My Annual Christmas Poem

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

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

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

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

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

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.)

the proverbial french fry in an order of onion rings

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

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!

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?

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

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?

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

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.