride of Men
Complexity and Complicity
Forgive me my ancient remedy,
My overthinking, my overwringing
Each moment into a cacophony
Of strained, offkey singing
When I feel overwrought.
You gifted me to look inside,
And underneath, and from afar
A gift to see conclusions implied,
To guide my wandering star
By unknown charts and graphs.
Your gifts preserved me
I’m thinking on them oft again-
My years now stretch to eight and thirty:
You discipled me in lone places when
I wasted so much trying to join a club.
Disciple me again in this foreign land
I use this overthinking
To try to understand
When my engagement started sinking
Into the deep barrier of me:
To find the ladder back out-
I can feel another cistern
Of grief, and anger, and doubt
And I know I must return
To the spot, to break open the earth
I want to be angry,
Because I know if it’s not true
I enslaved myself to agree,
To believe them over You
And there’s nothing left but to repent-
Which I know I will do,
But I thought they held the keys-
They didn’t permit me pass through-
And now could it be
It only mattered who held the Truth?
It only mattered who the Truth held?
Madame Poetry
A tender age, we met: a chance encounter
The impassioned, foolish child
Admiring nameless stanzas,
Metaphors, and syntax run wild.
Sudden fingers of sunlight,
Blinding gold through ancient trees,
Extending delight to me in verses-
Complex, reticulated leaves
And the tectonic plates of my existence
Shifting, suddenly shifting,
Steadied my continents of passion,
Ceasing their aimless drifting.
A treasure in a field, a secret thing of excellence-
Evidence God’s intentions
Bring order to our accidents, and
Beauty beyond our comprehension
As the first eyes to fall on the Grand Canyon
The world is the world unchanged,
And then a meter closer
It will never be the same;
With fumbling fingers and twisted tongue,
I stumbled on unknown eloquence,
And the world is the world and the world
has been waltzing ever since.
Leap of Faith
If wishing for something
could make it true,
what a horror in which we’d abide
Yet I yearn for You
and the Kingdom that can’t divide.
Most wretched am I,
among all men
if You aren’t who You are.
Here I pursue these disciplines,
but my hope is fixed afar.
My resolve and my delight
nailed to the sticking point
of Your blood-stained cross
The wood you worked anointed
by the profoundest, grievous loss
and my redemption.
Every iota of who I’ve been or will be
is leaning on who You are now
How sorrowful I’d be, how silly,
if You fell through somehow
but You haven’t yet.
When I travail, when I ache,
when the brokenness of man,
and the rebellion, shake me
You take my hand, You stand
How blessed am I
above all mankind,
that You lead me into the vast unknown
You whisper ideas beyond my mind,
ways above my own,
You elevate me,
and You expose my sin
Dirty veils that hide my face,
until You clean, You defend,
and wrap me again in Your grace
and Your love,
tangible as a hen’s wings
stretched over her offspring
Solid as concrete
under my foolish, and sometimes faithful feet.
The Thief
Did he steal heaven too?
Hanging there, despised,
Hearing words his equal spewed,
His wounded gut felt the lies-
Fear God! Is it not clear
Who owes, and who gives?
Death is raging ever nearer;
Despair is wrenching as he lives
But he has seen a glimpse,
And hopes enough to beg-
His hobbled life limps
To the end of broken legs,
And he cries out, “Remember,”
In one desperate act of faith,
“Remember me!” as slumber
Slices through his days
And in the closed fist
And throes of agony,
Hanging by the wrist:
He met the Prince of Peace
How his heaviest, darkest hour
Must have also been his brightest.
In the suffering grip of evil powers,
He finds his weightless rest
The Light overcomes the darkness:
His worst hour becomes his best.
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!
Knock Knock
Here is what I know:
There was a judge, an infraction,
And a widow who would not let go
Or succumb to distraction.
Here is what I know:
Jacob took hold, wrestling,
And would not let go
”Until” he said, “You bless me.”
Here is what I know:
You’ve told us to pray,
And I refuse to let go
Until You have Your way
In this heart,
In this family,
In Your house,
In this city,
And beyond.
Rapha
A morning lingering into day,
In waking, walking paralysis
Our finer natures overlaid
By an interlocking antithesis.
Waiting with breath abated
For any signal to divine
If affection is reinstated,
If value is reassigned.
Late afternoon I went to work
For You, to finish what I started
Not for favor, or fear of shirking,
But because the work is imparted
And I had the time to do it.
When I left, You began to speak
My fears are falsity-conduits:
I’m only in trouble if You are weak.
Then You reminded me
I’ve been gifted unspeakable devotion
A God who desires, who seeks,
Who set time in motion
To rescue me, to hold me close.
Your love rained on me all afternoon,
I saw You greater than the foe,
And somehow I’ve been hewn
In Your image,
Which is anything but hollow.
You alone set me to pilgrimage,
And equipped me thus to follow.
I began the day waiting to forget,
These frailties fading into embers,
But You reminded me You’re not done yet,
And what I need most is to remember.
Sangria and angrier
More than a year, it takes
on a single hand
to count these nights.
The foundations shake,
coldness expands,
and I’ve abandoned trying to make it right;
I only try to outlast the hours.
I can, but he has deadfall traps
constructed in his soul.
The bait entices, he devours,
snapping jowls and swallowed scraps,
until the trigger takes its toll.
I forget the Viking even exists.
He’s a stranger here, hard to know,
subdued by character and discipline
but when he took my wrist
and didn’t let go,
I realized he was here again.
His Achilles isn’t in his heel,
you’ll find it in his blood-soaked genes:
An heirloom-trap passed on in grief.
Still angry, I asked him how he feels.
“Good,” he replied, like being mean
brought some long-anticipated relief.
I know his decisions are his alone,
and generally he loves me too well,
but these nights leave me unsettled and concerned-
Is resentment hiding, ingrown,
waiting for the chance to swell?
He wouldn’t be the first good man I’ve turned.
Does loving me require the odd glass?
A little something to feel right-
a drink, an escape, an evening of bitter regret?
It’ll be months before the next trespass.
Tomorrow we’ll forget tonight,
But I can’t forget it yet.
Heavenly Father,
Is this design or dysfunction?
I feel tired through my core,
And do we go it alone?
It comes with no compunction,
Knock-knocking at my door:
This beast that chewed my child-sized bones.
But the memories, stale
With scratching fingers,
Cannot change who You are
I fight exhaustion, often fail,
But You ever linger
Both near and far.
I don’t trust where I began,
And I can’t know where I may end,
But You are the Ancient of Days.
No one plucks me from Your hand
When You have called me friend,
And whispered Your higher ways,
To lead me through this maze.
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