...

If I am not kind at all times
Am I truly kind at all?

fri|end

You tore a hole through
The threads of our time
The patchwork red and harrowing
Purples deep as the bruise
A pattern of black cuts through
The fabric; it is thick and cruel as
Your thoughts. No warmth for
Suffering soul, no quilt for
The quivering. You were an
Empty case adorned with praise
Because your tongue spoke no kindness
Your heart gave no grace

I grew new eyes but
You grew no ears
What to say of you?
A demon of light? An
Angel of hell
How must I think of you?
My brother, my foe
How can a tree watered with truth
Bear no truth, unless inside the
Twisted knots lies a
Tired, scared thing
But you didn’t have to hurt me
You didn’t have to kill me too

ἐγείρω

Sailing like the
ocean breeze, a
daughter swore with
broken knees
"We must be oceans
grand, my dear, whose
majesty comes from
quiet streams and a
depth-descending deeps."

There are wars with
hands and wars with
hearts, and while
violence may subdue,
love conquers all.

Be kind, be soft--
Gentle skin may bruise, but
it's the only kind that
feels.

photo

נָשָׂא

It was not enough to
see you fall. I
want to see you
crumble, for
you are built of dust.
Your words are putrid,
your flame is black.
O brother, what am I to
think of you? For
in your eyes I glimpsed
both demon and light
Your hands wield destruction,
but still they stretch into
troubled sky to grant the
Lord His glory?

You are blind and
the truth will
find you out.

But I am finding myself on
shores of grace, and
as I approached ever near, tears
began to well in my eyes
because I, too
am dust, bitter
as the earthen grave.
But knowing You who
are light resplendent,
glowing, transcendent and
pure, I am washed with
the fragrance of life,
Your blood for my
jaded bones.

Was I to bleed forever still,
when blood to cleanse already spilt?
Father, teach me how
to forgive.

photo

αναπνοή

Walker of waves,
still my heart

Restless soul, I
found you by the sea
you were a
wild child with
bruised knees, and
He found us both, pale
as ghosts on the shore—
gently-breathing breathless lungs
And into His arms I ran
"Child, welcome home."

mend

I heard the mountains move
I watched them as I crumbled

Father...—You speak as my head,
gently cradled, disappears beneath
the bandage You spun
The grave did I fear but
from ashes I rose
and from a death I once embraced, You
took me warmly to Your arms, and
as intransient ghost, I slipped through the soil into
a world beyond bone, beyond flesh and
in passing death I breathed
life into my lungs and this
skin became home to something beating—
zealous, throbbing soul.

miasma II

Putrid stench; smoke chokes the
air like demons—vile things
Death's flowers like blackened souls
Blood dried around the lip and
bodies tender from the bruises
My God! Alas, the damage your
children ravage, swollen bodies
crushed beneath the cruelty of man!
My soul— still, hard— sinks the depths of
despondency. Sorrow's sirens sing
out to me, pull at my hair, weave
obscenities as sharp eyes scour me
And death, romantic is the notion of
lover strangling lover 'til
breath and sigh subside to nothing
This soulless thief, would me, devour?
Great beast, if left alone, my
thoughts would thee caress with
painful disease
My God! Have we destroyed each other?
Unceasing, pungent labor, my torment is
mine own inflicted cross I carry

miasma

What of beauty? By it my
heart was broken, but for a
moment I breathed much easier—a
light; scattered shards on
endless seas where my
love was stolen from me
I held my fingers in between
dust pages on failing spines—
a ship of bones, its ribs a
sordid home. it bled through
the wood—stank of twisted knuckles,
bitter herbs and acrid hope. and
I was a wretch poorly clothed
A dusk so black even
darkness cursed, but I
lost you in vinegar soil
foul-mouthed and stricken ill,
With you I have fallen and
fall still

Always.

I will look for you.
I will fight for you.
I will not let you go.

I will hear you.
I will see you.
I will not let you go.

s|he

Light fades, your eyes
dimmer grown
My soul unravels itself—
torn up pieces of paper,
burned, crumpled, covered with
words alight with movement—
furrowed, filling, black and
deep with maddening ink
They were the ugly things
you said, they were the
dark swords that
sought a maiden's death
And your mind glows
ember hot, genius whirring like
the clicks of mechanical birds
But from the death of man first
your soul had shut in rust and
now breathes but dust upon these strings
Was I to see again, were I to feel—
no one foretold the
blindness of my vision or the
bloodless branch-like veins that
quiver with hatred's songs
But there was a Light that shone ablaze
It held my gaze skyward, and
had my eyes birthed wings they
would have hovered ever closer
But Light descending pulsed with a
curious sort of grace, that from the inward
further out it kept on growing
And Light ablaze had dared to swell
beside the spills of my old notes——
ink-stained with old blood——
and growing, lifted the parchment from
the soil, swallowed them with fiery glow
And as these words began to burn my
heart felt the warmth of the sun

εγώ είμαι

Hatred. This is the
smoke filling your lungs and
this will destroy you.

Grace. This is the
translucent air of
ethereal light, but its
beauty will disarm you.

Gentle breath calls me to
its side. "Please, let it
stop and let Me be."

fly, gather, be

You see the birds and
think they are free, but
every wandering wing has
a home in the trees

And what are wings if no
hearts pledge their
love to me, no
home with which in
peace to sleep

I must find my rest
in Love, I must
make my home in
Love, I must heal
myself with Love.

Death

Lord, rinse clean my eyes, I
need healing.
Christ, feel the wound on my side, I
fear I am still bleeding

Why do my hands still tremble, wake the
sleep of old wounds? Why
in the mystery of dark hearts do I
resurrect death, with its
fingers laced in black deceit?

O, were I to be freed from the
shackles of the dragon's teeth and
his graveyard of a million crooked
fiends extending their gnarled
arms toward me——would I find
peace then or be tormented with a
freedom much too free?

Soul, it is not enough to be free.

photo

stir.

What to do with calloused heart? When I
glance down at my chest to the pit that
has been carved, a center that drowns
hate and hurt in raging swirl
How am I to love while my fists clench the blood
spilt by the words of one with whom my heart had so closely
beat with, lungs with whom I so closely breathe with?
Do my eyes tell you stories? Do you see the wounds your
hands have created? We all say we are human,
finitely fragile and mortally weak, but
from what I have seen there is an
infinite power—we do not know the sorrow that
our hands can inflict

By God, I want to hurt you back! But
grace restrains my hands to be, and
instead of darkness blurring, He
washed my vision with the
fluids of His heart—compassion
and while my heart beats hurt, my
heart beats sorrow back for you

I read that Paul said love
compels him. Well I misread and I thought that
love was constraining, but
the Lord has shown me that this is
all under the frame of Christ-like living because I
am controlled by Love, each
action carefully checked and packaged and sent into
human air and earth and heart. And I
have heard it said that love is patient, love
is kind. Love, though it sees itself hurting, bleeding,
never stops to nurse its wound, never
kneels to its own vengeance, but
is only concerned with giving and never with
taking, always concerned with
healing and never with hating. Love seeks not
its own, its comfort, its convenience, but in the pile of
broken human bones it desires, it stirs that life might LIVE and
you might too. My friend, forgive me, my ribs cage a soul
shipwrecked to the shore of human despondency, but
I pray for you, I think about you, I grieve for you, that our
weary broken eyes may be given heaven’s vision, and
though imperfect we may be, its grace that
permits a friendship to be. Let it breathe, let it breathe. And friend,
We’ll be ok.

photo

hovering.

What is the way that a
wound begins to heal?
When all I saw was brokenness,
torn limbs and bloody sins, You
reached through the fractures and
like intangible air the bruise began to remedy
redemption ready, incisions to the gash rendered
restored sanity to a mind filled with
ghosts of past, present, future tenses
And fingers delicate as flowers float
down from the sky's haven and
wash my wounds with sweetness
Mercy's mist, come
wash me, when
death and sin were but
dust in my hands, Your
Word puts life on my bones and
envelops the empty cages with
living breath
breathing flesh

Why are You good to me?
Why are You good?
Because You are grace, and
grace knows no bounds

Inward

I look at you and
wonder if you have
ever hated me
too, like I
have hated you

I can't understand me, but--

you.

Why is it the
more we try to mend the
farther these ships in
canyons drift?

Why are we like shadows, joined
by the foot, connected but helplessly
without heart?

You cast the shadow and I
catch the dark side of
the sun, but why am I
the only one stepped on and
caught?

Please, don't be kind to me.
Don't be kind to me. It
breaks my heart and I
can't find my way
back to you.

dust

Your fingers brushed over the
imprints, feeling deep into
the bruise——his
words left wounds and
wounds left craters—
my heart a
rough moon, shaped and
bent into faces unknown
And in its dark rooms lie
pictures, undeveloped, where
life still breathes and
love still moves, but
it stirs ever so quietly, not
to wake the thoughts where the
saddest things bloom.

There are secrets that
live in the walls, tears that
color the windows and
dampen the floor.
O, morose sky! Are you
here to mourn too?
Your anguish rings through
the clouds and I sit,
small and cross-legged
beneath the grieving canopy

Yet this book I hold in
my hands holds me, as
Life lives within its pages and
ever-lives for me.
It tells Your story, it speaks,
for when You closed Your
eyes in death, I
was awakened the moment I
first believed; and
though the water bears much
blood from the beatings, Your
grace is a beautiful thing.

photo

deluge

You are the ugliest shadow that
I cast upon the wall
And this reflection barely mirrors the
tangled bones and
twisted tongue behind my figure
Death and his brother have
fashioned a noose
slipped through my door, but
it's my own hands that
wring my neck

Is it true when You said
we enslave ourselves? When
I, free, sold my
wrists for a chain and
my heart to an
unkind sea?
And standing again at
the water's edge, must
I glance anew to the
depths and swallow the
miseries of its blues?

Lord, forgive and heal.

photo

αλληλούια

My heart flutters and aches in
the quiet recess of the morning.
My chest, as skin peeled back, as
ribs exposed—a cage with
little evening doves hovering beneath
the sternum.
They are sad—O, sweet things! I
ponder at the thought of ever
having hurt them like you did.

Bruised wings brushing the
insides, the tips of my soul—
sore but still breathing. Maybe
this was my fault as much as it
was yours; maybe we're all just
tired little things, limp and exhausted and
sad through the whispering wounds.

And now this softly bandaged thing
beats faint within my chest
beats strong within Your hand

No words dare leave the dryness of
my tongue, but You hear the
spirit's thirsting as I churn through
the ashes—You spin my
death into gold.

selah III

I was alone before this
tore me; my
heart with its
song of mourning, but
You came and the
lungs of my soul were
filled with Your glory

spirit breathe

Watch the sky, My love
this is the poem I
write for you
Upon your lips I
will write My praise
Through the branches My
song sings
eternal of days
Within the sea My
promise speaks—
the depth of blue sang
the depth of sorrow I
had for you
But the highest heights
reveal my heart and
it beats for you
The purest white—
My Light—lucid and warm.
I cupped your haunted face in
My hands and
softly healed
My bruises bitter,
in grace make sweet
a soft glow, I
am kindness and
only I can make
you whole

Mercy. I am mercy
Light. I am Light
Be still, My love and
let Me speak

glory

I feel small
the ocean stretches
the light blankets the sea
the salt fills my lungs and
I know that You are here
with me

Hosanna

exhale

She looked placid as a lullaby, but
underneath those waves her
knees scrape the ocean's floor

Plunge my spirit into the depths
that I may awaken clean
Beauty from the deeps, my
soul was steeped with
Your breath, hovering
above the waves, rippling

Where the bandages fell
my scars were gleaming

hands

I saw you sleeping
by the old oak tree
whose persimmon leaves sifted
gently through the breeze
And I watched you
grow
blossom radiant hues
and when the darkness fell
your colors glowed
You were a nebula
dancing in the dark, deep blues
Gentle bud, I watched you
unfold
But my eyes grew wings
and my heart a thorn
Still I loved you, I
could have sworn
but my fingertips dug deep
and I painted purple and
blood on you
and in my blindness
I watched your wounds flow

Oh Father, how could I
never have known?
Rage is blindness and
I had plucked mine own eyes
until you healed them in grace
Touch too my hands; align them
fingertips to Yours
destruction is the devil's work and
my hands an open book
for You to write Your story or
for him to tear and pull

When Father lifted
my eyes to see
words were not the
only casualty
My thoughts grew arms,
gnarled fingers reaching
and around her face they grew
mangled, screeching
Dark blues painted on
fragile eyelids
my hatred grew claws and
cut deeply

Father, raise me up and
Straighten out my spine


photo

Hallelujah breaks my heart

They say you only hurt the
ones you really love, then
I am guilty and condemned.
The words I've hurled, the
thoughts unsaid;
my heart was an ocean and in
its depths you I drowned.
And what hurts most is
sitting next to you with
your blood on my hands.
And you are innocent,
unaware that my fingers have
put a dagger in your back.
I know there are things we
say we'll never do, but
I think of Peter's tears and
I cry too


photo

selah II

They stripped the mountains of glory and
the waves fell crashing
But I am holding onto the
hand of He who is eternal
and while the wind thrashed furiously
He was with me all along

selah

What heights of love,
what depths of grace,
the beauty of Your mercy
carved into this place
Paint Your light upon my face

sight

Awake with eyes closed
I cannot sleep; there is silence muffled in
my soul
There is light breaking through
resplendent, floating
descending.
My eyes caught the corner of
your robe
and from the moment I grasped it
I was whole
You were shattered
I was cleansed
and I am glued back together by
the pieces of You
I see your hands and
I am pure.