It's Christmas Time

The Coming

And the night was dark
The world asleep with sated breath
Trusting tomorrow might soon be morn.

And the night was dark
The world abed and waiting lest
The morning prove less forlorn.

And the night was dark
The world alive and drawing breath
But sleeping till the morn.

And the night was dark
The world prepared by sainted death
As faith turns into scorn.

And the night was dark
The world is still and quiet lest
What love is left be torn.

And the night was dark
The world awaits with bated breath
Begging that hope will soon be born.

Though we no longer lay with faith,
And love is stillborn within us,
We beg that hope be born

But the night is still dark.
Be born.
Please be born.
Dear God, be born.

And the night was dark
The world a-ready and waiting death
Be born
Please, God, be born.

And still the night was dark
Save a single star, a kindled hope
Behold, the Child of light

And the night was bright.

I don't know how many wrongs make a right

Madness


I wake up to a murderer in the mirror
And a terrorist hidden under my skin
While everything I believe I'm about
Is killing me, poisoning me from within
There's nothing can hide the blood in my eyes
Or the stains of your hopes on my sins.
There's a rosary under my toothbrush
To keep the demons that plague me at bay
A Bible, a shotgun under my pillow
Bidding my soul thief stay far away.
There's a bloody knife staining my laundry
Yet I do not know why, I confess
Probably a clergical error
Corrected hastily under duress.
On the horizon, dark thoughts are looming
This prejudice is clouding my head
Safely inside while the bigotry's booming
I decide you'd be better off said
And lingering only in past tense and pictures.
I decide you'd be better off lead
Somewhere far away from your future
Closer to this freedom from life
Closer to the cause of this strife
The love of your wife, the edge of this knife.
I wake up a-screaming and rife
With the questions of what I've become
For the face in the mirror is still the same one.
Save me, oh save me, for I am undone.

History and mist, magic and myths

Chupacabra


Every commercial proudly proclaims "next"
As if newer is better
And negates the need for subtext
And everything we'd gain
Outweighs all that we've lost.
Everything's brighter in the land of star-crossed
Where self-worth is bartered and battered and tossed
Solely on the merits of "latest"
As if "greatest" is ever-evolving
And fate is a mere whimsical child.
Every day another new invention
That defies the spirit of convention
Because wisdom needs an intervention
When it's hampering our lives.
How did we get here?
From the Beatles to Bieber? Mozart to Minaj?
Kierkegaard to Dan Brown? Hank Aaron to Bonds?
And as time ambles on
Can anyone really claim that we've won?
And why do we often speak of time killing
As though only the future deserves the top billing
In this un-watchable soap opera we've made of our lives?
From sheepskin and robes
To Armani clothes
Maybe the tatterdemalions had it right
And in our hiding ourselves from their plight
We've actually lost the most ground.
Though "progress" abounds,
We search and we search for what will never be found.
When did life become easy?
And are we so quietly tamed?
And far in the past
Beneath industry's ash
Rome had a temple to a god yet unknown
And for all that we've "grown"
Unknown is unnamed
And maybe now we're the same.

Dark Thoughts

Vaccination

  

Inoculated to the volatility

The violence and hostility

Bred for the inevitability

Of ever encroaching death,

Desensitized to the violence

Sporadically overcome by shyness

Confronted by our own blindness

We choose a weaker lens.

We’re scared we’re being cosseted

Afraid we’re being closeted

With the monsters of our youth

Or worse, with just ourselves

Our private living hells

Our tempests and our summer swells
Security  sacrosanct
Mandated by the file and rank

Protected for protection’s sake

Or so we’re always told

And so we're always cold.

Maybe the greatest tragedy

Is that we’re immune to gravity

Believing we can sail over the travesties

That disfigure cosmic tapestries

Until the threads of fate unwind

And refine the sands of time

Panning out the gold

And leaving only silt

A dagger buried to the hilt

And guilt.

Maybe love is just a jilted dream

All's fair in love and war
Became all's fair when wanting more
Hearts on every distant shore
Rise and fall with each discord
Until there's no more love,
There's only war
And happy trigger fingers.

I've never met a Nirvana song I like

Joseph

The gods of my youth have left me behind

The blind leading the blind

Maybe Mary was actually great with doubt

Wondering if she was simply ill

Or at the very best insane

Servant, certainly, when it suited her

Either she’d give birth or not

And one way or the other she’d know for sure.

Perhaps Joseph had the harder job

Believing his wife wasn’t getting some on the side

Angels and dreams are all well and good

But I ate some Mexican food one night

And dreamed my dad had taken up naked gator riding

As a means of discouraging a particular relationship

So how clear was his situation, really?

And how did he carry on?

And did he really think that he’d be rearing God?

Was he jealous that it wasn’t his, or relieved that

If Jesus was more spectacle than spectacular,

The failing wouldn’t be because of his bloodline?

Did he ever come to terms

With the supposedly divine hijacking of his entire life

Or did he always wonder why he was stuck

Parenting a child that wasn’t his and working with wood

When possibilities untold were purportedly at his child’s command?

Or maybe he was just happy that if everything broke right

Someone might remember his name.

And that made it easy to believe.

I'm stumped on this one, so if you want to mess around with it, feel free.

Perspicacity

It begins beneath the fading light
Of a season newly born
The horizon marks a dawning night
Now older, more careworn.

Something Something Something
Summer Summer Summer
I don't have enough sunshine in my soul to fill this part.
Birth of faith, heat, sunshine and storms.

Autumn, loss of faith blah blah blah.

And from the long dark winters
Spent battling our souls
Bleak and gray, off-center
Our demons growing bold
And the leaves idly fallen
Amid the tattered shards of faith
Rebirth came softly calling
In shades of green and grace.
And past the times of darkness' gloom
Where we frolicked in our sin
As ever, promise gently blooms
As the world believes in You again.

5 am brain dump

Un(en)titled

I wonder what the price of progress is,
And if we knew, would we dare to pay
And if we knew, could we dare to pray
That God forgive what we deliberately did?
I wonder what the cost of living is
And if the corpse that bears our weight
Was worth the gluttony and hate
It took to get us here
To speed their passing and fuel their fears
I wonder what the cost of our living is?
Is it that somewhere in a sweat shop
We saw an agonized sweat drop
And made it an image for "a cause"
That we champion without claws
Unless someone else dares to make them?
And I wonder if we matter in the white space without applause
The empty hearts and empty bellies
The glassy-eyed with legs of jelly
Or if we only do good things to boast
That we're making progress now?
But we're making progress how, exactly?
And I wonder do we even know what progress really is
And if it's worth its cost?

He is Risen Indeed

Faberge Eggs

I feel like everyone skips ahead to the triumph

Fast-forwarding past the cost

Forgetting that every victory comes with a fear

And every addition comes with a cross

Where something somewhere is sacrificed for gain.

There’s a moment of pure indecision when the outcome

Hangs on the edge of a knife

The swing of a pendulum strike

Too far away to miss

And too close to hit.

Broadsided by the ramifications of our predilections

Our own resurrections take a back seat

To our persistent reflections on things we have long since

Left in the rear view

Best analyzed in a white room

With a shock collar lest we disagree with ourselves

As if our conflictions can persuade our convictions

To rise from their long dormant states

So just to be safe, we’re raising the stakes

And convincing ourselves that it’s for a good cause

That we stay and we stay and sometimes we pray

That Santa Jesus will make us all better

Without anyone ever having to work.

And we skip again to the apex, the climatic conclusion

Setting aside our abrasions, contusions

And basking once more in our emphatic delusions

That we knew it, we always knew it all along

Perhaps we’ve done repentance wrong

And instead of repenting for what we cannot atone

We skipped ahead to the new old familiar song

Where the triumph comes and the shadows pass

And the skies are clear of dust and ash

And we’re forgiven the questions we never asked

And nobody ever needed an ounce of faith to get here.

How did we get from Jesus to this

Without really noticing the God that we’ve missed?