Porkchops and Wallet-chains

I'm trying to write more coherent poetry. Is it working?

2012-02-09T00:51:00.000-08:00

Kimble

I wake as though I am sleeping
I sleep as if I were dead
Oft I speak aloud as if praying
Lest I commit treason instead.
I am not wishing for trumpets
Rather, I'm waiting for sin
To come on the legs of seduction
And transform the state that I'm in.
What I get is the clapping of thunder
And the feeling I'm lies wrapped in skin
The break-apart storm clouds of wonder
The sensation I'm where I begin.
Which is what I'm truly afraid of
That I can, in fact, change who I am,
That mistakes are all that I'm made of,
That I've always been out on the lam
To escape my own definition
A fugitive fleeing from grace
Scared of the future I'm racing,
Even more that I'll see my true face.

So come on around the bend

2012-01-06T23:09:00.001-08:00

Walter Rauschenbusch

Evening found us waiting

Just to glimpse a shadow,

To hear a wraith, see a ghost.

Never realizing

That Elvis had already left

The building years ago

And been replaced with a ghast.

With an addict in costumes,

A preacher in street clothes

And we waited

And baited our breath

Too caught up in the fumes to notice.

Morning found us listening

To a pre-recorded message

Never realizing that Elvis

Would never have recorded that song.

Noon found us singing along

Subtly changing the words

Without conscious focus

Never taking notice

That Elvis was singing a wholly different song.

Sunday found us buying

Tickets to a magic show

Where Elvis would perform

Despite his missing qualities,

Namely breath and a pulse,

But details never derail true belief.

Monday found us waiting

Still in pre-assigned roles

Though Elvis had already moved on.

Tuesday found us antsy with

Sweat stains on our clothes

And not a whisper of rockabilly around.

Wednesday found us nervous

Just scratching the surface

Close to accepting the Vegas guy in his suit

Because Elvis had left the building

While we were still glued to our pews.

My Annual Christmas Poem

2011-12-20T00:26:00.000-08:00

It never fails to shock me how disgusting the incarnation must have been. We see it as a beautiful, selfless act but it was also a brutal act of unspeakable violence. God, the forever whole, self-sustaining, forever complete God, ripped God apart to become one of a race of broken and incomplete people. We're all born broken, with our purpose in life to heal and be healed. To become whole. This is what makes Jesus so compelling. So significant. So incomparable. He was born as the only one who has ever truly been whole, and yet He chose to become broken that we might be whole. He literally ripped His own being in order to restore ours. Indescribable.

Instant

We're all born of scars, of wars, with tokens

Of unspoken snares upon our skin

Born broken with tears in our seems, we begin,

Awoken by pain from the daydreams we're in.

And if life has a purpose,

A surplus of purposeless torture remains,

To the sane, the trademark of our lack of faith

Strung out as bait, asphyxiate, we wait

For rescue from the days we hate

The lives we make.

As if.

What if.

If only.

Say it does not do to dwell on dreams

And speak till you believe it

Yes, bleed till you repeat it

Say it till you conceive it.

But exceptions come in unlikely places

In excitable atoms, in figures and braces

For impossible change, until wearing strange faces

We see ourselves in our eyes.

For into the chaos from the realm of the sane

Out of fulfillment and born into pain

From perfection and wholeness to incomplete strains

Of the melody, now all that remains

Is the moment to moment rendition, reprise

As we look to the morning, yes, look to the skies

For out of the billions, one star defies

The rules of our constricted sphere

And guides the seekers gather here

For the moment of triumph's surprise

The moment the dark cannot rise,

The moment the world was remade and reborn

The minute our hist'ry of tarnish was torn

The instant our heartache was parted and shorn

The second that cleansed all our grief and our scorn

The moment that changed everything,

A Baby was born.

Easter comes every December

2011-12-01T15:28:00.001-08:00

Insanity

Someone asked if I was mortal

I said I was it’s chosen son

Till I pass in life’s sweet agony

I breathe one last, and then I’m done.

They asked me if I feared it

I said decidedly so,

Still answering no

Not knowing precisely where I should go.

There were pistols in her eyes, I said

As I walked roulette’s once hidden bed

Toward the perjury of the purge, then dead.

“You lied,” she whispered. I lied, I said.

For death is just an alibi

A reminder of the days gone by

When we were found and worthless.

Not so anymore, I said.

Death where now is your vitriol?

Does it’s acid poison your tongue?

Insanity where is your caging?

Trapped in past violence and dung?

Ashes to ashes and dust to dust.

Blasphemy, Blasphemy,

We all fall down.

Ashes to ashes, unless, unjust.

Ashes to ashes, and change we must.

Sheol, where are your games?

Loathing, have you begun?

Oh hatred, what have you done?

O evil, where is your son?

But ashes to ashes, a phoenix breaks free

What began as a martyr is reborn as a king.

I like this one a lot

2011-10-29T00:32:00.000-07:00

The World is Our Clam

A valley grows in madness
Sadness earmarks the back-lit sky
(Why?)
'Twas (Y)ou there beneath the Cosmos
Almost as though we're born to fly
(Why, why try?)
The cavern that dwells within my chest
Bested once to never rest
Lest twice come 'round once more
(Folklore's still keepin' score)
'Neath the coruscating nigh
Sigh escapes, each passing dry
Eye emotes my shame
(Came softly here without a name)
We raised our birthing irises
Virused as we were
Sure of our own expense
(Defense of what we were)
We dilate optical illusions
Allusions to a diff'rent life
Rife with more potential
(Inconsequential)
Standing 'neath Galileo's dream
Seems impossible to be (to me)
We feel as though we are ants
Perchance, we feel we are little gods.
(Purveyors of our own existence)
(Resistors of our own persistence)
(Resistors of our own resistance)

ice, ice baby

2011-10-22T15:17:00.000-07:00

Ice

There beneath the frost of abused
In cracking grass, the white-tipped bruise
To be covered and topped with dew
To be hidden and fade from view
To be kept far away from You.
As my fears scatter like the seeds
Indian summer's dying breeze
Bears away all my desp'rate pleas
And bares the scars the cover me,
That grow beneath the thrashing trees,
It bares the hidden depths of me.
Kept there beneath Your lock and key
Is all I ever hoped to be.
Instead I kept doubts arising
Found this harvest's freeze apprising
You of my lonely, prising grasp
Of this desolate, crackled rasp
Of all You gave me leave to be
Lest I fan fires of destiny
And find myself returned to Thee.

Leafing on a Jet Plane

2011-10-21T22:46:00.000-07:00

Where Sermons Go To Die

I am the acolyte
Of autumn's dispersion,
Witness faith's conversion
To despair, and come
Whatever find you there.
Disbursing out our overdues
Perversing mold from autumn's hues
Conversing on our tattered news
Worn bare by all of winter's leaks.
I notch the passing days in weeks
One for ev'ry thousand hours
Drink before the sweetness sours
And we're all stuck in rhyming sap
Another feather in our cap
For delusion's own achievements.
As we wend our way past our bereavements
With bureaucratic speed,
Blinded by our own need
Stuck to redemption's tree
By our stupidity
So have Your way with me.

I hate feeling a failure

2011-10-06T01:04:00.000-07:00

Ultracrepidarian Me

Forging opinions I do not hold
From all the facts I do not know
Perhaps if I could be so bold
I might pretend it's all a show
(Cause after all, it's all my fault
But then again, I'm wearing thin)

(But then again, I'm speaking sin)

Perhaps I'm merely cherophobic
It's certainly less aerobic
Than prancing 'round in childish glee
I do not act so childishly.
But then, I only hate the hate
(Or at least that is what I say
I do not know myself today.)
My baseless anger at a faith
I have taken little part in.

My silver tongue turns to tin
Thus becoming little more
Than member of the infantry
In a lonely little boy's war.
Just soldiers in the games of kids.

Now I've put all that behind me,
Claim I did not do so blindly
(Why is it so hard to find me?)
A misanthropic misanthrope
(Cats in cradles, and mem'ry's rote)
Perhaps all that I've ever done
Is create endless streams of me
All dumber than the prior ones.

(I'm just one mistake from greatness)
(Just one success away from death)
(I swear, oceans apart from you.)

2011-09-22T23:55:00.001-07:00

Books: Series/Collections

John Bellairs & John Bellairs/Brad Strickland

- All except Facein the Frost

Stephen Lawhead

- Song of Albion Trilogy

- King Raven (Hood) Trilogy

- Celtic Crusades Trilogy

- Dragon King Trilogy

- Pendragon Cycle

- Avalon

- Bzyantium

- Patrick

- Dream Thief

- Skin Map

Phillip Pullman

- His Dark Materials Trilogy (with book four)

Rick Riordan

- Percy Jackson 1-5

JK Rowling

- Harry Potter 1-7 (with Beadle Bard)

Tolkien

- Silmarillion

- Hobbit

- Lord of the Rings Trilogy

- The Complete Sherlock Holmes

- The Complete Shakespeare

- The Collected Works of Edgar Allen Poe

- The Works of Charles Dickens (Posthumous Papers of thePickwick Club, Oliver Twist, A Christmas Carol, David Copperfield, GreatExpectations, A Tale of Two Cities)

Assorted Fiction: To Be Kept or Discarded

Douglas Adams

- A Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

Eoin Colfer

- And Another Thing . . .

Frank Beddor

- The Looking Glass Wars

Derek Benz and J.S. Lewis

- Grey Griffins Trilogy

Eoin Colfer

- Artemis Fowl 1-7

Frank Herbert

- Dune

Stephen King

- The Stand

- The Eyes of the Dragon

- The Shining

Mercedes Lackey and James Mallory

- Obsidian Trilogy

- Enduring Flame Trilogy

Kathryn Lasky

- Ga’Hoole 1-2

Pittacus Lore

- I Am Number Four

- The Power of Six

George R. Martin

- Game of Thrones

Jenny Nimmo

- Charlie Bones 1-3

Christopher Paolini

- Inheritance Cycle 1-4

Frank Peretti

- This Present Darkness

- Piercing The Darkness

- The Oath

- The Visitation

Rick Riordan

- The Red Pyramid

- The Throne of Fire

Angie Sage

- Septimus Heap 1-3

Jonathan Stroud

- Bartimaeus 1-2

ND Wilson

- 100 Cupboards 1-2

Classic Fiction:

- Mr Poppers Penguins

- Alice’sAdventures in Wonderland & Through The Looking Glass

- The CanterburyTales

- The BFG

- The Brothers Karamazov

- The Lost World (Doyle)

- The Three Musketeers

- The Chronicles of Narnia

- Paradise Lost

- Frankenstein

- The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

Graeme Base

- The Eleventh Hour

- Animalia

Dr. Seuss

- Green Eggs and Ham

- The Cat in the Hat

- One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish

- Fox in Sox

- Hop on Pop

- There’s a Wocket in my Pocket!

- Horton Hears a Who!

- Horton Hatches the Egg.

- I Can Lick 30 Tigers Today! And Other Stories

- Oh, the Places You’ll Go!

- On Beyond Zebra!

- The Sneetches And Other Stories

- Yertle the Turtle and Other Stories

- Dr. Seuss’s Sleep Book

Non-Fiction:

The Craft of Research

Rob Bell

- Velvet Elvis

- Sex God

- Jesus Wants to Save Christians

- Drops Like Stars

- Love Wins

Oswald Chambers

- My Utmost For His Highest

Francis Chan

- CrazyLove

GK Chesterton

- Orthodoxy

Primer of Biblical Greek (Croy)

Jonathan Edwards

- Sinnersin the Hands of An Angry God and 13 other sermons

John Eldredge

- Wild AtHeart

Mircea Eliade

- The Sacred and The Profane

Immanuel Kant

- Prolegomena To Any Future Metaphysics

Soren Kierkegaard

- Philosophical Fragments & Johannes Climacus

The Koran

Brother Lawrence

- The Practice of the Presence of God

CS Lewis

- A Year With CS Lewis

- The Complete CS Lewis Signature Classics

Brennan Manning

- The Ragamuffin Gospel

Brian McLaren

- A New Kind Of Christian

- A Generous Orthodoxy

Donald Miller

- Through Painted Deserts

- Blue Like Jazz

- To Own A Dragon

- A Million Miles in a Thousand Years

Reinhold Niebuhr

- The Nature and Destiny of Man Volumes 1-2

Friedrich Nietzsche

- Twilight of the Idols and The Anti-Christ

Daniel Pals

- Eight Theories of Religion

David Platt

- Radical

Phillip Yancey

- The Jesus I Never Knew

- Whats So Amazing About Grace

- Prayer

Voltaire

- Candide

John Woolman

- Walking Humbly With God

Concise Encyclopedia of Preaching

The OxfordHistory of Christian Worship

William Young

- The Shack

Matthew Henry’s Commentary on the Whole Bible Volumes 1-6

The Liturgy of the Hours

Greek New Testament

The Message

The NRSV Bible

The Story (TNIV)

The New Living Translation Bible

The ESV Bible (2)

The NIV Bible (3)

The NASB Bible

The KJV Bible

Movies

A-Team

Ace Ventura1

Ace Ventura2

Air Force One

Alicein Wonderland

Batman Begins

The Dark Knight

Batman Forever

Beowulf

Blade: Trinity

The Blind Side

Blood Diamond

The Book of Eli

Braveheart

Bruce Almighty

Captain America

Jim Carrey’s A Christmas Carol

Cinderella Man

Clash of the Titans

Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs

Constantine

Corpse Bride

The Count of Monte Cristo

The Day After Tomorrow

The Day the Earth Stood Still

Dumb and Dumber

Eagle Eye

Edward Scissorhands

Enemy of the State

Equilibrium

Eragon

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

The Express

Fantastic Four 1

Fantastic Four 2

Fantastic Mr. Fox

Field of Dreams

The Fifth Element

Finding Forrester

Finding Neverland

500 Days of Summer

The Fountain

Ghostbusters

Ghostbusters 2

GI Joe

Gladiator

The Golden Compass

Good Will Hunting

Green Lantern

Harry Potter 1

Harry Potter 2

Harry Potter 3

Harry Potter 4

Harry Potter 5

The Highlander

Hitch

Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

Hoosiers

Horton Hears A Who!

How To Train Your Dragon

Hunt For Red October

I Am Legend

I Am Number 4

I, Robot

The Illusionist

Inception

Independence Day

IndianaJones 1

IndianaJones 2

IndianaJones 3

IndianaJones 4

The Invention of Lying

Iron Man

Iron Man 2

Jumper

Jurassic Park 1

Jurassic Park 2

Jurassic Park 3

King Arthur

King Kong

Kingdom of Heaven

Knowing

Kung Fu Panda

________________________________________________________________________

Lady in the Water

The Last Samurai

League of Extraordinary Gentlemen

Liar Liar

Lord of the Rings 1

Lord of the Rings 2

Lord of the Rings 3

The Majestic

The Mask

The Matrix

Matrix: Revolutions

Memento

Miracle

MissionImpossible 1

Mission Impossible 3
Moneyball

Narnia 1

Narnia 2

Narnia 3

The Natural

The Nightmare Before Christmas

The Patriot

Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief

Priest

Prince of

Persia

The Punisher

The Pursuit of Happyness

Push

Remember The Titans

Robin Hood

Robin Hood: Men in Tights

The Rock

The Rookie

Rookie of the Year

The Sandlot

A Series of Unfortunate Events

Seven Pounds

The Shawshank Redemption

Sherlock Holmes

The Sorcerer’s Apprentice

Star Trek

Star Wars 1

Star Wars 2

Star Wars 3

Star Wars 4

Star Wars 5

Star Wars 6

Superman Returns

Taken

The Terminator

Thor

3:10 to Yuma

Time Machine

Timeline

Transformers 1

Transformers 2

Tron: Legacy

The Truman Show

V for Vendetta

Van Helsing

Wanted

X-Men: Wolverine

X-Men: First Class

X-Men 1

X-Men 2

X-Men 3

Yes Man

Zodiac

TV Series

Smallville: Seasons 1-3

the proverbial french fry in an order of onion rings

2011-08-31T23:10:00.000-07:00

Flowers in the hourglass

These brittle tears
Eradicate the etch of endless faces
Intuition won't save me now.
These fickle years
Replace the past with shifting places
Yet none my when and how.
My inner Napoleon takes his bow
To the clapping of a bitter crowd
To the hissing of their hidden clouds
Of long-suffering disappointment
In me.
But I am not their Caesar
I no more know their names
Nor recognize their patterned seizures
They call dance
I do not see the same.
These winter fears
Do not thaw beside their frenzied, crackled blaze
And I cannot meet their desperate summer gaze.
These fragile, autumn tears
As I abscize into the dust
Into the lies, to be raked and thus
Burned and scattered over seas.
Forgotten, erased, . . . and free?
A flower in an hourglass
That holds back the sands of grime.
These dreams were never mine.
Not me.
No, not free.
No, no, please don't erase me.

Stuff that collides with the rocks in my head

2011-08-23T22:00:00.000-07:00

To Be

I am washed away and raised anew
In every stillborn moment
I am farther in and further through.
I am feared by those who know me
Both to with, and to without me
I am hope to those that doubt me
Those who tarry all about me
But do not trust enough to take me in.
I am where permanence begins.
I am the gray granite slate of time
I am all that lingers on and on
And I linger still when I am gone.
I am wiped away in every moment
Raised again in sleeping torment
To be marked, then washed again.
I am grace, I am forgiveness
I'm both in and making every moment.
I am love.

My Room Smells Like A Febreeze Leak - Gross!

2011-08-09T07:27:00.000-07:00

Strip-Mining The Yellow Brick Road

I am a little man behind a curtain pulling greater strings
With the heart of a cowardly lion
And a tin foil hat to keep my thoughts my own.
A puppeteer hiding off the stage
With a disguised, projected voice
To cover my growing list of sins
My rising list of doubts
To keep God from finding out.
The world markets burn
With the green flames of our black-hearted greed.
The grey skies fill our yellow bellies with uncertainty,
And the red dawn fills our eye-whites with doubt.
Our lips turn blue as we forget to breathe
Our ears begin to bleed
From the strain of suspending our disbelief.
And there are wars and rumors of war
Collapse and disaster, strife and rampant chaos (and greed)
And we hang God in the city square
For daring to make us feel
Only to realize that without hope we were never real.

I am a puppet on a tiny stage
Dancing to thoughts not my own.

Are We The Horse and Rider Thrown Into The Sea?

2011-07-27T13:31:00.000-07:00

Doubt

Said in the morning it will be clearer
Thought happiness is just smoke and mirrors
There's none that understand,
There is no promised land
There is no holy man
Not one.
Claimed and cleared of conscience
Your bemusement fogged with smoke
Noose from our collective hope
We conspire to hang ourselves by deed.
We volcanic-cratered time-bombs
We are the mechanized napalm
Encompassed whole of soulless industry
With most deserving blame.
Duality embodied
Duality unleashed.
We're all just smoke and heroes.
We're all just smoking heroes.
We're all just burning Neros.

Something Silly

2011-07-16T18:58:00.000-07:00

Villainous

I've got you where I want you

I cliched unto my foe.

I'll laugh about my triumphs

While you weep about your woes.

You may have drawn the first blood

But the last laugh is the deepest,

At least, I think that's how the saying goes.

Know that I only let you touch me

Because I'd look dashing with a scar,

Yes, in a burst of flimsy

I thought I'd like a scar,

Yes, in a fit of whimsy

I wished upon a . . . oh there you are.

You caught me monologuing

Indeed, you caught me cataloging

All these dreams you can't despoil,

Yes, soon you'll be spitting soil

Or pushing daisies west

Yes, yes, that would be for the best.

And why are you lying there defeated

Get up and start retreating

Don't listen to this drivel

Whimsical people, heads on a swivel

Caught by whatever thought they choose

Always losing sight

Thus why I've got you dead to rights . . .

Hey, where'd my victim go?

What if I don't want to be the lonely one?

2011-07-14T04:23:00.000-07:00

525,600 Pieces of Silver

Sitting, sitting in circles
Walking, walking in lines
Children of circles in circles
Wandering, Wandering in mines.
Numismatists seeking treasure
Concerned less for substance than shine
Polish our pieces of silver
Thirty in total, in kind.
Move to our next destination
Double our traitorous fares
Or nothing, gamble our conscience
For a chance at sixty piece shares.
I wonder if great sins will sink us
Or small blasphemies bring us down?
Failings from time unremembered
Sacrilege coming unbound.
My God, can You feel my erosion,
My corrosion tarnish Your crown?
I've never been less undiluted
And I've never missed You more than now.

A long time ago in China I'm told

2011-02-11T08:49:00.001-08:00

Mausoleum

And I watch my soul wash from the skies

What if Emerson dreamt he could fly

What if . . . no, wait, nevermind.

Divided by dancing Maples and Pine

Crushed by the weight of industry and time

And buried in a concrete sewer.

Where no doubt countless thought to say

Everything there is worthless anyway.

A volcano in the rain

I do not ask forgiveness

For where my indignities lie

For the world will watch me burn

With their flashing firefly grins

As I watch my soul wash from the skies

Everything dies in the end.

Autumn

2010-11-28T18:00:00.000-08:00

Fall

I am formless, overwhelming
Futility embodied in drifting
On the wings of Zeus' gasp
Into Hades' unforgiving grasp.
I am preconceived as whispers
Father Time footsore with blisters
In every creak and groan and snap
In each dim-lit feinting pass
Overgrown and under-worked
And often seldom tread.
I shift in fluttered dread
As I feel the earth's derision.
I am convenient hope's abscission.
I will pass in ash nigh Advent
In reds and golds and browns,
For three months absorbed into the ground
Yet someday, life will find it's morn.
Among the pruned and plucked and torn
Upon the dark midwinter's pass
I will frost amidst the dying glass,
And on a warm day as the bleak fades
On a Friday, as the black grays
Someday, there among the thorns
Someday, on a Sunday, I will be reborn.

Than What I've Been Handed

2010-11-23T13:57:00.000-08:00

The Insurrectionist

Are we really all so justified
In our blindly trusting ties
Bound as victim to the tide
The shore's self-defeating slide
Into erosion, corrosive pride
Where fractured filaments lied
In premasticated fabrications
Spit back out, wide-eyed dilations
Thoughtless forms of meditation
All led us back to here.
Baptized both by fire and fear
Muddling through the very clear
Dimmesdale-packaged preaching
Plastic-wrapped magazines impeaching
Virtue with perjury's beseeching
Mercy for its slandered speech.
Another doubter into the breach
Where discontented masses reach
For connection to themselves.
Self-help books on battered shelves
Epics of men, dwarfs and elves
Distract us from believing.
Time capsules are deceiving
As any truth worth perceiving
Is found in clawing up from crashing don
We're all alone in a room of clowns
And we're the closing joke.
As the laughter drowns our final choke
Perspective swirls in vapid smoke,
Burns away all time's reclusions
Fills our lungs with our delusions
Marks our souls with dark contusions
Lost inside our own illusion.

The Blog is Back!

2010-11-18T05:56:00.001-08:00

I Am John Wilkes Booth

Someplace. Spotlights. Stage lights.

Today is the day I assassinate everything

That I have ever believed in.

Poor caliber selection my only saving grace

With residue on every point of contact

And q-tip flavored second thoughts

In chemical solution

While my hand is quietly turning blue.

Today I am an incorruptible figure

In a stupid hat, constructed mostly of legend

Sewn together with myth

And liberal usage of wishful thinking.

Tomorrow I am Novacaine mixed with vodka

And a single cherry

In a glass of sherry

Downed by whispered fools

And I tie my tongue in knots

To relieve the loosening in my stomach

Yes tomorrow I kill the only face I ever loved

In preparation for facing the mirror.

Today I shot the face of freedom.

jjjjjjjjjjjjj

2010-09-30T17:54:00.000-07:00

Tigers & Goats

Oh disenchanted charm

The loveless lovers' undying vows

Until death will do them part.

Bright and luminous darkness

Ere the night time's dawning sky

With still and stilling breeze

Distilling undiluted ale

From the pure corrupted proof

Of vintage-aged modernity.

Oh anachronistic dancers

A three-step waltz in five-by-four

Patterned unique conformity.

Sacred oath of perjury

With crossed-finger hand to God

Standing tall on bended knees.

Oh misbegotten child of promise

Named destitute of fate

A clear, abstract work of art

With a three-part death on wooden stake

Oh the demons here are human

And the bastard child of Father time

Just fingerprints of doubt's divine

Once a pride of manes, a flock of wool

Now jungle cats and mutton

Just blindly looking for a sign.

2010-09-10T17:56:00.000-07:00

I Am Death

The pathway to revealing chaos

Is begun by creating order

As in our world where factions border

Patristic, nationalistic pride

Stars and stripes and stitches in our sides.

We're crafting rules just to break them down

Singing drunken eulogies in round

Ah, but at least there is defiance

Masked puritanical compliance

But really a joker wearing spades.

Here our feeble eyes are crossed and glazed

To convey an infirm appearance.

Bondage of the will makes adherence

A betnoir's glimpse of grinning ghasts

Where Tanaris breaching reach is past

And we're just phantoms wearing halos.

2010-07-16T12:47:00.000-07:00

Pink, Orange, Moon and Stars

Still and picturesque, swells and collapse
A backdrop of everlasting fire
Of mantles, veils and cloaks
Pinprick eyes of a thousand gods
Awash in infinite longing
Beg Lady Midnight lift her skirt
And send them all their waking slumber
And send them all their gold-orbed rest
And send them all their unadorned, azure sleep.
Lord Twilight peddles wares tonight
Star-scape pendants emblazoned white
With the traversing, patterned sameness
Of eternal heat.
There with the unenduring sojourners
A stillborn faith flat-lines while yet awake
And miracles birthed of fathomless breath
Streak sonnets 'cross the forever sky,
Giving mortals turn to wish
Entreat, entrap my love with yours
As we wait for Avalon's kiss.

2010-07-09T12:52:00.000-07:00

Tendrils of Insanity

Whisked about the frothy madness
Of the addled and Antaean mercury
That siphons the alchemy within;
That which beats within the breasts of beasts
And twice within the chests of men.
Ah, but the fates are loud tonight
Those bringers and revelers of chaos
Intermittently feral the saints march
In concussed, percussion steps
As if on the stroke of witching hour
Your loyalty falls to eldritch ire
To be replaced with the yellow stains
Of temerity, stench of tremulous fear
Oh and how . . . are you looking closely?
With leaps of roiling grace
With gifts of slight of hand
Breached yet unassailable
Nigh but unapproachable
Surreptitiously revealing cards
Iris glazed, with malice hidden in the sleeves
And oh, but what are we, what are we . . .

We walk were angels fear to tread.

Olive Garden Mints

2010-06-07T12:14:00.000-07:00

Vintage Fake

Clerical collars for witches
And silver chains for priests
Thumbscrews unleash the sacred wine
Bits of Mass clinging to torture
Bind it up on the tides of time
If it floats, just hollow sleepless fits
So bite your tongue and will it to sink
You were never meant for bliss
Cloaks and silver daggers
Concealed within our lips
Designed to humble kings.
Again the simple way of things
Bleeds the color from our world
With blurry hues of pastel beige
Heaving with surprise and rage
At the rapier betwixt our ribs
Cracking every egg-shelled friend
Just another lie proclaiming peace
Another wrinkle, an older face
Another farce pretending end.

Rubber Baby Buggy Bumpers

2010-05-31T03:15:00.000-07:00

Asps

In every quarter-hour crisis
The blood infused retch stains carpet

Oh be still my faithless heart

Please be still.
But I will not say peace.
Not to each passing wave of nausea
Each directed search of pain
Each reverberating weakness

Please be still, I ask you
But I issue no commands.

I offer forth no trust
Neither animosity nor kinship
Darken bile-cracked lips
Consider me a moment to be chosen
But neutral on the both sides
Until the future of forestry is revealed
As ink-stained obscenitied hands
With cyanide tears.

Or should I say all trees become paper
Covered in worthless words
And the cries of our venomous fears.

Consider my scars, measure my doubts
Carefully weigh this poverty
Yes, consider me well
Else, consider me poison.

Winding Roads of Cheese

2010-05-21T11:22:00.001-07:00

Paul Revere

The intravenous insurrection beckons, gently
Come.
Ethereal injections whimper as you run
Until the howling in your ears become the throbbing hum
That bids you think escaping is an urgency,
Just Come.
Forward on the beat, at the thrash of pounding drum
Come.
The silence echoes swiftly across the darkened numb
Of holes in midnight forearms,
Into the breach - the scum
Into the cracks - the scrum
Into the darkness
Come.
The Paul Revere of madness rides in twilight, gathers some
But answer not his cavalcade of finitude and
Come.
The bells astound the scattering alarum of we numb
Catatonic replicas of violence render dumb
Into the breach and seal the void, insurrection's strum
Come.
And rally toward the weary lines of chaos,
Simply Come.

Come.

Come.

I beseech you, come.

Fear not the tyranny of possible
And Come.

Ultimately life makes fools of us all

2010-05-18T00:41:00.001-07:00

Rivers, Rivets and Convergence

We will kneel
With empty hands aloft
As the albatross
Of our grief bears down upon our skulls
And every spoken word
Infringes on the quiet
Each sigh of sweet relief
Rings harsh amid the silence
All well-intentioned
But utterly pointless.
In seamless retractions
Of infinite voids
One whole is the next
The intimate toys with the blasphemed
Creating a kaleidoscope
Of comforting irreverence.
We would speak to vanquish
The still beating hearts
That gather together our tears
In banquets of tourniquet blunder
And the rending leaves every wound fresh,
Even ripe for the plunder of breath
Into staccato, stale breathing.
But speaking is words
An encroachment of order upon
The meandering meadow of chaos
While heartbreak judges itself.
Thus we will stand
With vacant eyes alight
As fragmented hands reunite
With another
Hands raised to banish the oncoming darkness.

Danish boats float higher above the water

2010-05-13T00:44:00.000-07:00

Cottage Cheese

How long can misrepresenting
And various "isms" hold us together
When we are determined to blow?
Yes, the infinite dwelt inside
And corrupted all our movements
With extending bronze fists
In iron-clad contracts.
So greatness entered a life's holy hell
And the fulfillment was too great to bear
Tiny hands drop their egg-shell worlds
To cover the stains on their pants.
Love is paramount
Anything else is tantamount
To swearing allegiance to disaster.
We are jesters in the courts of mobs
The unruly conscience of riot
So full of the ether we explode
And cover the world in our entrails.
We're so full of the righteous we crack
Leaving a track of digested god
The world sits in hand grenades.

And your smile is the reason I am still alive

2010-05-01T23:41:00.000-07:00

We The Broken China Dolls

In the whirlwind of unanswered pleas
Spat back like vending machine change
From the genie jar of well-wishes,
   The weary insincere mop crinkled brows
   With wary eyes in haggard countenance
   Weary shine dampened by romance spots on tissue.

Every clarity forsaking me
In news reels of microfilm vision
Swimming against the dowsing rod
That has claimed my lusted, rusted orbs
As it's potentially hapless victim.

(I already walked the aisle
And took my hypocritic oath
With a reveler's hand on my shoulder.)

Everything within climbs over the clamor and out
(Digging trenches of crusted precari)
Retreating from ruddy child with muddy cheeks
   Wanting only water, hugs and candy
   With their human rain-delayed smiles

My twin spirits dilate with greed
I cannot move forward and yet I can't leave.

And I only see a sawdust-stained iris.

They Say Only Fools Rush In

2010-04-20T02:00:00.000-07:00

Pharisee

Pyrotechnic hands are raised
As eyes are glazed with blind faith
Offering un-fazed salutes
With (one) finger to the truth
And (two) upright in sacrifice
For each of (three) denials.
(Four) of (five) are tried by trials
Of the vague and "Christian" sense
That may or may not exist.
Thus with words both never meant
And scattered over fourths and fifths
Poor chords sear their souls with glee
Euphoric mid-cacophony
Of post-creativity
Then lost for (six) or (seven) days
To masturbate away the gays
Then wake up at (eight) and rinse . . .
Abandon sin and common sense
For prejudice and pretense
As if we're (nine)-lived creatures.
Backroading faith to glory
To escape the bloody stories
Of the dying and burnt out
Tourniquet tithe a small amount
Now, are we down . . . for . . . the count

(Ten).

Quiero Comida!!!!

2010-04-17T18:17:00.000-07:00

Prepositional Incarnations

You can tell me that death is forever
That beauty in strange places
Wearing scarred faces never was.
That the timings of hoping are chance
Matchsticks in desolation are trance
That the void in the star-scape is coming
And the mind of the skeptic is humming
In our ears, and that science defines
These disparate blurring lines
And all else is just blips
Random synaptic firings in a chaotic world
All but begging me to believe
You tell me, you tell me
But that doesn't change what I see.

Only the Lonely

2010-04-13T23:39:00.001-07:00

Antipathetic Filler Kills

"Negligence" cry blinded mice
Speaking in the land of lice
Reeking both of unwashed flesh
And branches grafted, limbs spliced
Together into mansions
Built pseudonyms of failure
Hanged man from the monorail
Finds the apathy of God.
Nausea floods the remedy
Hemorrhaging memories
Like aneurystic doctrines
Bail other facts in buckets
Keep floating in the muck yet
Listing toward the monolith
Anti-intellectual
Mostly ineffectual
Thinking God is in the synths
Distortion pre-recorded
Our Theos burnings dormant.

Percent Ampersand Ampersand Snicker Snicker Snicker

2010-04-08T20:52:00.000-07:00

Fourths and Fifths

Change is born with each phasing atom
Chance within each split infinity
Empty, hollow rocks hold destiny
Though enmity spans many fathoms
Incompletion scrolls the universe
As oppression fakes each hallowed hold
There exchanging divine sparks for mold
Leavened with the covenanted curse
Brokenness bars possibility
And mars scars with insecurity
Now turning healing into pity
With each irresponsibility
Burning promise into claustrophobes
And our pain attempts one last escape
With velvet sin forming concrete drapes
Where death is cloaked with our human robes
Remember, it's just the beginning.

Earrings, Statues and Snakes

Wandering inside these what ifs . . .
Yes, grace and pain feel much the same
And we wish the gods would tame
Themselves for our amusement.
So go ahead and turn me gray
Baptize me with spit
Tongue bathe me with shit
And wash me clean with irony
In the baptismal font of fire and farce
Forbidden fruits of Spirit sparse
Only eaten by the chosen few
Keeping company with fools
But there's only dark in whiter lies.
Prayer drops warping wooden floors
Tattooed with shrouds and plaster and sores
Waiting for the wild to come claiming
But everything is too tame to save me
Smoke and grinning torture
And god I need a drink.

Somebody told me that Mormons taste like donuts, and I said that's not possible, they don't drink caffeine

2010-04-01T03:10:00.000-07:00

Witnessing a Murder

Creating Hell with insistence
Spontaneous riffs on existence
If life is wasted is breathing vain?
With each contraction exhaling shame
Conjunctions spell subtraction slain
A teeming mass of human game
Hunted by the same, divine without fame
Mocking each stitching, seizured side.
A Sisyphus climbing Syzygy's slide
And form without function is pride
Least until Dante finds us a home.
Industry replacing Shalom
Post scripts of violence echo Dear John
Where God signs the greetings of cons.
A poorer place, the world is lost
The sky is calm, the trees are tossed
By endless vengeance and arrogance
If we're going to die, then shall we dance?
Whiskey tango foxtrot, my side's caught
I can't breathe, dimes for nickel thoughts
What if I traded love, created naught?

Do the truffle shuffle?

2010-03-26T22:58:00.000-07:00

Canonized With Paint

My eyelids have heartburn I claim
As I rub the reflux from my cheek.
My chin shakes with dry-heaving
Sshh baby, rest, don't try to speak.
Nursemaids with old fairy tales
Hold my writhing sides for countless weeks
And kept the lint from my tongue
Until her vacant skies are numb;
Yet dark with misty disregard
Still somehow greener than my black thumb.
There's life inside this poisoned rum
Leeching thin and taut, food from thought
And ridicule from religion.
Rolling paraphrasing from my skin
More alive than nearly scary
All angles and elbows, arms and shins
With soft misquoted reverence
And an embrace that smells of love.

Like finding a needle in a needlestack

2010-03-24T13:44:00.000-07:00

Dingy, Sinking Dinghy

I sat alone in a peopled space
My prayers loosely forming fists
As if unclenched fists exist.
If I bare my throat in kindness
Are my sights above Your highness
Do You see me in this blindness
Are You answering with silence
Each desperate, graduated plea?
You must know I can't submit and see!
Are You drowning me in waves of sand
Or guiding me into wasted lands
Because You love me?

Or because You always find me deaf?

Am I so hidden within the cleft
And shadow of Your passing
That I'll never see where You are
Just lost among the fallen stars
Spinning freely from Your ether?
Another destitute with fever
Hallucinating hands extending
A beggar waking and pretending
That God takes notice of his fears . . .
Are You calming me with violence?
Is there sacred in this silence?
Are You reaching out in shyness
Crying every time it rains
To place the beauty in mundane
In my profane?

___________________________________________________
Spitting in the Wind

If we're going to set the world a-fire
Then we might as well burn it down
Hear the creak of guillotine sounds
Come to take the stress away.
Redemption is the endless tide
Repetition's erase divides
Or eloquently gathers up.
And we are the lens without scope
Still-life when capturing movement
We are the bridge, wood without rope
Finite blurs of self-reprovement
Pajamas soaked through with thunder
Anonymity stoops to wonder
Chaos finds us where substance passed
Camera shudders too slow to capture
All this chasing after rapture
Are we spitting in the wind . . .

Sooooo Tired

2010-03-19T12:56:00.000-07:00

Lazy Can O' Corn

It was noon and the moon was rising high
And our horror plots were poorly written
While I rest against the fatal sigh
Shut my eyes, my faults are drawing nigh
Naive lies, no one's this snake-bitten.
Maker calling carvings; deaf, blind and numb
No one believes in patience anymore
The air-conditioned drum and hum
As raucous laughter mocks the dumb
Waiting, just waiting for the death of war -
Can't find the plot-line, fingers turning claws
Innocence sets sail, waving last goodbyes
The world handed me unlucky draws
I find excuses there for all my flaws
It's midnight, and the sun was in my eyes.

"What's the ratio of spiderman to moose muffins?" ~ Mark

2010-03-12T18:23:00.000-08:00

Where Angels Cast Shadows

I wake and feel like blood clots in
Tornadoes, blocked and unrelenting
Swirling and churning with blacked-out despair
In a country of lead paint and consenting
Waste. With garbage-pails of salad days
And quite frankly not repenting
Of our mindless belief in lust
In sweaty palms and dust and touch
And sand beneath and between
Our toothless fantasies, the sheen
And luster replaced by idle hate
While I pine to ponder love.
Love like free-falling screams and shrieks
Of helpless panicked jubilation,
Like thunder in squalls and reckless
Fear suspended in fascination,
Love in train-wrecked sensations
In thoughtless desperations
Until it only hurts to look away,
Love like a gale, that though I stay
Feral gusts carry the day
Steal me away.

Bounce

2010-03-10T12:25:00.000-08:00

Deconstruction

Life does not exist in black and white
But in various hues of percolate
Of dark and darker blends, non-absolutes
Misogyny wrapped in coffee
A chocolate date with toffee
I lacked the guts to flip the trigger
I guess it goes to figure
Isotopes and dye
Weak kinetic ties
Allergies and wishful thinking
Stoned and cold and whistful drinking
Eyes are washed with lie, cleaning soap and lye
Careful children cry, but why don't I?
Life exists in capes of black, shades of lack
Window-shopping need
Hiding morbid thoughts with speed
Obese infatuations, obscene insinuations
A mist across creation
Some say the world will end in fire
Some in flood
And some when the gods blink their eyes
But most probably, if I can read the signs
We'll asphyxiate while doing lines
Hallucinating about the times
We held our breath for change.

p-p-p-po-em

2010-03-06T00:53:00.000-08:00

Aurora

Formless and void . . . devoid
Nothing's expansive smirks
Expression tilts and spoke
Axis, expanding clerks
In dark cloaks of orbit
Spun of the naked man's
Journey into abstract
With flags to mark the span
And arrogance to spay
Or neuter each perceived
Obsession, whether fact
Or madness' hope conceived.
The licit rotates once
Angles, peaks, curves and rope
Anchor straining shoulders,
Tensed against graying slopes,
Heads rest on familiar
Habits, abbots, rabbits
Pulled from hats in keeping
Gravity at bay. Mitts
Warmed at the blurring slide
Of great into the small.
Some see a juggler's ball
Some see a place to hide.

I Believe I'd Buy Whatever You Would Sell To Me

2010-03-04T07:48:00.000-08:00

Mornings Spent Hacking Up the Phlegm

Sometimes I am weightless
But never in the proper order
Dark with flecks of light
Littering the unspoken eulogies
Of thousands of un-mourned
But well-buried beliefs.
Sometimes I see light in darkness
So secretly afraid
That it's only the patterns
The physics of motion
The induced psychosis of strobe
The effects of shadow
That I love.
And if the light would flood
Break forth and sink the barge
Of stranded deserters
And seek forth in absolutes
I think I would be mostly . . .
Disappointed (not to mention blind),
Become search and self-destruct
Another love in which to hide
Can the soul of daylight find
The luminescent terrors
That only ghost the mind?

Oswalt

2010-02-26T19:00:00.000-08:00

Stoned

The going rate for going broke
With wide-eyed stares in curling smoke
And graveyard shifts in drowner's moats
Only keeping in the desperate.
Our feet are bound by twisted sheets
Soaked with artificial heat
Damp with manifested bleats
For death, for dawn, for drifting.
Harnessed in our fabric gallows
Hands sniffing out every shallow
Flicker, jaundiced lungs are sallow
Yet awake, flirting with destiny.
Garden handcuffs, fly-trap stains
Flowers decked with wistful chains
Petals laced with acid rain
Sifting across our compass,
Plucked and sown in sleeting spar
Picked and strewn in melodic bar
A fleeting wish on green-stemmed star
And we watch it float away.

We've Never Done Nothing, How Can We Be Something?

2010-02-24T16:19:00.000-08:00

Contrivances

They said she said he said that
We said somebody said something
Passed along in sidelong whispers
Perceptions, rumors . . . flings
Shoulder to shoulder . . . tap, touch, tap
Fibonacci patterns code
Hand to fingers, nose to nose
Exchanged, inhaling gossip.
Chew then swallowing the rap
Drinking the isotope connect
Becoming caricatures
Of ourselves, straw people
In straw houses of sand, assured
Of mutually contrived
Misrepresentation derived
From deaf certainty, demurred
The ambiguous, amorphous sheaf
The collective teeming masses
Breathing sighs of blind relief.

Farsighted

2010-02-21T11:49:00.000-08:00

Paper Bags

Hell's high-water mark is nigh upon us
Upon our knees, our bones . . . our souls
There upon the cash-strapped tree
Stripped of whatever dignity
We thought our right to own.
The slow decay of bramble
Into human ash
A world of fire.
Our collective work redundant
Mere mockery of complacency
Incapable of even that, fingers pant
Fulfillment.
And all creation groans in wait
A crown of incapacitation
Upon our feet, where higher wattage bows
To mere conductors, pianos of the mind
Strings and sound and triumph's score
Swelling inconsistencies.
The re-warmed brooks no reduction
Forever fleet of heart
And the original scopes the ceiling's fade
Arches loft the dead seduction
The quest to deny the wonder.

Tequila

2010-02-19T18:28:00.000-08:00

Somewhere There's Rice in Her Hair

At the dark side of noon
Roiling, roiling, toiling
Perfection feels like failure
Faith is just an easy sell
Attraction reeks of hate
Above a cresting dell
Toiling, teething, seething
Cut our gums on milk and wine
To mask the taste of brine
Inane, terrain, indiff'rence.
Vacuums filled with substance
Ignorance feels like need
But fatal marks a diff'rent breed
Sliding, grinding, leeching
Just at honesty's impeaching
Love looks much like absence,
And damning with faint praise,
With browner grass to graze.
Salvation seems surrender's tell
Sometimes grace burns like hell.

Jesus

2010-02-14T18:06:00.000-08:00

Jesus.

The word is obscene regardless of context. Those who use it as profanity offend those who use it religiously. Those who use it religiously offend those who it casually. It never ends.

Who is He?

What did He actually come to do?

Ask a self-proclaimed evangelical and you will usually get either a cliche, a slogan, or a long-winded response that ultimately is similar to "cow spit". Jesus did this theological act. He did this soteriological act. He freed us from this particular sin, that particular struggle, etc. He came to establish particular redemption for His glory (by the way, if anyone actually knows what the hell that means in real life, let me know).

Exactly.

Wrong.

You see, the real genius, the true brilliance of Jesus is that He came teaching a new application of old truths. He didn't come establishing new doctrines left and right. He came applying old doctrines to new life, using old doctrines to create new life.

He did not come to introduce a new religion. He didn't come to save us from particular sins, from general ideas or improper doctrines. No.

He came to do what nothing else could do, what no one else could accomplish.

Any religion, properly applied, can free a person from greed. Any religion, properly applied, can free a person from pornography. Disease can render certain sins impossible. Injury can render certain sins impossible. Surgery can render certain sins impossible. Any religion can fix the particulars, can change general ideas. Any religion can establish, enforce and manipulate doctrines.

But only Jesus can save us from ourselves.

Only the love of Jesus is capable of freeing us from fixating on ourselves, from being our every waking thought, our only true worship, our only waking desire. Only Jesus is capable of letting us see life beyond ourselves. Only Jesus is capable of freeing us from the mindset that we are the most important thing.

Only Jesus can save us from our need to save the world.

From our need to always be right, always correct, always certain.

If we are always right, then He is not. If we are all-knowing, then He is not. It is the nature of Truth. Either we can be the truly Great One, or He can - but never both.

Certainty in life is not the perfection of faith - it is the absence of faith.

This is the beauty and brilliance of what Jesus did. He saved us from ourselves by saving us from needing to be the Savior. He saved us from ourselves by freeing us from the burden of having to be absolutely certain, absolutely correct and instead He allows us to trust, to rest, and to believe.

That is the true measure or grace and redemption - they are always bigger than the scope of our imagination. They are bigger than what we can fathom. They are limitless.

And this is what Jesus did that nothing else could do. No matter how far we extend ourselves to assert our dominance, no matter how far we retreat within ourselves to preserve ourselves - He is there. Grace extends beyond the boundaries of our capabilities.

It surrounds us, hems us in from every side, isolates us from ourselves, and removes us from ourselves replacing us with the person we always thought we were and hoped we would be. A person who looks a lot like Jesus.

And that is what no one else could do, no other religion could accomplish - the redemption of the self. The newness of all things.

Jesus came to save us from ourselves, because no other Savior could.

Clock Tower

2010-02-14T15:08:00.000-08:00

Clock Tower

We are clockwork
Carefully measured deconstruction
Inextricable
Mostly inconsequential . . . with perks,
But occasionally lights and sound
Combine to Morse the message
Embedded in a subculture
The stoned have yet to drown.
Noise without frame of reference
Beauty lacking footnotes
And depth less its citations
Gold, myrrh and frankincense . . .
Lights, sound and clockwork
And insubstantial meanings
Pain with transitive verbs
The promise lingers, the forgotten lurks
At the periphery of flatlined
When the effervescent clicking stops,
The memory burns both white and red
And only death can read the signs.
Lights and sound and clockwork.
Lights. And sound. And shame.

Moon and Whiskey

2010-02-10T21:56:00.000-08:00

Black Hole Supernova

Cracks and fissures form, colliding
From the expanding contraction
In the heating and cooling of a blush.
Someday the somber drains away
To find another's face to flush
In reprimand, remorse, or glee.
Beneath the flash of melancholy
Mischief flutters pretty eyes
Every time you "loved" me . . . lies
Pupils sliding down and left
While my face wore a lover's smile
Not that you would glance to see it,
Chance to meet it on a dare
A chill falters through the air
Daily severing the human . . .
Confronting who we are
But not enough to chafe the mind.
Shackled by grandeur's hubris
While squalor lurks behind the blinds
And after shocks contorting grace
To form tomorrow's about face
A black holed supernova.

We Are the Ocean

2010-02-05T16:05:00.000-08:00

We Are the Ocean

We are untamed violence with a poet's soul
Insurmountable potential in a harlot's bed
A seamless garment of fractured wholes
Unassailable in our disbelieving faith
Light and dark are the fire and ice in our veins
Contracting and recycling our breath
Forging and remembering the strains
Of the refining song the Singer sang
To purify our ash out of nothing.
The singer blinks above the deep
And pauses draft across the sky
To part the everlasting sleep
And impossible dreams above the dreamer
Where speaking into abscess brings about the keeping
Of the song of soul and psych
Where we are the ocean
As the Ever-Burning One ignites the night.

Tango

2010-01-26T17:20:00.000-08:00

The Dance of Nightmares

Snowfall against a midnight sky
Breathing like teardrops
Swept across the madness of the gods.
Currents of torment, flakes of certainty
Funnel into wind tunnels and swirl
Eddies of prophecy
Three parts confusion, one part hope.
And stone by stone we raised it up
Brick by brick we tore it down
Voices raised in silence, united by the sound
Of whirling wishes, flickers in a stream
Sputters of anointed flame
Against the wings of serendepity
And the stuttering of the gods. . .

Chopsticks are not ideal for pizza

2010-01-02T03:02:00.000-08:00

Orbitals, Spheres

I woke while drifting toward a feeling
Startled I continued reeling (in)
A fantasy lest it fade to haze
And count itself among the razed
The grind of years have rendered.
Toil endured made a peasant spender
The moon a change of phase
Human course marks the passing ways
In teardrops on a ceiling
The seasons spiral, ever stealing
Away. Fly and fly away you say
Count me in each yesterday.
There I can only gape and stare
Chance a glance at something fair
There, be swept away from me
By this tonic, static sea
Till my ember sparks the bloodless coal
To sapphire eyes I give my soul.

A Christmas poem and a poem about death. I'm so well balanced. Don't touch me.

2009-12-21T04:44:00.000-08:00

Are We Having Fun Yet

A blue-eyed child with ruddy cheeks
Wonders what it's like to die
Secretly, I ask the same . . . no, not I
I ask in jest and beg for lies.
Will death knock, then turn the key
Or seep under the cracks
Will death barge in and break the latch?
At first knock I will tremble
As I silent towards the door;
At second, tear drops on the floor
Rivulets on my cheeks, knees are weak.
On the third knock I will answer
Standing, laughing, spitting
Crawling, weeping, lashing, hitting
Sighing either way.
So I will offer my bravado
And demand it be enough.

Listen Closely

Here and there a weary word
Turns to cross a bridge of death
And then travail at some behest
A helmet made of thrones
In a hallway lit by stone
As kingdoms fade in golden ashes.
Foot-sore hallelujahs
Straggle toward repletion
And until its near completion
We dwell where we destroy.
In fields of fleece and slumber
While keepers nod and number
Sleepers drift and start anew
Patchwork spirits ere the mornin' dew
And frozen comets in fiery hues
Punctuate each turn of phrase
As Hosanna's first prophetic rays
Paint Gloria 'cross the night.

Proof that we are doomed

2009-12-04T11:34:00.000-08:00

That we are going to hell and that we don't know God.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/34270487/ns/us_news-faith/?GT1=43001

When I Rule the World

2009-12-03T11:45:00.000-08:00

- All Bible college graduates will be forced to spend a year working in an urban setting before applying for seminary or church jobs.

- All university and graduate school presidents will be forced to eat all of their meals in their school's cafeteria until they learn to serve their students good food.

- People who make the same ridiculous statement at least 3 times will be forced to act upon their statement. For example: "Every time I see Obama, I feel the need to throw up." (Actually heard today). Upon uttering this statement 3 times, the speaker will then be forced to vomit every time he/she sees Obama, or until they learn to keep their mouths shut.

- Drunks will have to attempt at least half of their boasts.

- People who hold religious and political views that allow them to preach racism will be forced to wear clothes stating their views at all times, in all situations, around all people groups.

- Guys who cannot aim in the bathroom will be required to pee sitting down.

- People who refuse to wash their hands will be sent to Dirty Jobs, forced to work, and then given lunch with no opportunity to wash.

- Anyone who refers to homeless people as "lazy bums" and "thieves" will be required to trade places with them.

- Anyone who roundly condemns all forms of contraception will be required to raise all the children produced by people who are not mentally and financially mature enough to raise them.

- The complete works of Shakespeare will be required reading for everyone. Romeo & Juliet will be surreptitiously removed from all copies and hidden until my death, and hopefully the world will forget its existence.

- Sopranos will be required to own very large houses.

- There will be baseball. Lots of baseball. And tacos. And pound cake.

- People who deliberately misrepresent other points of view will be arrested and forced to listen to their own view dismantled for 8 hours a day for 6 months.

- People who base their opinions on other people's opinions will be subjected to the real thing, and forced to campaign on its behalf.

- People who own cats will not live within 100 miles of me.

- All alarm clocks will be manufactured without snooze buttons.

- Chaos will still find a way. So will Jesus.

Infinitives

2009-11-26T16:14:00.000-08:00

Conjunctions

And so they placed rocks . . .

Built as reminders of mercy
of gratitude for the gift of turmoil,
As we become who we were
at our moments of birth
naive children of unbridled promise
with wings of unabashed hope.

Unaware that the intentions of pain
will carry the chorus.
And the parts we will play
Will be loud and off-key
understated and reviled
overstated and overplayed
and sometimes poorly drawn
To make an unnecessary point.

Unaware that the story will move without us
Breathed by another tongue
With lines from another's hymn
At the moment of triumph . . .

And that someday we will pause
Between the interstates and the fields
And build an altar of faith
With the cinders of grace in the grass.

In the Jungle, the Mighty Jungle, oh, nevermind, that's just my roommate snoring

2009-11-22T17:22:00.000-08:00

Dumpster Prayers

We stand on the subtle edge of a knife
. . . but haven't we always?
One mistake from achievement
One success from fiction's endings
And we number the days
As notches in our belt, serving little
Growing bitter, meaning nothing more
Than a piece to bear the weight of time
As it passes like a mime
Silently, with frantic motions of fury.
Oh surreptitious knife
Cleaving spirit and leaving the strife
Of our years of theatric pretending . . .
Am I a soul shipwrecked in skin,
Or a fully autonomous being of dearth
Of purpose, meandering worth,
A journeyman of starlight
Longing for the sun?

Frustrated

2009-11-01T19:58:00.000-08:00

For the first time in my life, I'm doing things right.

I'm going to church "religiously" - to make a bad pun. But seriously, I've found a church I really enjoy and I'm going every week.

I'm doing my homework as it is assigned, rather than as it is due or after it is due. My Greek homework is always done by Saturday night despite not being due until Tuesday. I take my quizzes the first day they are made available instead of the last, which means I am up to date on all my quiz reading and study material.

I am completely neat and tidy. I find things to clean because I am so bored.

I'm not dating a sociopath. O course, I'm not dating anyone, but that's a step above my typical alternative.

I'm not turning down opportunities to be with friends, to be social, to get to know random people.

I'm eating lots and lots of salads and fruit - primarily because our cafeteria food would kill a whale.

And I feel worse than I have ever felt in my life. My body hurts constantly. My ribs burn, my stomach hurts and bleeds, my chest, shoulders and knees ache constantly. I've had multiple kidney stones and I seem to randomly run a fever every other week.

Yet when I ate primarily pizza, never went to church, never did my work, was completely anti-social and dating a sociopath, I felt great.

Is this the lesson? That when we get our lives together, we die? Why do I always feel like hell?

I am frustrated.

Birthday

2009-10-23T07:50:00.000-07:00

So yesterday was my birthday. I am 25. Thus, I have had 25 birthdays. And I cannot remember one stranger than yesterday's.

I don't make a big deal out of birthday's. I ain't special, so the less fanfare, the better. The only nice thing about a birthday is hearing from people and realizing you matter to them - and even that didn't happen yesterday. But here again, it's not that big of a deal, just a mild disappointment.

The whole of the day was just a series of disasters. Apparently my grandfather had chest pains during his morning walk, so he drove himself to the hospital. And even better, he decided not to tell his kids. I found out when my grandmother called to tell me happy birthday - and being the talkative worrywart that she is, she told me all about it. That placed me in the awkward position of having to let other people know that their father was in the hospital and he hadn't felt the need to tell them. I eventually decided to pawn that task off on my mom. I called her with the news and probably ruined her day, and let her tell her siblings.

Then I ate some questionable food for lunch and got the squirts for the rest of the day. I went to all my classes with a glazed over expression, and was so tired by the end of the day that I fell climbing the stairs. And my computer crashed as I attempted to load some music on it.

But I did get some homemade rice krispy treats from a friend.

However, the moral of this story is: thank God birthday's only come once a year, or I'm not sure I could live through them.

Hip Yip Skooray

2009-10-09T14:54:00.000-07:00

Gongs, Cymbals

A gently resounding chaos
Enigmatic and contained in tense
Allowed yet unforsaken
Forgotten in the perfect sense
Of a sound both quiet and loud
A fire both white and cold
A surge now unabandoned
Future stilled, foretold.
Whisper with an echo
The blinding dark of sight
A flame with eyes eternal
Consumed but never sold
And never growing old.
With a spark across a smile
Yet commanding all the while.
Consuming fully in the whole
Yet no ash corrupts the gaze
No scar diverts the blaze
From sustaining its reprise.
Caressing with a bend and sway
Yet lashing and unleashed
Duty, punishment, warring peace,
I saw the voice of God today.

Jacob, Joseph Squared

Entrapped by gloom,
Else bewitched by rapture
Another mile escapes
To the clicking of my tires
The flipping of my shoes
Against the grating on my nerves.
Another mile disappears
In the race to reconcile
Echoes of faded glory
With the consistent urge to forget
Some fools cry repent
But I will not give up this chase
To remember to forget your face.
Why'd you have to throw yourself away?
All you did was throw me away.

Bigotry and Bullshit in the name of God

2009-09-03T08:57:00.000-07:00

I just had the supreme misfortune of having lunch with stereotypical "Christian" America.

I don't want to bring faith, theology, or God into this blog very much . . . but sometimes it is unavoidable. However, this really isn't about God. It's about people. Or to be more specific, it's about stupid people.

When someone at a seminary lunch table says "I'm having a quarter-life crisis because I'm twenty-five and the world isn't mine yet", there are three appropriate responses. 1. Laugh. 2. Ignore them. 3. Roll your eyes. However, Mr. Super-Christian-Captain-America did not laugh,but replied "Well, just keep getting closer to Jesus and that desire's going to go away."

Seriously, pull my teeth out with pliers.

When Mr. Super-Christian-Captain-America started talking about how America always has protests going on, I thought he was making sense. But then he continues by pointing out that the rest of the world doesn't do this because if they open their mouth, someone might "blow their brains out." A bit of a stretch.

Then he takes the plunge. "What we really need in America is more violence. We need to start doing the same thing. It's not taking away freedom of speech - it's just making sure people are willing to die for something before they start talking about it."

Umm, isn't good, rational discussion the best way to prevent NEEDING to die for things? And isn't good, rational discussion a great way to decide whether or not an issue is important enough to die for? And isn't stupid, pointless discussion preferable to brains and blood spatter on the pavement?

Ah, but we weren't done yet. "And we might as well do it anyway, because it's gonna start happening to us real soon. People are gonna start killing us when we speak up for Christ publicly."

And congratulations, thanks to all the hot-air you've been spewing, you just created a mouth-fart with enough lift to create a whole new level of stupidity.

The end of the world has been coming since the apostle Paul. Everyone thinks "this is it." Everyone thinks "in my lifetime, people are going to start killing all the Christians in the world/my country/my area/etc"

It hasn't happened yet. Christianity is swelling in the Southern hemisphere (not the Southern Baptist or Southern Seminary hemisphere, the real Southern hemisphere). Since I was eight years old Christianity has supposedly been on it's way out of America. Yet every four years since I was eight, every major presidential candidate has tried to convince America of their strong Christian faith. Obama was no different.

And in 2012, it will be no different. We are years away from "being killed for speaking up for Christ in public." Sure, there are nutjobs who will shoot you for speaking up. But they then get prosecuted for their actions.

This is why war is always a matter of theology - because theology is populated by us all, even the bigots. This is why people are consistently raped and murdered in the name of God - because the world is populated by morons who can't keep their damn mouths shut.

I'm going to say it once, loud and clear, and I am appalled and ashamed that I have to say it at all: Hurricanes happen because of the weather. Tornadoes happen because of the weather. All disastrous things happen because of sin, and we are all sinners. God does not sit in heaven using weather patterns as target practice to pick off particular sinners.

God does not rape and murder people. We do. God does not start wars for land, democracy, or politics. We do. God does not stand outside and protest. We do. God does not kill stupid people, bigots, sinners, or unbelievers, and we should be thankful. We don't do that either. We are the stupid, bigoted, sinful, unbelieving people.

Because every time we open our mouths, there is no God in our god. It's just another redneck who thinks he's the king turd of shit mountain. And unfortunately, right now, the world is our mountain, and we're the biggest load.

God forgive us.
God save us.

2009-09-01T03:24:00.000-07:00

Magnify

A speck on fire, a lens, a lair
Feet on hills, an itch, so human.
Magnify, magnify
Oh rose desire, sapphire
Azul and black the skies
Magnify or die
Magnify and die.
Ants beneath the sadist's scope
Survivors on a burning rope
With hands and eyes and skin
But nothing so distinctive
As the plume by which we burn.
Magnify, magnify
Oh magnify his name we cry
And wash away the majesty.
So the parchment seared
A blue of Poseidon's hue
Tarnished by the same
Oh burning, dying flame
Oh misbegotten lens
Of an unforgiving ire . . .
Kill the fire.

Heroes Are The Real Monsters

2009-08-04T00:34:00.000-07:00

Prologue

I am a thief, and a murderer. I am a saint, and a sinner. I am a drunk, and an addict. A preacher, and a savior. I am that moment when you first wake up, when the lines between dream and reality are gone. I am you. This is your story.

Perhaps first, you should introduce yourself. You believe in truth much as I believe in lies. There is no wrong I can’t commit, no right beyond your reach. You profess to believe, I profess no such thing – and neither is right, nor are we wrong. You have no future, and I have no past. You dwell in dreams, and I cannot dream. Yet, we’re the same. This is your story.

. . . . . .

I stand alone in a cell, twelve feet below the ground. I’ve been here before. Not this exact cell, mind you, but others like it. Every place the same – near enough to the action to feel it, but not so near as to comprehend it. Forever on the verge of battle.

I’ve always laughed when people say, “Well, at least you aren’t in the battle.” If they only knew. The battle is nothing compared to this waiting game. However, I shouldn’t be surprised – people have always failed to comprehend what truly matters. They fail to understand that there are things far more important than life or death. Battle merely decides who lives, and who dies. The waiting determines so much more than that. It begs every question of Truth, of love, and of hope – its strips away our certainty and leaves us with only questions.

Though I understand this, I still prefer the battles. Questions of Truth and of God are best left to philosophers and theologians. I am neither one. I am merely a gladiator. I do not face groups of soldiers, paid to seek my demise, nor do I face ravenous beasts. I merely face one opponent. Here, there are ways to win without killing, and ways to lose without death, though death is often an outcome. Here, should we survive, we are paid handsomely for our efforts; should we die, we are unceremoniously thrown in a dumpster outback. The sanitation workers receive a king’s ransom for their silence, and as this is our work, our home, and our life, no one asks any questions once we’re gone.

I would tell you where I live, but that is immaterial. My work is generally kept silent. However, what I do takes place in most countries, and even most states, with governments none the wiser. If you should seek to find me, know this: I’m always the last place you’d expect, the last person you’d expect. I don’t fit the “criteria” for the job. Yet, none of us do. That’s why we’re gladiators, because we were brought up to believe that right wore a business suit, and wrong wore tattered jeans. Thus, if you truly seek to find us, look deep within yourself. Then go to the largest city you can reach, to the most well respected establishment you can think of. And I’m sure, if you look and listen hard enough, you will find us there. Every place has its secrets.

I flatter myself that you might be surprised at my attire. I wear no gloves, no armor, and I bear no weapon. In fact, if anything, I carry a briefcase. My shoes are polished, my suit impeccable, and my tie in a firm Windsor knot. It is the attire of the respectable, of the right. But you and I both know that this is no corporate picnic, though sometimes even I’m surprised at what it is.

However, here in this cell, none of that matters. I pace to ease the burden of thought that presses in on me. Impatience threatens to constrict my chest. I feel the rumblings of each successive duel reach me, but the only sound I can hear is the hollow of my own footsteps and the cadence of my breathing. I am quite certain that my heart stopped several minutes ago. I still feel it pulsing within my chest, but the sound no longer reaches my ears. And here, it is not safe to trust only what you feel.

Soon, a man will come to get me. He has been assigned to me for every match so far, and I don’t even know his name. He’ll take me to the action, and then depart. Does he watch from the sidelines? Leave to get the next combatant? I don’t know, I’ve never asked. It seems I’m always rather preoccupied by the time he arrives.

I’ll fight. No more, and no less. There is no pre-amble, no announcer, no stadium. Merely a parking lot, with greedy people betting, pitting one against another. Me, against it, or sometimes them. I am Judas. Oh yes, I am Judas. Thirty pieces of silver might not buy a field anymore, but it still has its uses. I don’t know those that I engage. They could be criminals, they could be victims. I don’t know. I only kill them. Innocent or not, it doesn’t really matter to me. I do what I’m told, and I win. I always win.

Do you recognize me yet? Perhaps not. My name is Judas, to the extent that I have a name. But as I’ve already told you, this isn’t my story – it’s yours. Whether you can admit it or not, you know me. I’m in your reflection. Your morbid smiles at the despair of those around you. You don’t have to hide them from me. I’ve noticed your bank account inflates every time your company makes a donation to charity. It’s ok – I did it too. After all, what’s humanity without at least one appreciable vice?

But I nearly forgot! If I keep up this rambling, I’ll miss your introduction. Your story begins with a crow, does it not?

Me

2009-07-20T22:39:00.000-07:00

I keep reading about how America has slipped just slightly from being the greatest country on earth, and how we are going to return to that status. I can't even begin to tell you how much I don't care. I don't understand nationalism. What does it matter if we're the greatest country or not? So long as we are sheltered, fed, watered and allowed to work as we choose? Who cares about the rest?

I remain firmly convinced that we are not in a recession. I think we are in a correction, and a pendulum adjustment. We overachieved for too long, and now we are beginning to function at a mean level. I don't really see a huge recovery or a precipitous collapse. I think we now are what we are - which might not be such a bad thing.

I think we've all lived at our own, and at other peoples' expense for too long.

A pastor I really respected resigned 6 weeks ago. I haven't been to church in 5 weeks as a result. I think I never actually understood the importance of a pastor before. We live in a world of replacements. Is it any wonder no one gives a damn anymore? The average duration of a pastor in a Baptist church is less than 2 years - which leaves lots of time for idiots in pulpits. How much of an impact does anyone expect to have in 104 days (2 x 52 Sundays)?

I think about myself too much, and too little. I think too highly of myself, and consequently, regard myself too little. I don't plan. I think I'm tough enough and smart enough to deal with whatever. I'm not.

I'm 24, going on 80, and I can't think of a single thing to do with my life. The only thing I can do is write - and I very much fear the old adage is true. Those who can do, do. Those who can't write. I have no idea what to attempt to do with myself, or what direction I'm headed.

I used to be able to write these long rambling blog posts about whatever I was currently thinking or feeling - even if I had done nothing for days at a time. I can't remember how I did it. I'm not that interesting.

I watched "The Boy in Striped Pyjamas" today - and it mostly left me confused. I don't understand the fascination with Holocaust films. Particularly this one. What was the point? To emphasize the pointlessness of it all?

I miss college a lot lately. Particularly now that facebook sucks. Mostly I just miss friendship and being involved in the day-to-day life of intelligent, open minded people. I never really respected that blessing and privilege enough.

Narcissism

2009-07-08T21:46:00.000-07:00

I apologize. I have been lax in my promise to ramble and wax poetic about abnormal and irrelevant things. But no more.

I have returned. You probably don't care - which would be a sign that you are a healthy, balanced person who has better things to do than care about how much a person blogs. And if you care immensely - well, you should probably be off seeking professional help rather than reading this. But if you care slightly - well, you've come (back) to the right place.

For all of you people who find yourselves one step above complete apathy, I'm here for you. For all of you who are but a thoroughly scratched butt away from being completely unproductive - I write for people like you. Because let's be honest. Truly productive people don't blog - nor do they waste time reading blogs.

It's the rest of us, the other 92% of humanity who blog and read blogs. Because we enjoy mild productivity like a good cup of coffee - nothing like a few things done, and more that we aren't doing to make time-wasting and vain pontificating so enjoyable.

Where am I going with all of this?

Facebook and Twitter.

We've reached a new low in the evolution of people and society. Our need for immediate self-gratification has caused us to feel the need to post a status on facebook that declares that we are not actually doing anything. So now, people not only need to know when we are doing something, they need to know when we are not doing it as well.

Hell, there's even a device that will post your heart rate to Twitter for you. (Though for fast food and caffeine junkies - I'm only guilty of one - that might actually save a few lives.) That could actually prove cool. Especially if it added words. Imagine logging into Twitter to check your heart rate and seeing "Your heart rate is: 112 bpm. For God's sake fatty, lay off the sodium." Aside from the humor value, this is pathetic. Aside from the fact that the world could know of your death or heart attack within seconds - who cares? Wouldn't a heart rate be better sent to a hospital or dispatch than a website?

But seriously . . . how often do we need to be validated by other people? Every 15 minutes? Every hour? Every few hours? Every day?

Are we really that alone? Are we really this needy? Can we even survive if we are this desperately self-centered?

Or does society itself never evolve, but merely devolve and cycle in a vicious progression of infinite regression, broken occasionally by plateaus viewed historically as peaks, yet really merely isolated instances of slowed decline?

What are we?

Don't worry. I'm not actually expecting answers. Heck, I'm not even expecting to remember the questions. That's what conversation and real life and real people are for. This is a blog. I just say it here to avoid actually asking it, and to make myself feel deep and important.

"And if the council decides to bear its bottoms and sit on the dung heap? Will you do that as well?" ~ Stephen Lawhead

Until I return, watch out for Irishmen with sporks.

My best yet

2009-06-29T08:13:00.000-07:00

Apparitions

Stood, anxiously waiting
To make my promise for your hand
My voice in the lofting silence
Seems diminished, yet expands
To call out in the gladness
Remembering in the darkest strands,
Invoking who we were before
But never here, and nevermore.

I promised love and little else
Save whatever was myself.
I linger 'neath the rafters asking
To hear your voice forevermore

Yet running in the gown she wore
With flowers in her braided hair
Those I did not pick find a purchase there
And I stand alone, alone undaunted
With wiliting flowers of my own
And the altar weeps a lover's song
For the flowers in her hair
Colors that I did not pick find their purchase there.

With hymns I had not ever sung
A tear escapes, so harshly wrung
From my now forsaken gaze.
For years, if it was even days
I could not help but stay
I dare not look away,
Lest my love forget what was before.
With wilted dreams and golden rings
Waiting with my hands held thus
Ashes to ash, but stay I must
Though I be waiting here forevermore
It will not seem a day spent poor.

Transfer

2009-06-04T16:28:00.000-07:00

So, I confess: I'm an idiot.

I am stupid, I am ignorant, I am cowardly.

Or, to say it again, I'm an idiot.

I've spent a lifetime following people. I've spent a lifetime trusting that other people really did have my best interest at heart - and so I've followed their plans. I still believe in their intentions, but I no longer believe in their path.

I've been confused and stupid about many ideas and beliefs. I thought stewardship only applied to time and money. I probably owe Brandon an apology on that point. I always thought the less money spent, the better. Turns out that is not the case. I never thought that I had to be a good steward of my soul. But apparently, one does.

What's the point of learning doctrines and ideas and never being prepared for doing what you were made to do? What's the point of getting an education on the cheap when it doesn't work for you, makes you angry, and causes you to run from truth.

I'm not going to bash Southern here - but Southern is not a place for people who desire a life of social justice missions. Southern trains preachers and professors - and I don't much care to be either one.

It's not working out financially either. I may well have to take time off to work before going back to school - and I'm certainly not going to work to go someplace I don't enjoy being, that does nothing for my soul, for my mind, or to further prepare me for what I feel I have to do with my life.

I did all my work for the entire semester in a 2 day span - the final two days before I came home. I still made A's and B's for the semester - it's that simple so far. I need a greater challenge than that.

But more than anything, I've followed friends - and as much as I love them, I can't follow people forever. The only way to take control of my life is to lose control of it, and go someplace where I can be trained to be whomever I am meant to be.

I may come back for the fall semester, but not beyond that.

It's time to stop following and become.

I'm transferring.

Pigeon. Part Deux

2009-05-27T00:52:00.000-07:00

Things that I can do better than a pigeon:

1. Eat Tacos.

2. Watch baseball

3. Mooch.

4. Look like an idiot.

Yeah. I got nothing. The pigeon wins. Damn.

In additional news, i HATE the internet.

Why I HATE the internet:

1. Because now everyone can share what they are thinking. On the obvious plus side, now more ideas, information and knowledge is shared. On the obvious downside - now everyone who thinks they have something to say says it. Seriously, shut up already.

2. I don't care that you have a blog. I really don't. You can link to it and I'll read it. You can mention it online. But the second you start talking about what you said in your blog in real life, you have officially become an idiot. I'm pretty sure that's even in the dictionary.

3. Facebook.

4. Facebook friends. Seriously, enough already. Every status does not have to express how much you hate Obama. We got it the first 9000 times. These new status updates are not funny, cute, clever, or insightful - they just mean you can't grow up and get over something.

5. Al Mohler. Not only am I unfortunate enough to go to his seminary - I get an email EVERY time he updates his blog. Really? I mean, realllllly? If he's that desperate for an audience, why doesn't he do something actually constructive instead of blogging?

6. Abortion. I can think of about 1700000000000000000000000 other issues I'd like to hear people talk about - and that's just off the top of my head. Included in that list are things like: the mechanics of gay sex, Eleanor Roosevelt's denture analysis, Jon and Kate, and sermons by Joel Osteen and Tim Lahaye.

And . . . (Drumroll please)

7. Christians. Christians make the internet a terrible place. It's great that you love Jesus - really, it is. But every blog entry, facebook status, and quote does not have to be about Jesus. You are allowed to talk about other things, to reference other things, to enjoy books that are not Scripture. I'm fairly certain God gets annoyed with you also. He probably sits up there, listening to mentions of His name, reacting hopefully, then sinking back sadly because He realizes you didn't mean it, you just thought it was what you had to do. So, for the actual love of God, stop.

2009-05-16T12:48:00.001-07:00

In a world that is desperate for the truly human

We demand the right to be inhumane

To forge our own destinies, the sleeping insane

In a word that ends in an "e"

Which personifies our collective silence

Our tainted, ever-drifting grasp

And we claim we are only human

When we are merely what we were before

A rib could elicit a gasp.

So concerned with our appearance

We failed to ever appear, begging for another minute

To make another change, thinking it fashionable

To arrive late, only to never arrive at all

A perennial no-show in moments of chance

By design, by fate, or by choice

Our reflection has lost its voice

Because we no longer see the eyes of the furious Dreamer

That could rescind the world at a glance,

And we affected apathy to the point

That we never affected anything at all,

Because while we thought we arrived

We could never see what they saw.

Pigeon. Part 1

2009-05-15T13:32:00.000-07:00

A list of things that your typical, run-of-the-mill pigeon could do better than I can.

1. Poop on statues.
2. Fly
3. Lay Eggs
4. Dance
5. Play Foosball
6. Speak Spanish
7. Study
8. Sleep

They are all completely and indisputably true. Don't even attempt to argue with me, or I will send trained gerbil assassins after you.

In other news, I am bored and have nothing to do. Al Mohler would probably say that I should go out and evangelize. I tend to think I should sleep or play msn games or watch a movie. So tell me, dear reader, which should I do?

Because. That's why.

2009-03-17T20:43:00.000-07:00

Insufferable Peculiarity

The world is made of cancer,
Of tests, and fear, and sweat
And faith.
Or lack thereof.
Sporadic bouts of promise
Most often mixed with vomit
While everything from ages past
Means nothing on our tongues.
The world is made of cabinets,
Of closets, and secrets, and it
Wherever it shows a face.
A place to cry, to hide
To forsake for a few seconds blood
To misappropriate
And tell a child
The moon is made of cheese.

So, yeah, and poop, and stuff

2009-03-12T21:38:00.000-07:00

Because poop is always funny. It's like my tag line in life. If there were captions under my actions, that could be the constant caption. Me sitting in class "because poop is always funny". Me sitting in my room "because poop is always funny." You get the picture.

So, someone might need to stage an intervention for me and my fantasy baseball addiction. It's getting absurd. I just can't stop drafting teams. I put 2 or 3 teams on auto draft because I didn't get the pick I wanted - so I don't care about those teams.. But I'm still trying to start a league, and I have 4 or 5 other teams that I will manage and do care about. Only 1 team is balanced. I have one team that is heavy on pitching, one that is heavy on power, one that is heavy on outfielders, and 1 that is just utterly dominant. But I keep drafting them. If only I loved other things as much as I love baseball. And tacos. And tacos while watching baseball!!!

My addiction is made worse by the fact that facebook now officially sucks. Too many redesigns. So I have to funnel my facebook addiction into something else, because the internet gods demand that I find ways to keep from being a productive and balanced person.

Umm - yeah. I'm out of thoughts. I'll be back sometime. Who knows, I might even address Inspector Gadget.

For the Sake of my Sanity

2009-03-10T22:09:00.000-07:00

So, I am surrounded by "Christians". I read, or pretend to read a nearly unending stream of "Christian" books. I go to "Christian" classes. I am required to journal about my devotional life for a class. On the whole, I'm utterly, annoyingly inundated with "Christian" and "religious" things. So I'm blogging now about random things, whenever and however they strike me. But I assure you, these are totally non-religious thoughts. It's safe to come here.

At some point soon, I'll talk about baseball. Fantasy baseball. But not now.

I wrote this today instead of paying attention in class. Enjoy.

A Covenant Always Leaves Scars

A child with bed rails lies awake,
With a night light for his dreams
And a flashlight for his nightmares.
Vengeance reeks of ammonia,
Of oft-forsaken fear
Until death itself despairs of trust
(Linens, iron, lead and rust).

One floor down and three lifetimes over
Without stains upon the sheets,
The object of our failures
Restless in his sleep
Having unleashed our hymns of evil
By brutal, somber dance
(This painful, lucid trance)

(This liquid-solid-stepped advance)

Upsetting, but not obsessive
Yet compulsive nonetheless,
With white vinyl and picket fence
And two parents full of hate,
A fatherless child lies awake.