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To leap without look
For sacrifice brooks
No moment for mere self-concern
When will we learn?
To fall full of doubts
Uncertain our shouts
Of fear and of hope will be heard
To do the absurd
Unimpeded, unbarred
Our vision unmarred
By consequence and death
Just the frost of our breath
As the chill of unknown
Floods our bones
Comfort damning our souls
As it fills them with holes
That our stored fat can't easily fill
We do what we will
Ignoring, in pride
The quieting murmur of life deep inside
That asks "is this it?"
When our only remit
Is increasing our gluttonous hoard
Dying fat, lazy and bored
In comfort and tedium
Our lives, the medium
For gaining an eternal dark
For sacrifice is a spark
That we now live without
Impotent for all of our clout.

!

Some think truth is a fire
Burning away the impurity inside
Refining away all we divide
But fire burns everything
Not just our pride
Truth must be better than that.
Some say it's a mirror
Reflecting the whole
What's on the outside's projecting the soul
But mirror's just show us ourselves
And that leaves me cold.
Some say it's an ocean
Nigh endless and vast
Telling the stories of centuries past
Sometimes clear as glass
Sometimes clouded through
But it still has an end
And it still shows you. . . you.
I think it's impossible
For even the brave
I think more became less
Wore the skin of a babe
Became mortal, yet not, was nailed to a stave
I think Impossible took on the grave
And won
Carried us out on it's back
For what else but Truth
Could really do that?

~

I don't know
That I believe
Because if You're still good
Why am I still me?
What am I missing,
What can't I see?
Sometimes I pray
Just to ease my own shame
Sometimes I don't pray at all
But if I don't believe
When I'm down on my knees
Do I really believe You at all?
If I do not change
If I'm always the same
I think I'm committing a fraud
Wearing a name to which I don't belong.
But that's always the case
I'm a name without face
Praying a prayer I don't mean
But I wish that I did.
Yet my sins so increase
As I fall at Your feet
I fear Your mercy has missed
For how else could I be this
Unless, in truth, I don't believe
Perhaps too proud to receive
Too dumb to perceive
But I wish that I did.
God how I wish that I did.

`

My eyes as lava in my tears
This nexus here of all my fears
Each burning trail upon my cheek
Leaves only ash behind to peek
At what lies beneath this flesh and bone
What monster dwells here unatoned
The lava melts this cage away
As darkness comes to steal the day.
This cloud of ash upon my brow
And magma on my neck
The bubbling vice robes me somehow
In the purest clothes of disrespect.
No vision in these molten eyes
These liquid, orange orbs
Blinded here both by my pride
And thus by metaphor.
These thoughts akin to madness
An ever-growing sadness
Stills in the air for miles around
As death comes with her thundering sound.
I had drunk my fill of virtue
So vice beckoned me in
All the anger that I'd nurtured
Has poisoned me again
Volcano posing in my skin. 

Z

It's hard to be grateful for pain
To stand, soaked through by the rain
And thank God for the storm
When you just want to be warm
To stand up and know in your core
That life will come back for more
And from down on your knees
That you should say please
Thank God for each bleeding sore
And beg that He test you once more.
It's hard to getting up from the ground
Feeling you're more lost than found
Knowing that strife
Is a double edged knife
That sharpens your soul as it injures your life.
It's hard to be thankful for pain
To be rendered down grain by grain
To know as you're threshed
That you're now being blessed
As each swipe furthers the strain
But if we cannot sing
Through the troubles life brings
How will we hear hope's refrain?

Y

The repository of lost socks
Holds many solemn soles
Some bare of thread and full of holes
And some as fresh as ticking clocks
Which have been wound anew.
All linger, looking for a mate
Longing that a match be made
Disregarding size or shade
For function has no room for hate
And what cares warmth for color?
So they lay there, in mated pairs
Pink crew with knee length argyle
Threadbare soles, and ones with toes
Stories worn across the miles
All mingled here in Time's great box
And somewhere Comfort smiles.

X

Ah youth
The endlessly untapped stupidity
That will come to define our existence
Our slowly decaying resistance
To the tyranny of being born.
Childhood
With it's boundless joys and freedoms
Until a trip, we fall, we're bleeding
Invincibility's rendered fleeting
Our scars bear out one meaning:
That soon we all must die.
Ah youth
Nostalgia for naivete
Until grounded hard by gravity
Scabbed knees unmask cold reality
That we're made to be in pain
For soon we all must die.
Ah youth
The celebrated innocence
Of unimpeded indolence
And years of near incontinence
That return as years go by
Oh, how we all must cry
Knowing we all soon will die.