For unto us a Child is born

The Glorious Forsaking

What can hold life if ev'rything life holds?
Is there meaning if ev'rything's purposed?
Can there be depth if ev'rything's surface
Or bravery if the world's made of bold?
Where is the still that accompanies know?
Where now the flower and where now the Rose?
When cometh grace for the follies we chose
For endless gestures with nothing to show?
Come now the hour, yea it comes in the night
The star is upon us, burden so bright
The Oath of the ages laid at our doubt.
So come and step softly, come with steps light
When ev'rything's said, 'haps silence is right
And silent the night, hear rocks crying out.

There is a house in New Orleans they call the Rising Sun

Uluru

How do you start what shouldn't be started?

How do you break what should never be bent?

How do you win the wholly unwanted?

And how can you stand your own face at the end?

Who will you be, when ev’rything’s rusted,

When age wears the varnish off of your skin?

Who will you be, when your world’s combusted,

Broken in strips, never matched right again?

What if your scars tell more than a story,

And what if your pride wears better worn thin?

What if your wars were fought without glory?

Would you be more than the scope of your sins?

With luck, a glance, a chance, a game of dice

What if your actions cost more than your price?

Are You Afraid of the Dark?

The Lamplighter and the Candle-snuffer

Running amok, adrift in the endless

Lost in the inescapable expanse

The tyranny of distilled disbelief

Swimming in daydreams of dying

Drowning in visions of flying

I cannot escape and I'm lying

The truth is I'm too scared to try

For behold, the extinguisher comes!

The imbiber of animus here

He seeks to consume your glimpses of flight

To come and devour your will to fight

Exterminate your ev'ry spark of delight

But who's the real enemy here?

He, me or thee?

It's no use, for there in his chalice are we

Indeed, in his goblet I'm me

Slowly approaching his vast, gaping maw.

To live, such ignominy

To die, such unholy glee

Is this how it feels to be he?

I forgot how it felt to be me

To fly through the water-less sea

I'm drowning in oxygen

For I cannot recall how to breathe.

Sometimes quotes from movies I haven't seen in a decade pop into my head

Toy Soldiers

Green: with envy at those chosen before us
With guilt at those who fall behind
With nausea at the violence of our movements
With hatred at our usage so defined.

Stiff: with courage as we face what lies before us
With valor as we race against the times
With rigor as we're parted from our futures
With fear as we're frozen in our minds.

Armed: with hate for whatever we are facing
With guns for approaching battle lines
With everything that can be found and gathered
With nothing that can't be left behind.

Rigid: with confusion at an ever-changing purpose
With respect for the whims that call us forth
With terror at the giants that surround us
With pride at the valuation of our worth.

Made: of necessity to broaden imagination
Of plastic to handle uncertain tides
Of misfortune and explanations for our children
Of the hope that we'll one day be undefined.

Stored: in boxes, in closets and on shelves
In recesses until brought back to the fore
In fingers and behind eyelids and bright smiles
In trash cans when there's no more need for war.



Egg Salad

Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall
Humpty Dumpty wished he was tall:
Tall and valiant and brave and tough
Humpty Dumpty had it rough
Because he was short and round and eternally fragile.
He'd never be quick, and he'd never be agile
He'd always be shorter and thicker and wide
He'd always be better off as a main dish or side
But he couldn't accept he was made for a plate
So he wished for a more palatable fate
And he climbed a wall to pretend he was tall
And escape the poachers that he thought he saw.
But then he smelled slaw,
And thinking he'd cracked
He turned, thinking mayo would ooze from his back
He thought he was hurt, that he'd never win
So poor Humpty Dumpty did himself in.
And all the kings horses thought "we have no hands"
So they snorted and stamped and ignored the demands
From the king for Humpty's repair,
For they thought with some relish, if out of the air
He'd make for a quite tasty snack.
The king's men agreed, so they crept round the back
And gathered his innards under the pretense of grief
Then took him home, fried him and paired him with beef
And named him in honor of kings
Thus the royal was born, and a tastier thing
Humpty couldn't have done if he'd tried
So while it's sad that he died
All nursery rhymes end rather badly
(And most are geared around food)
So if you don't want your kids hungering madly
(And you don't want them in a bad mood)
Remember poor, dead Humpty and say
"A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away"
And you'll probably be glad that you did.

I dream of knights and dragons

Candlelight and Torches

Is there a place for perspective 

In a world without points of view

Save for the grasping

At whatever's deemed true 

By most recent consensus.

In worlds made of screens

We live out our dreams

Vicariously through others

And sometimes through you

Oh, Did that room have a view?

Somebody gets injured

And fantasizers get mad

Someone's arrested

And daydreamers perjure themselves

To dream on

And ignore the twelve shades of blue

In this fading twilight of souls.

Another glowing soul goes dark

Only to blink bright thirty seconds later

Revived before it even reached stasis

Reaching again for what truly matters:

Me

For everyone must know how I feel

At every single moment in time

Yet if my soul's in my pocket

Am I even real?

Or is it back-lit because

There's an abyss in my eyes?

"I built this city just to bring it to its knees" ~ Anberlin

Sand

 Walking ‘long forever shore

‘Neath the azure sky

Found a bottle made of glass

With everything inside

Promise of impossible

Her hair a wreath of flames

A banquet there from shore to shore

At this place without a name

A face I cannot forget

With a name I can’t recall

A freckle there, beneath her hair

And a joy enough for all

This world’s ceaseless violent dances

They did all but fade away

A distant, long forgotten cloud

In a world less shades of gray

A home of love and meaning

And a dream I can’t deny

I begged God I should never blink

Lest beauty vanish from my eyes

The hue array impossible

Her smile perhaps even more

And there I stood ash to dust

On that nameless, placeless shore.

Yet blink I did, eventually

And the present world restored

Beheld a bottle made of glass

And a message bound with cord

Out it fell, it unfurled read

“If you get this, I am dead”

And here, I could read no more

I fell and wept in growing dread

For a dream I can’t ignore

Of a nameless, placeless shore

Broke the bottle, burned the note

For the dream, it was no more.

Yet once upon the other day

As of empty try I tire

Girl ‘neath midday glass and sun

Her reflection made of fire.

Who needs enemies when we've got friends like you? ~ Anberlin

Lovers 

We're on the run
Our tail lights reflecting
Off hood whites we're leaving behind
I can almost smell the sunshine.
Telling your lies for power and fame
Hiding yourself for whatever you gain
Baby, come clean, just tell me your name
And I swear you'll sleep freer tonight.
I watch your fingers stroking the keys
And how I wish it was me
And I don't even know who you are
Better yet, I doubt that I care
Baby don't stare
Cause I see sunshine in your eyes
But I can't taste it yet.
Don't worry, I won't forget
I'll leave before you wake up
So your image remains
And maybe one day I won't
Maybe one day I'll stay
Just let time slip away
Just see what the future may bring
If this means anything;
And maybe you'll hate me
And maybe you'll take me for all that I have
Just so long as you'll take me at all.
Oh baby, I don't care who's between your sheets
Just tell me your secrets and I'll be complete
I see the border and smell the sunshine
I reach for your love but I know that it ain't mine
Cause we're still on the run.
Just stop hiding who you are
We can almost taste it, it isn't very far
Just to love and be loved in return.

The Destroyer of Worlds

Void

I  am twilight
A temporary state
That has lingered on too long
A momentary passing time
Made better when it's gone.
I am seclusion
For all that I'm so long without
I'm better left alone.
I'm stood alone on endless hope,
Hear foolish call my name
"Madness" I argue
"Madness" I scream
"Madness" the echoes answer back the same.
Pray the Lord above
Forgive uncertain hearts
In these unfaithful times
"Madness" the echoes answer back my crimes.
I am void
The endless unremembered, unforgotten vague
The all-consuming absence, the all-consuming rage.
I am blood
The dripping, oozing abscess
That tarnishes your gaze
As my glass eyes do pierce it
Quite literally, I'm afraid.
Though you don't believe me yet
Don't know sorrow is its name
I beseech you, don't find out the same.
I am the lonely soul
The empty heart
The vacant, absent stare.
I am death
For we all know I don't belong.
I am death
Though I cannot find my way home.

"Questions, Questions that need answering" ~ Gandalf

Inquiries of God

My once overflowing cup

Is now crushed beneath Your feet

I feel desolate and incomplete

But mostly I feel numb

(When I feel anything at all)

Just waiting to be struck dumb

To gape and stare or gasp in awe

At something divine among the mundane.

To find a divide between sacred and profane

A line in the sand, to know where I stand

Am I saved, am I lost

Have I picked up a cross

Or counted the costs

And what does such rhetoric mean?

Is there a meaningful answer to glean

As I feed this machine of clichés

And find only doubts?

Am I in, am I out?

If I love, do I win?

What comes after the end

Of everything? Where does faith begin?

In the here? In the rough?

When everything's tough

And I'm left waiting for grace to barge in?

Have I not yet waited enough

To be over this stuff

Or will these converging tensions conceive

A way I can finally believe?

Everything and Nothing

Heroes

I remember everyone I've ever killed

Stilled, though I cannot recall their names

Only the frames in which their portraits

Will forever remain, only partially complete.

I repeat, only their eyes, infinitely vacant

Impossibly hued and unblinking with hate.

I have wrestled with fate and tangoed with time

I have deliberately subdued the sublime

For one second more by myself

In this hollowing hell, on this harrowing shelf

A precipice supporting each side

Perhaps explaining this free-fall.

As momentum builds, the abyss approaches

And I find that motives encroach on my mind

Did I do what I did for the sake of a bid

Cast in earnest, in prosperity's wake?

Or in some vague attempt, 'neath the scorn and contempt

To act on behalf of a greater mystery's stake

In the movements and stalemates of life?

It seems all I've achieved, is the wind through the leaves

An ambiguous striving for strife.

Every face that I pass as sharp as the grass

Pointed and staring, forever comparing

My virtues with those they would own

They find me a pawn in the game of my making

Breaking vows I never knew I was taking

Each alternating between terror and awe

I hear sirens' call, their song ringing death in my ears

I'm the source of their fears, and of my own.

If I fail, they will die, but if I don't, so will I

In every way that matters

Until only tatters remain.

May It Go Well With You On Your Journey Hence

Requiem

I wake up each morning
With more doubts than faith
More anger than grace
Less sure of the line
Where love turns into hate
Believing I don't believe
In believing anything at all.
Each night I stumble and fall
Down on my knees,
Crumble and crawl
Begging whatever forces I may
That everything I am
Ends before the new day.
Because nothing makes sense
And whatever mystic imprints
We might like to confess
Are buried under years of duress
Guilt, grime and hard alcohol
I wonder at the lack of wonder in it all.
Please teach us to pray
When all we do is demand
Teach us to breathe
When we're frightened to stand
Teach us to see
When we're blinded and scared
Teach us to hope
Beyond all we've prepared
Teach us to heal
What our actions will rend
Give us the faith
To believe ere the end
Teach us to love
When we don't think we can
And Father, forgive us
All that we can't understand.

Love Always Leaves A Mark

Pause

Baptized by noise

Inundated by the endless

Images and ideologies

Noises, sounds and self-help theologies

All conveying the same few words

That I am incomplete without new

That I am discontent with the used

And used is what I am.

Baptized by noise

Inundated by the endless

Ticking and tocking

Clicking, clacking and clocking

Politicking for a little more time

All conveying the same thought crime

That there's still so much left to do

That I might see something new

And I'm too young (too dumb) to die.

A sunrise where everything stopped

But here in the stillness

The warped message is dropped

And re-emerges as true.

That I am incomplete without new

That I am incomplete without You

That hope is here, there's nothing to fear

And I can never be the same again.

[CENSORED]

Cinderella

There was a girl called Cinderella
With slippers made of glass
Though why of two just one remained
She never dared to ask.
Either way she got her prince
Her "once upon" and "ever after"
And ashen children ever since
Are broken even faster.
So the cinders became someone else's job
Another day, another slob
And still no charming prince
No rude or ugly royal lass
Just another set of fingerprints
To be polished off the glass
Off the valuables, and off the trash
For it has the most of all
But only 'round the wrists and neck
Where they "saved you from a fall".
Where they can be hidden by the scars
From a life prayed behind these bars
And I cannot see the stars
I cannot see the stars
And the stars cannot see me.
This floor is much too high and bright
For me to look beyond it
Been dark so long, can't stand the sight
Of life beyond this fancy cage
Can't bear to turn the page
To find I'm just a man in a dress
Stuck cleaning up another's mess
And hated for that reason
This secondhand duress
Just contemplating treason
With no princess out to find me.