I use a loofah . . . so what?

I Am The Tempest’s Son

I saw my father’s face in a window pane today

Save that it did not have his features

The complexion and the colour were all wrong

The gaze as strong as the chin was weaker

But the same scowl curved the mumbling lips

The same shimmering, simmering rage

Seethed behind these always disappointed eyes

And I realized I’d never turned the page

Today, I am my father’s rage.

I saw my father’s faith in a windowed train today

As I glimpsed my own confused reflection

All sound and fury, noise and hate

As it always goes these same directions

Without variance and without hope

With but a slow certainty of arrival

It only goes where it’s always been

Without even prayer of revival.

Not even begging for survival.

I saw my mother’s doubt in an overpass today

With cracks in it’s foundation

And painted sayings not her own

Adorning each incarnation

Someone loves somebody else

But it never feels like her

Hell, it never feels like me

And we are always what we were

And we were never very sure.

I saw my own reflection through a looking glass today

And I could not find resemblance

A bitter husk of wilted choice

For each and every false remembrance

Where I blamed a father’s features

For a fault that I should bare

Or a mother for a fault I chose to share

Until I saw myself just standing there

Still so very unaware that I am killing me.

Happy Easter!

Metallurgy 


A tarnished copper flower
Bent and rusted through
In a world of alchemy,
Welded together differently
Than everything it thought to be.
Turning gold to polished lead
And elixirs into poisons,
A tarnished copper hour
In a world of gold philanthropy.

An acorn falls amid the dust
Among the leaded thorns and rust
That lust created man to be.
A biological reaction
In a world of Harvard pedigree.

A silver weed on a copper lawn
And all the neighbors sigh and fawn
Over what was never meant to be.
A single-souled catastrophe
In a world that hates misanthropy.

A living tree in shades of green
There among the metal things
A pulse amid technology
A grace before apology
A tree among the crowning thorns
Where that which fell has been reborn,
For in a polished world of gleaming thrones
There remains a grave without a stone
A breaking day
And a dawn that can't be scorned away.

There goes my hero, watch him as he goes. . .

Some Bridges Are Better Off Burned (A Slam)


Perhaps there are two men in every soul
A coward, and a noble man.
This much, at least, I understand.
In a world of poor and sick and dying
Of wars and fears and mere trying
To wake up this morning alive
We're more worried about shagging and bragging,
Shacking up and packing up, shucking clothes
And lucking into the right bed
And who is doing what with whom
As though this narrow bridge has ample room
For both our egos and our baggage.
We blame churches for deliverance
From what surely would be providence
Toward souls as pure as uncommon sense
Would dictate ours to be.
Blame governments for starting war
And governments for stopping more
For death always stimulates the economy.
Blame fathers for daughters and mothers for sons
Blame murder on children playing with red BB guns.
Hate others and brothers for hating each other
And brothers for being from the same mother as me
Until I hate everyone because I believe.
I hate you, and you hate me
It's in the equation of what we might be.
It's not dying I'm scared of
(That's just being without breath)
It's the life that comes first, not the one that comes next.
Perhaps I was wrong and I blamed the wrong throng
For all the problems I thought I could see.
For there is only one man inside of this soul
There is only the coward
Yes, there's only me
And perhaps the true problem isn't where I thought it would be.

1

Less

And everything feels like regression

Back to the mean, into the lean

Years of famine

Of hoarding, of cramming

Dull lives into bleak days

Until the haze would raise

And we'd be paralyzed by forgotten rays

Of promise. Let's be honest,

The moment passed, the die was cast

And I was carved out of dust and ash.

Yes, I am a ware in a peddler's stash

Anything for a little quick cash

I am the king of a valley of trash

For every time I've thrown myself away

In the hope of a yesterday

That holds no future sway.

Maybe I'm just here on my own

Maybe I thought I was here all alone

Maybe we're aliens desperate for home

In a world to which we've never belonged.

And maybe simpler thoughts convey more

Perhaps simpler words preserve lore

It might be that simpler waves can save shores

And the overly complex destroys all in its wake.

For art is the magic of give and of take

It's not always better to add more to make

A masterpiece.

So in this art that You're making

I'm tired of faking

And pretending I have good gifts to bring

All that I am is here for the shaking

That brings down and rebuilds all things.

So come ease this aching

I'm here for the taking

And make this world better with less

Take me away

Take me away

And save all the rest

Give us grace, give us love, grant us rest

And Lord, of myself, give me less.

Here we go for the hundredth time, hand grenade pins in every line . . .

Weltanschauung


Pray you do not think this open-ended
Find this plea both frail and winded
With which I dig one desperate trench
From which I make one last defense
And sweat, for whether dock or bench
The jury still deliberates.
Beg, do not think it trite and empty
But little pleasant rhymes with God
And even littler still with Jesus
Except worn cliches and the very odd
With which we all find disagreements.
Here, I do entreat you think
If for but a short and lonesome while
Is any subject more abstract to write,
Yet clearly put in common style
Than that though we strive with all our might
Remain meanest beggars of the night
Still needing One to save us,
To step into the bleak and claim us
When we would not claim ourselves.
All we thought was altruistic
Revealed as merely pantheistic
For too much good without a Name
Is really quite as much the same
As having done no good at all.
For if goodness is our claim to fame
There is little goodness in it.
Yet one day, on a someday
With a voice too loud to hear
And a sound too soft to miss
By and by it shall be made clear,
Resounds, "Be at peace and know, my dears."
Indeed, take heart, for Hope is here.

I'm trying to write more coherent poetry. Is it working?

Kimble


I wake as though I am sleeping
I sleep as if I were dead
Oft I speak aloud as if praying
Lest I commit treason instead.
I am not wishing for trumpets
Rather, I'm waiting for sin
To come on the legs of seduction
And transform the state that I'm in.
What I get is the clapping of thunder
And the feeling I'm lies wrapped in skin
The break-apart storm clouds of wonder
The sensation I'm where I begin.
Which is what I'm truly afraid of
That I can, in fact, change who I am,
That mistakes are all that I'm made of,
That I've always been out on the lam
To escape my own definition
A fugitive fleeing from grace
Scared of the future I'm racing,
Even more that I'll see my true face.

So come on around the bend

Walter Rauschenbusch

Evening found us waiting

Just to glimpse a shadow,

To hear a wraith, see a ghost.

Never realizing

That Elvis had already left

The building years ago

And been replaced with a ghast.

With an addict in costumes,

A preacher in street clothes

And we waited

And baited our breath

Too caught up in the fumes to notice.

Morning found us listening

To a pre-recorded message

Never realizing that Elvis

Would never have recorded that song.

Noon found us singing along

Subtly changing the words

Without conscious focus

Never taking notice

That Elvis was singing a wholly different song.

Sunday found us buying

Tickets to a magic show

Where Elvis would perform

Despite his missing qualities,

Namely breath and a pulse,

But details never derail true belief.

Monday found us waiting

Still in pre-assigned roles

Though Elvis had already moved on.

Tuesday found us antsy with

Sweat stains on our clothes

And not a whisper of rockabilly around.

Wednesday found us nervous

Just scratching the surface

Close to accepting the Vegas guy in his suit

Because Elvis had left the building

While we were still glued to our pews.

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.