TenTen

More than I can hold,
Too many feelings and emotions,
An abundant moment leaving me on my knees
With arms flung down by my side, head tilted full back,
Like a soaking rag limp on a laundry line,
Waiting for the air to dry me back to life,
So I can long once more to be cleansed and drenched,
Left hanging across my support.

To cry,
To weep with anguish,
To laugh so hard I feel soar and hoarse in the morning,
To love so fiercely it hurts,
To sing aloud with every fiber that is me,
To blush from embarrassment,
To be confused until I understand,
To feel overwhelmed,
To be trapped in circumstances I cannot change, whether good or bad, pleasing or not,
To know melancholy and apathy like old familiar friends,
To meet joy in the midst of their company,
To stare into the night sky or gaze up at the moon until I appear to myself nothing,
To grasp the world as it pertains to me only
To have wrenched from my hands even the idea that it does.

My feeble fingers then locked soundly around the truth too large to contain,
I turn and find all that I am lying on the road there behind me,
Dead, while I am still alive, left with only a soul inflated by the breath of His Spirit,
Being found in Him, and made in His likeness.

To face the Thief and be not robbed,
To face the Murderer and live,
To face the Destroyer and remain unscathed,
To know Him who searches heart and mind,
He who keeps, protects, and resurrects.
This is the abundant life.

Space

O concrete slab with two lines
Do you realize you hold within your parameters my mood?

O three-sided rectangle,
You are always open but never available.

O first in line of identical siblings,
Why send me to one of your farthest relations?

Why make me wait in my need of haste
To watch you spit forth one you have taken?

O concrete slab, you hold that which you should not,
And could I steal it from you I would go about my merry way, happy,
Whether I have received your favor or not.

Condition

It’s hard to explain it all.
Some things only make sense in your spirit,
Which is where you really live.
The problem with that is complicated.
It seems I allow more people access to my spirit
Than to my body.
So I appear unscathed.
I appear fresh, optimistic, enthusiastic.
I appear a lie.
For the part of me that really lives is mangled.
Ravaged by doctrines and rules
Which create miserable people.
Answers that fuel pride and choke mercy
Sleep with men of faith
And produce spiritually abused offspring.
O that spiritual purity would reign
In the hearts of those whose lips cannot be silent.
O that love for sinners would overflow
Even more toward saints.
When you lie to yourself long enough,
I’ve heard it said, you begin to believe what’s false.
You believe it’s great and proof of God’s hand,
But I believe it’s time to admit
That something is terribly wrong.

Perhaps

Perhaps this spinning earth could stop and let me catch my breath.
Perhaps the voices screaming still could know the taste of death.
Perhaps a smile and servitude could change a thing or two.
Perhaps a journey far away could fix what’s wrong with you.
Perhaps a glass of sweet merlot could make you understand.
Perhaps a quiet moment here could make you more a man.
Perhaps today a gentle rain could wash away the grime.
Perhaps you could leave on your own and save the rain the time.

Loneliness

O Loneliness, O sweet repose,
You left me here some years ago.
You left me in this crowded room
Where I would dance, alone, with you.
So now instead of pensive peace
I bear my own despondency.
The kind that comes from being close
To all the ones I love the most.
The kind that wraps itself up in
The company of all my friends.
The kind that comes with wrenching pain
Because I wish they’d go away.
The kind that penetrates to breed
And nurse all of my apathy.
O loneliness, O sweet repose,
I wish that you could only know
Just how I long to be with you
Instead of in this crowded room.