100 Favorite Songs

In no particular order after #1

1. U2 "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For" *
2. INXS "Listen Like Thieves" *
3. INXS "What You Need" *
4. INXS "Never Tear Us Apart"*
5. Anberlin "Feel Good Drag"
6. Matthew Mayfield "Turncoat" *
7. Matthew Mayfield "Open Road"
8. Icon For Hire "Make A Move"
9. Heart "If Looks Could Kill" *
10. Heart "What About Love" *
11. Heart "Alone"
12. Heart "WTF"
13. Paramore "Misery Business"
14. April Wine "Waiting On A Miracle" *
15. Shinedown "The Sound Of Madness"
16. Pearl Jam "Just Breathe"
17. Project 86 "Ghost of Easter Rising"
18. Audioslave "Show Me How To Live"
19. Bryan Adams "One Night Love Affair" *
20. Bryan Adams "Heaven" *
21. Bryan Adams "Everything I Do (I Do It For You)"
22. Foreigner "That Was Yesterday" *
23. Adele "Set Fire To The Rain" *
24. Pat Benatar "We Belong" *
25. Pat Benatar "Hit Me With Your Best Shot" *
26. Michael Jackson "Man In The Mirror"
27. Joan Jett and the Blackhearts "I Hate Myself For Loving You"
28. The Beatles "Norwegian Wood" *
29. Foo Fighters "Home" *
30. Goo Goo Dolls "Keep The Car Running"
31. Goo Goo Dolls "Iris"*
32. Goo Goo Dolls "Broadway"*
33. Fleetwood Mac "Little Lies"*
34. Billy Joel "While The Night Is Still Young" *
35. Elton John "Rocket Man" *
36. Ryan Bingham "Beg For Broken Legs"
37. The Beatles "Hey Jude"
38. The Beatles "You've Got to Hide Your Love Away" *
39. Queen "Save Me" *
40. Queen "Somebody To Love"
41. Radiohead "Creep"*
42. Lifehouse "You and Me"
43. Skillet "How Deep The Father's Love For Us"
44. Barlow Girl "Oh Holy Night"
45. Shinedown "Fly From the Inside"
46. Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers "American Girl"
47. Aerosmith "Dream On" *
48. Aerosmith "Crying"
49. Beastie Boys "Sabotage"
50. Bob Seger "Old Time Rock and Roll"*
51. Michael Bolton "How Am I Supposed To Live Without You"
52. Michael Bolton "Hot Love"*
53. Needtobreathe "Hard Love"
54. Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers "Free Fallin'"
55. Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers "Won't Back Down"
55. Whitesnake "Here I Go Again"
56. Big Brother and the Holding Company "Piece of My Heart"
57. Bob Seger "Hollywood Nights"*
58. Edwin McCain "I Could Not Ask For More"
59. Counting Crows "God of Ocean Tides"
60. Simple Plan "Jet Lag"
61. Harry Chapin "Cat's In The Cradle"*
62. Slash ft Pink "Beautiful Dangerous"
63. Sixx A.M. "Lies of the Beautiful People"
64. Johnny Cash "Hurt"
65. The Eagles "Hole in the World"
66. Newsboys "Lost the Plot"
67. Brooke Fraser "Hymn"
68. Otis Redding "Sittin' On the Dock of the Bay"
69. Josh Garrels "Ulysses"
70. Lit "My Own Worst Enemy"
71. Tremonti "Cauterize"
72. Tremonti "Decay"
73. Alterbridge "Life Must Go On"
74. Alterbridge "Blackbird"
75. Velvet Revolver "Fall to Pieces"
76. Journey "Don't Stop Believin'"*
77. In This Moment "Lay Your Gun Down"
78. Joan Jett and the Blackhearts "Dirty Deeds"
79. Whitney Houston and Mariah Carey "When You Believe"
80. Temple of the Dog "Hunger Strike"
81. Phil Collins "You'll Be In My Heart"
82. Dasboard Confessional "Vindicated"
83. Bleach "Child of Sod"
84. Needtobreathe "Washed By The Water"
85. Yellowcard "Gifts and Curses"
86. 3 Doors Down "Loser"
87. 4 Non-Blondes "What's Going On"
88. Linkin Park "Numb"
89. Blondie "Heart of Glass"*
90. Bad Religion "Sorrow"
91. Evanescence "My Heart Is Broken"
92. Evanescence "Bring Me To Life"
93. The Cranberries "Zombie"
94. In This Moment "In The Air Tonight"
95. U2 "With or Without You"*
96. U2 "Where the Streets Have No Name"
97. David Bowie "Space Oddity"
98. Creedence Clearwater Revival "Bad Moon Rising"
99. Soundgarden "Black Hole Sun"
100. Kid Rock & Sheryl Crow "Picture"

Honorable Mentions: Third Day "Morning Has Broken", Billy Joel "Piano Man", Elton John "Tiny Dancer", Fall Out Boy "Save Rock and Roll", Skillet "Invincible", Smalltown Poets "Monkey's Paw", The Waiting "Hands in the Air", Ludivico Einaudi "Andare", Florence & the Machine "Stand By Me", Coldplay "Fix You", Red "Hold Me Now", Stevie McCrorie "Take Our Time", Bon Jovi "Livin' On A Prayer", Blondie "Call Me"*, Halestorm "Freak Like Me", Rush "Tom Sawyer"*, Pearl Jam "Once" *

Leviathan

I feel as though I am made of hate
Like no action can quell or sate
The ravenous demons within
Hatred and rage, violence and sin
Perversions and twistings in tin
With only a lid to keep the beast in
Leviathan in a tupperware cage
Just waiting for his turn on stage
Just waiting to unleash the rage
Roiling, coiling in my soul
A madness that can only grow
Lurks just beneath this thin veneer
How long can I keep him here?
Leviathan in his lidded pot
Just waiting until I forgot
To keep the lid secured
And this, I am assured
Will happen someday soon
For there is no more room
For miracles in my mind
All will yet be left behind
Vice, a thoroughly baited hook
Pulled virtue to the top, mistook
A lid for fine containment
As though wearing a king's raiment
Disguised my leper's skin
Yes, a lid to keep a monster in
But the walls, the walls are paper thin
Oh God, the walls are just my skin.

as the wise have said, time makes fools of us all

UNO

I see your smile

And his.

Knowing all the while

What is

It burns,

Turns 

Over in my stomach

Acid breathing free

Gathering again

All laughing, but at me.

So many merry faces

Paired of racing hearts

A glance can soothe at paces

A heart been torn apart

Save mine

In ashes silent

No kindling for a spark

I drift through life alone

Unwanted, in the dark.

DOS

you think you're helping
they think you're blind
for every step forward
they fall behind
and then darkness.
and pain.
betrayal,
and pain.
steel seeks warmth
in your ribcage
in your spine, your neck
it's a cold world most days
steel longs to connect
with your heartbeat
bones sometimes deflect
the knife in your back
but never the pain
as everything burns in the end.
yes, everyone turns in the end.

Poems

ONE

Behind rusty locks and tarnished gates

Chimera sleeps, Chimera waits

For time to break the spell

To release him from his cell

For man cannot tame hell

Alone, within his soul.

Monster, wearing chains of old

Rages, paces, in the cold

Recesses of my heart

Waiting, waiting, for his part

To breathe his fire, work his art

Of pain, of hatred and despair

His hate curdles the very air

And his cage is only me

So hear now, my desperate plea

Kill the beast, don't let him free

Kill Chimera inside of me.

TWO

No words could write a poem

To convey my depths of grief

For my sorrows are an ocean

And my virtue but a reef

Worn away by tide and time

Stolen, as though by thief

By years of constant failings

Now guilt my only fief

Doubt, my anthem's chorus

Regrets, my crowning jewel

Some claim God is for us,

But I am no such fool.

God is on God's own side

And blame God, I cannot

For 'twas not God that left the path

To wander through the rot.

No, it was not God who pondered

Things best left forgot

No, 'twas I, and I alone

And God's fault, it was not.

THREE

I saw your face today

Amid the green and gray

Of fading times and seasons.

Even now, mutiny, treason

Committed by my heart

For though you tore me all apart

I miss you anyway

I still wish you could have stayed

But I've always been a fool

And love's warmth turning cool

Is just the way it goes

Heartbreak, I suppose

Is the thing that I know best

I'm just a masochist, I guess

Chasing down duress

Then hating it's caress.

But you knew that didn't you?

There, in your eyes, it's true

You took me for a fool

And damnit, you were right.

FOUR

I thought by now I'd have faith down

Instead, mostly I drown

With selfish desires

Build funeral pyres

For times when I cared.

I often despair

Of finding any virtue within,

For there's mostly sin

And reciprocal prayers

A sort of putting on airs

In a cyclical dance

A cynic's romance.

I ask God forgive what I've become

For what I've done

Is now too long to list

And I'm long past pretending I'll quit

Ennui of the soul is a cancer

A question without answer

Will I change, will I run

Back to what I've already done?

Does God hear, am I deaf?

Am I wasting my breath

Trying to come clean from this mark of death?

Cause I'm tired of the strain

Of this mark of Cain

For I confess, down on my face

I've sought so much of sin and so little of grace.

FIVE

For everyone I've hurt

God blood stained the dirt

Like red stars on sand skies

Galaxies for each of my lies

And universes for all of my sins

Wound upon wound on God skin

Each one should have been mine.

Thorns render irony's crown for divine

A King left a Kingdom behind

To bleed in the dirt

From death, bring rebirth

To restore sight to a soul so long blind

A soul, exactly like mine

Each wound should have been mine

Thoroughly earned, to my shame

Thoroughly burned, by my name

God wore a face in my place

And took onto Godflesh my pain.

Sometimes I think God insane

For surrendering when I'm to blame

For being impossibly good, and doing the should

Always, never shirking the pain.

God met death in my name

How can I know this, and still be the same?

SIX

You said what you said

And part of me died

Maybe you meant it

And maybe you lied

But those words were spoken

Now inside I'm broken

And my restless demons won't be denied.

How do you wrestle a legion?

With arms pinned behind back, no less

With feet in concrete

I've wrestled with less

But never to victory, this I confess

This daydream believer

Turned vitriolic receiver

Wrestling damned legions of fate

How well I know hate

Yet I feel it still

And I no longer know

Which part of me's real

The man, or the demons

And which one's been killed.

SEVEN

God, can you teach me to pray

Give me something to say

That would bring your voice to my soul

But that line's ringing cold

As if I prayed it before

So could you create a new door

To the forge of my heart

And give its fire a new start

Make me worry less about

Voicing my doubt

And more about hearing you speak

Less about being so weak

And more about freedom in grace

And more about running the race

To see you at it's end.

Let me go when you send

Without asking why

Not just stare at the sky

With my questions

And ignore my suggestions

That I'm not your tool

I know I'm a fool.

Help me trust what I can't

See without slant

Be what I ain't

Erase the taint

I bring, I'm absurd

Don't let me be heard

Until I can speak truth

Without saying a word.

EIGHT

I (have been, am, remain) a fool.

A slave to the pointless, a tool

For dulling sharper things

A spear made for clipping wings

Of those who would transcend

The state, the skin, the sin we're in.

I (have been, am, remain) a wreck

A joker pulled from playing deck

For wrenching every game

With my well-worn crown of shame

Embrace it, my refrain

As I, a fool, remain.

I (have been, am, remain) a fool

Pursuing death, defying rule

Of all more-suited Kings than I

Their will, I will deny

Imbibe, pursue defame

Ignominy my name

And I, a fool, remain.

NINE

Lost within my own skull

Every thought, hypothesis: null

No significant change

The demon still remains

The good still dwells in chains

The beast still holds the reins.

Every thought a muddled maze

Of hazy days, an endless phase

Of trying to overcome my sins

Without knowing where the beast begins.

Lent's Journey Ends and Happy Easter

Day 28

One hundred years asleep

And nothing's changed

'cept my hair color and blood alcohol.

One thousand nights I weep

I weep and would be hanged

For wandering down forbidden halls

In one millions dreams

Life's never what it seems

And mine's completely stalled

Like I'm passing time half-asleep

Giving dreams free range

Might be stumblin' toward a fall

But I just see steepin' alcohol

Gray hair and alcohol.

Day 29

If there ain't no thunder in the rain

Run child, run child, run

For gentle winds bring ling'ring pain

Run son, run son, run

Storms can birth disaster

Fist holes in the plaster

Scorch marks on the walls

Beware when violence calls

Beware, but fear it not

For violence burns, and it burns hot

But violence fades away

And calm will find its own way

To claw back to the surface

So too thunder's purpose

To bring forth brighter days.

Don't trust the gentle ways

When rain falls without thunder

Run child, run child, run

Don't stop to think or wonder

Just run child, run run run.

Day 30

A miss, a wish, a second try

I wonder if a second lie

Would be told better than the first

Or a second shot would end up worse

Farther now from distant shores

Greener pastures now closed doors.

Perhaps you'd walk a lonely mile

Wearing a stranger's worn out smile

Would you recognize what you could do

If for one second you weren't you?

Day 31

Can one prayer at the end

Atone for my sins

Overwrite a lifetime of fault

Virtue ground to a halt

As hatred leaked lust in my veins?

My good deeds mere grains

And my misdeeds boulders

The sins on my shoulders

Aren't small

But they did not lead me to fall

I did that all on my own

I threw the first stone

And as so, I damned myself

Now come to the end of life's shelf

I knew the standard

Yet instead I meandered

Walking my own path of lusts

Denials, betrayals, mistrusts

I upheld the world as unjust

Replaced "should not" with must

Can two words in faith

Really erase

A lifetime surrendered to dust?

Day 32

Surreptitious glances

And subtle dances

Of fingers upon cheeks

Hours lasting weeks

And passing in instant

Full throated insistence

No thoughts of resistance

No worries of treasonous mind

Tonight, caresses divine

Each touch a sign

Forever frozen in time

A mem'ry always undying

The love that you're crying

Furrows your face

With the seedlings of grace

And your eyes sing does of joy

Both brash and coy

Ignited and take

Each touch, each whisper changes your name

Every glance changes the same

And where there were two, now one remains.

Day 33

Strange bullpen usage

Erratic substitutions

Thus crumbles cookie.

Close and late, rarely

The win column moves, barely

No bets for bookie.

Mistakes mixed with age

Proving youth adage a phrase

Losses swift will rise.

Slow bat, slower footed

Left fielder chased it, couldn't

Lost it to the skies.

Or so claimed post game

To shirk the encroaching shame

Old and overweight.

Thus season trending

The crack of bat not rending

Often when at plate.

Often when in field

It's too bad there is no yield

For Braves, in baseball.

Day 34

What have I done?

What have I done?

What, Lord, have I become?

I did the math

I know the sum

Oh Lord, what I've become.

What have I done?

What have I said?

These things I've thought inside my head

I read the words

I've made my bed

Oh God, all good things I've left for dead

Laid waste to all that's good and true

Seen your face, spit on it too

I've run everywhere under your sun

What have I done

What have

I done?

What, Oh Lord, have I become

I've smelled the blood

I've heard the drums

I fled the war that rages, numb

From all these things that I've become.

Day 35

We all become as we grow old

Perhaps our parents, as often told

Perhaps our lovers, perhaps our lies

Until we're running out of alibies

And become in truth, what began pretend

Running out of sins to sin.

Changing as the days go by

Once lived in sun, now drawing nigh

Upon nocturnal life

Took what we wanted with a knife

To the throat, because we could

Becoming never felt so good

Save one tiny, simple thing

We're all becoming what we dream

The dream now becoming clear

And mirrors are now our greatest fear.

Day 36

Mistakes compounding

Surrounding me with doubt

Out of chances

Trances and meditation fail

Frail and seeking aid

Paid for by something more

Core trembles and shakes

Mistakes will be displayed

Played for all to see

Me, seen for what I am

Damned. 

Day 37

All my fears are now complete

Replete I am with guilt

Spilt, so much blood my hands

Stand for only sin

When will I cease defecting

Erecting walls of vice

Thrice times millions denials

Trials of flesh all failed

Hailed again by weakness

Bleakness finds my eyes

Lies encircle and surround

Crowned king by filthy mind

Blind leading the blind.

Find a new beginning cant

Pant for want of longing

Wronging everyone

None more than me and you

True has lost its meaning

Gleaning nothing now

How I need erasing

Replacing, me with You.

Day 38

It was the dawn before the darkness

The breath before the plunge

The wines of celebration

Ere the vinegar-soaked sponge.

Raised hands of adoration

Before raised voices turning fists

The triumphant jubilation

Before death's final kiss.

It was desperation's final act

Ere hope's great curtain rend

It was a promise long foretold

The beginning of the end.

Day 39

Face to face

A price to pace

Ten steps turn

And love.

Burned by smoking 

Barrels, poking

Holes in pinata

Hearts.

We gotta try

Not to scream or cry

As lead is pulled

From chests.

Mulled over 

Our four leaf clover

Had but three after all

Unlucky in love.

Day 40

Each spring comes anew

And the chlorophyll hue

Makes even death green with envy.

Each bud and bloom

Revealing the doom

The embalming tomb

Of sunlight's last frenzy.

Born so swiftly to die

One long oxygen sigh

Exhaled into dust

And it was thus.

Spring seems to mean

The birth of all things

But lasts but an eye-blinking season

Then death comes with treason

And summer's heat cracks

Your facade at last

Renders you brown

And autumn rains drown

The last vestiges of your existence.

This is your resistance

This birth

This cycle of remaking earth

A shot fired at the tyranny of change.

Day 41

All our beliefs

Painted velvet reliefs

Our trinkets and charms

Meditations of karma

And expectations lie thus

Rendered dust and unjust

Neutered by trust

In the unseen

Unclean, so unclean

How I needed to die

And in my depths, there would it lie

At peace, so at peace

Higher than high

And there at my peak, there was it nigh

For there is no karma to grace.

No reason in faith

No power in hate

There's only His love.

Day 42

There's a hat rack on the wall

With baldness hanging on its pegs

And in the closet, in the hall

Stands a table without legs

Sitting there, a hand-less man

Holding a remote

And on the ground, the ceiling fan

Spins it's blade-less rote.

The hand-less man dons baldness

To cover up his hat

Then stands, and in his tallness

Wipes his hands on the welcome mat.

Then he leaves his one room house

Takes the stairs to second floor

And there, with his computer mouse

Clicks mute to stop his snores.

Day 43

Love

Does not heal

It self destructs

For where there is love

There is no self

It is not easy

But painful

For it brings scars to the surface

And reopens old wounds

For love is not a cosmologist

But a tattoo artist

Bringing life fully to the fore

Hidden scars are private pains

But visible ones are triumphs

And love is never content

With second rate

With second best

Or second place

Because love is separation

Abnegation

The utter rejecting of me

That you might be you.

Day 44

Black skies

Spell sordid lies

In every thunderclap

Lured into the trap

Of believing what is known

Of seeing what is shown

And not what pulls the strings

Of seeing only things

And not what lurks behind them.

Every darkened whim

Now breathes it lightning fire

As we enter darkness' lair

The dragon's teeth of doubt,

And it's gaping maw closes round about

Our hopes.


Easter - He is Risen!

Two days and nights of dark

Third day now, and a spark

Of dawn arises

For hope's full of surprises

When death has looked away.

Thinking there would be no day

Indeed, no day e'er again

Death's sinister grin

Worked slow across his face

Then moving with great haste

Death ran to claim a throne

Leaving hope dead, buried, and gone.

It was his last mistake.

For in his rush to have and take

Death left one breathe to soon

And sure as he had left the room

Hope's chest rattled, rose.

Stopped. The silence grows.

Rattle, rise again

Not an "if only" now, but a when

When will Hope arise?

Dawn comes streaking 'cross the skies

And with a mighty crack

Death's power is beaten back

As a stone is moved

And doom is doomed,

For there's an empty tomb.

Lent Hogsmeade Station

Day 15

Lord teach me to pray

Words that I'll mean

Not words that look good on paper

Not words that tell people I'm smart

That soothe the ear

And tell the world I'm good.

Teach me to pray honestly

Urgently, yet modestly

Not to impress, but to be impressed upon

Not to express theology

But to learn it

Teach me to pray

As the miserable wreck that I am

Freely admitting it

Without condoning it

Not merely asking to change

But being unable to stay the same

Teach me how to mean 

Your name

How to need your grace

How to see your face

And be transformed

How to say I love you

And mean it

Because my heart beats

Differently when I think about you

And not solely because I'm afraid.

Lord, teach me to pray

Not just what to say

But what to feel.

Teach me to kneel.

Day 16

There in the sink

The lonely dishes think

Of their owner with hate

A man with out mate

And so too are they

Then suddenly one day

Spoon says to fork

We could make little sporks

It's better than being alone

And with sanity gone

Fork says to spoon

Not a moment to soon

With your suggestion my dear

Because over here

Bowl and plate

Are discussing spatula-gate

From that time he mingled with pot

Because skillet forgot

Bath time that week

And ladle and knife

Are bemoaning their strife

In being left out of so many meals

In favor of pizza wheels

And mac and cheese

Then from the drain, broccoli sneezed

For he was the least loved of all.

Day 17

Dear life

I surrender

Unconditionally

White flag in hand

All that I've planned

Set aside

Paused midstride

By your relentless assault

Face in the asphalt

Arms wrenched behind

A slave to the grind

Of your endless erosion

Continuous corosion

Of all that I was

Of all that I love

I give up

For my cup

Overflows with sorrows

All my tomorrows

Look worse

Your curse

Wears me down

Till I'm facing the ground

Concrete in my teeth

My laurels a wreath

Adorning your smug expression

You won

For I'm done

I'm done, and I quit

I submit, this is it

I can't fight in your cuffs

I'm saying enough.

Day 18

She came

Seeping, weeping blood

Her tears, a ceaseless flood

Desperate and ashamed

For just a touch

She came.

She came

Without artifice or crutch

For just a glancing touch

Unobtrusive and unnamed

She came.

She came

For she would not stay the same

Not clamoring for fame

Not with praise or adulation

She came.

She came

Fearing not damnation

Not looking for salvation

But for a cure

She came.

She came

For she was sure

That all she had endured

Would end by grazing thread

She came.

She came

From despair's deathly bed

Pleas swallowed, left unsaid

Just to simply brush

She came.

She came

Just for one fleeting touch

In a crowd, in a rush

Just knowing of your name

She came

Why am I afraid to do the same?

Day 19

Vice is the flavor of the weak

And I taste it most of all

For all the good that I would seek

I'm caught within deception's thrall.

Upright walks immoral man

For good ones only crawl

We won't kneel, we damned demand

Thinking to stand tall

Not knowing that our posture

Marks us as least of all.

Day 20

Walk the same miles

Day after day

Pass the same beggar

Spare the same change

In other words

Nothing changes at all.

Self-improvement's vanity

Ambiguous insanity

To be good to me

While you suffer.

For what does my weight mean

If you don't eat?

These new shoes on my feet

Make me uncomfortable

Looking at your cane

Each ache and pain improves what?

As your dignity's shot

To hell and back with each lap

As I pass you with barely a wave

Trying to avoid the grave

And putting your feet in it.

Where did everything go wrong?

Day 21

To be trite

Well-defined rhymes

Chiseled lines

Perfectly punctuated meter

To say what fits your scheme

And pleases the eye

To speak in riddles

Dwell firmly in either the overt

Or rest in the shadows of the obscure

Or simply to be

To say

To see

To revel in every piece

Of each heart

Healed, broken or loved 'long the way

To dance freely in verse

Or without

No scheme holding back subject

No meter withholding truth

No poetry measuring love

But rather love itself unleashed

And given poem's form.

Which will we be?

Day 22

We sleepless wights haunting the night

We fearless boasts, we ghastly ghosts

Invincible in our infamy

The ever watchful enemy

Of the dreamer's restful nights.

Insomnia so oft approaching

Ennui ensues, now encroaching

On our ability to care

Lethargy bends the very air

Dreams made ripe for poaching.

We dreamless ghasts, the mizzenmast

Of death's arriving fleet

The skull and bones

The throwing stones

Toward glass houses made for sleep.

Day 23

I don't know anything

Think anything

Dream anything

See anything

In

Out

In

Out

Existence.

Meditative mantras

Peculiar slogan Santas

Giving particular gifts

Healing impassible rifts

In slogans at any rate

Reality's another state

Untouched by quiet breathing

A tension, coiled and seething

Uneased by proper pose

The heart knows what it knows

Though we oft impose upon it

Long trained commands to stay or sit

Fools we were and are

For there is no wishing star

To be found in inner light

Denying absolutes doesn't make you right

There's no inner peace within

In most, there's sadly, sin

Eons of untapped night

Denying that won't grant you sight

It merely leaves you blind.

Day 24

Always alone

In darkness, alone

In daylight, a stone

Rolling slowly along

A tumbleweed adrift

Blown as the sands shift

Carried by the wind's song

Alone.

Always alone

With words, alone

So many sift in

Don't come out again

For reading is oft done alone

And writing, a wrong

Made mostly of tone

For talking shouldn't happen, alone.

Always alone

The gathering throng

Left me here gathering dust

Sitting here, twiddling, just

Sitting here like a stone

Sitting, and sleeping, alone.

Always alone

Returned to the stone

And clay whence I came

No need for a name

Only a grave

No markings, save

Dead and gone

That alone.

Day 25

God of starlight far and wide

Reach across the vast divide

Between now and who I should be

And make me what you see

I could be in you.

Risen Christ, oh Rising Tide

I am so far now from your side

Come swiftly, sweep me away

Come strongly, Wellspring of Days

And carry me off to you

These things that I do

Taunt me, mock me,

Horrify and haunt me

And worse they've done to you.

Lifegiver, ever true

Breathe into these lungs anew

The breath that's found in you

For mine is stagnant, stale

Words beyond the pale

Have and thought and uttered

And yet at praise I've stuttered

At love, been silent and untrue

Crucified God, bring me back to you.

Day 26

If everyone's told what to think

Then no one is thinking at all

The whole world a lemonade stall

Laced with poison, begging you drink.

If someone needs this to be that

The obvious answer is why

Should I be anything other than I

And who are you to define that?

We're told to love this, that it's good

But who decides what good means?

And who are they to define all our dreams

To tell us we must and we should

Choose this or that way?

If so, what matters the dream?

Or the song, if everyone sings?

It's always groundhog day

Without choices.

So don't be the same

Choose your own name

Ignore all the voices

That will tell you you're wrong.

Day 27

Every surface reflective

Each changing perspective

One drop in an ocean of grace

Every thought a reminder

We're all on a timer

Held by the hand with no face

Stopped clock illusions

Second hand contusions

Bruises to egos and pride

In each prism a vow

From the eternal now

That time is always on his side

But the enemy of hearts

With our faulty starts

And infinite repeats of lessons

Learned for the test

Then lapsing, at best

For the rest of life's sessions

So we're back to the ocean again

Just one more drop, we begin

Thinking conviction a choice

Repentance a phase

That will last a few days

Then fade like the sound of his voice

Swallowed by the roaring of pride

Revealed by the rise of the tide

Pulling us back once again.