Descent

How can you rightly be remembered,
Burn and blaze in my waning soul,
I with the sense of a new born foal,
Neglect the love that gathered,
This one to its breast.

You have entered my darkest places,
And I held the spike and the spear,
Cold. As dark filled the sky with fear,
Hades halls were stormed by graces,
Only dying could attest.

As there I stood with dripping spear,
With all the children of Adam's race,
What is this — our sin did God erase?
There his blood has stained this sphere.
Without rancor or protest.

And I can taste your flesh and blood,
At your table, the bread and the wine,
Brings you — as death could not confine,
A seed that dies, will arise and bud,
Hope for all the dispossessed.

How can you rightly be remembered,
Burn and blaze this birthing soul,
This body and blood — an ardent coal,
That ambers the grace I once hungered,
In death — love did you bequest,

To save a broken man,
And his kin,
And his race,
In your descent.

Recoil

Our blue-green home pulses life,
Blooms of plankton sea-titans feed,
And pollens and bees each compound,
The living dreams of beast and seed,
Exuding artistry — lavish in excess.
Yet, trembling — aware of fragile need,
Every cell draws a breath.

With gifts of rain and sod and air,
And eyes that crinkle in the sun,
With kin, we laugh, and tell stories,
Yet still cringe at what we become,
Like a bird that flutters from a hand
Offering seed — it's hunger will shun.
Every soul knows its fear.

And while we could but live for love,
Our kind craves the poverty of power,
Pulsing the blood of seraphs and satans,
Our love is lust, as we long to tower
Uber-strong over quiet kindred souls;
Though graced, firmly return a glower.
Everyone by tooth and claw.

And I too, like a dog with lowered tail,
Will test and doubt the stranger's hand.
Though every crystal revealed as light
From water, my blue-grey orbs will brand,
Betrays such love that fires each life,
Each dream, each place, each grain of sand.
Everything yet in strange recoil.

Penitent,
Confession.

Dark Glass

In that moment, where joy stops time,
Even then the shadows will sprawl,
The sacred birthplace of creation,
Is witness to the desert's crawl,
And every song or whispered love,
Belied in death's melancholic drawl,
Opaque.

In that moment, where grief stops breath,
Even then, holy fear attests the sacral
Within the sepulcher, where frames wither,
Bone eye holes peer beyond the natural,
And in every dirge or dance macabre,
Aurora's Seraph burns shades adumbral,
Stained.

In that moment, most knowing the alone,
Even then, hellion leviathan is denied,
A strange fellowship known in despondency,
Friendship of lepers and of the crucified,
In every tear, in every heaving breath,
Love and lament present each alongside,
Translucent.

Rise

Awaken, in the dawning, in the skies,
Night embers, like breakers on the shore,
Sets the vault ablaze in sparks of light,
In fiery hues, in hope, in love, arise.

Even as eyes of beast and eyes of kin,
Rest, oblivious to the grandeur vision,
While with the breeze and upon the dew,
Light mists shapes in auroral baptism.

Breeze finds song in the ebbing eventide,
As forms find life and limbs find sod,
And the light is caught by sight and soul,
Awash in warmth the night had once denied.

Whatever is Good

My eyes rest in the midday light,
The world's many places — not at rest,
Like anthills hell-bent on expansion,
Yet each part paces far from sight,
Exhale.

Each conflict, each pain, each death,
Like a weight upon my fragile breast,
But blandly blending through my cortex,
Are carried silently upon my breath,
Travail.

Perchance the years slack the senses,
Or mere neglecting one's genuflecting,
Perchance the fire would have expired,
In truth I must quiet these pretenses,
Telltale.

A common sound pierces this meditation,
And mind and soul slack their chains,
This man recalls that he is a creature,
Pitiful and beautiful unto salvation,
Avail.

Fog

Somewhere are vales, somewhere are peaks,
Somewhere someone walks a-wondering,
And eyes probe blind and lamely seek.
Someone clouded in reverie and wandering;
Averts a gaze.

Plodding pointless — fingers comb the air,
Neither the sight nor the spirit guide,
Nor dreams, nor visions in the stare,
Without the flame of desire to abide;
No heart ablaze.

And the light that lights the darkness,
But dissipates through the nebular air,
While someone hard in habitual aggress,
Whittles lifeless as life does pare;
With eyes aglaze.

Now Puddleglum, the wise marsh wiggle,
So dour, yet a wiser friend than most,
Remembers the sun and flatly inveigles,
This someone receding like a airy ghost;
Whispering praise.

Fragments

How is it that moments bleed to days,
The days drift to months, to years,
Yet sacred times are forever fixed,
The times that mistral joys or fears.

Perceive a glance, an ache, a shiver,
Just like thousands of such kin before,
Grasp at neurons, or eyes, or even soul,
Then lost, they slip through a back door.

And life, like a river that gets away,
Yaws in an ever present evasion,
Except for those refreshing draughts,
When face in cold laps in libation.

A child aware that God is love,
A kiss in a quiet hall,
A hand enfolds a clammy palm,
First cry eyed through dewy orbs,
A second glowers at the touch of air,

And love in God feels very lost,
And lips that kiss may also curse,
And fingers also form to fists,
And cherubs wounded,
And cherubs wounded.

Time, like tears may be remembered,
As sacraments through the mundane,
Speaks and heals, as beauty, as truth,
Reveals the longing in all our pain.

And sacred time is forever fixed,
The time that mistrals joys and fears.