Fairie Clouds

Relationships are difficult, I know this both from personal experience and from watching others. I know many divorcees, and a few people currently in the midst of that difficult position...decision...all of the above. The following poem is both about the hope for a new relationship to begin and for a broken relationship to heal. It attempts to bridge the divide between those who have always been single and those who are newly single. We are such wholly selfish creatures and it is so easy for us to forget that everyone else is not concerned about us first. We tend to ignore that which we have in favor of that which we desire and we so often forget that when it is a person who we ignore...we may not have them for long. Selfishness in all the myriad of forms it takes can easily destroy us, it takes from us those things we most value because it lies and tells us that they will always be available. Selfishness destroys lives because it leads us to believe that those self-same lives are the most important concern...it allows us to put our wants above other's needs and so we show them such little care. We destroy ourselves.

Two hearts beat as one
Blessed union then betrayed
By selfish similitude
Hearts separate and then, in time, return
Such is the course of life

Run aground on shores of wanting's wiles
Ever far removed from trust's wise pace
One heart beats a mournful tune, longing for his mate
While 'thother sings a wistful song,
'Membring her's as well

And here they sit, so far separate and yet the same
Hoping soon to meet their true desire
Though've never thought what such might be
So they wait and dream and pine,
Missing truth set before them

That such as they might hope to see
Is not truth, yet instead
Distant glamour made of shining dream
Such faerie dust as shrouds their eyes
Clouds all that truest love may hope to bring

May e'er such lovers meet?
Might their glistening eyes be opened yet?
Such will might be as fearfully strong
As world's oh so inviolable turn
But 'tis not true that weaker men have found?

Should glamoured heart then be freed
And clouded eyes be opened yet
Then those self-same eyes be free to see
Such love awaits as puts the dream to shame
And twin hearts be made beholden set

My Judgment

So...I'm honestly not really sure what to say about this poem...it just came to me one day...not really sure where from so I think I'll let it speak for itself.

Death sits astride a pale horse
And fires light his eyes
His baleful gaze sums us up
And clips the ties that bind
Then as we are wandering souls
As pale now as our white king
And following in one accord
His duties do we bring

This mortal verse, my heart protest
His sum should ne'er the full to know
For of his burning eyes and mind
The world has far too much to show

And know we then his fullest name
Should we choose to cry or sing?
We turn away and would not see
Such blessings he bestows
That we would ne'er accept
For fear of loss and life's release
That struggles end and fate decide
Whether I should know heaven's peace

Trees of Life and Love

I have no love life, this isn't a surprise to those of you who actually know me. I write about love, I desire it, I wait for the day when I'll meet my wife and woo her...however, when it comes to the female gender, I am prone to excessive shyness and a wholly undesirable lack of confidence. Sadly in most every other area of my life I am far more confident than I probably have any right to be. Nonetheless, I have no love life, so I write poems about what I would like to have, what I dream of, what I hope for...blah, blah, blah. This poem is actually inspired by one of my favorite Greek myths, it is a story of compassion and commitment, two of my favorite words.

Planted as a seed of hope
Love may grow a mighty tree
A shade under which we might sit
And blend our hearts together

This tree might reach thick roots
Deep into the earth, drawing up
The life-giving water of gentle union
Received through words of grace

Let those words fill my mind
Flow from my heart to my love
Filling our lives with worship
That our well might ne'er run dry

May love 'twine together
Two lives grow as one
These trees of living consciousness
Entwined in lover's embrace

Dawn

Here's another Haiku.

Rising with new day
Glories inescapable
Bring new life to me

Scripture

I love the word of God. It has unimaginable power, the recent movie 'The Book of Eli' did a good job of representing the scripture as being set apart. Gary Oldman's character Carnegie repeats several times the importance of 'having the right words' and that 'they will listen if the words are from the book'. The word of God has the ability to touch the heart, the mind, and the soul unlike anything else I have found. I have read the holy texts of a number of religions including The Book of Mormon, A few of the Hindu texts, The Holy books of Shinto, The scriptures of Tenrikyo, and Lao-Tsu's Dao De Ching among others. I have studied Greco-Roman, Norse, Japanese, and Hindu mythology as well as some Egyptian and Mesopotamian mythology. All of these contain interesting stories, sometimes they are emotionally touching, sometimes they contain wisdom or some seed of truth. However none of them can change the entire person the way Scripture can, none of them contain the power, the authority, or the understanding of humanity that is found in scripture. I love the word of God.

The word of truth
Sits on my lips
And never may recant

For this wondrous book
Of life and joy
My flawed heart doth pant

Its veracity unquestioned
Its flawless words
My life renew

Transporting me
To sweet release
With hope my soul imbue

This simple book
Held now in single palm
Has power yet unknown

To change mens' lives
And teach the wise
To, their understanding, hone

And falling then
From simple men
Precious words, like stars, alight

To draw the foolish
In time's tight grip
Into heaven's height

Freed from sin
And darkness now
By scripture's blessed word

Which from the lips
Of your kind
Messengers they've heard

And now we live
And choose to give
All we are to you

For from your word
The truth we've heard
And given it it's due

The Pride of Life

Everyone deals with pride, either because of their successes, because of their failures, or both. We all tend to view the world with ourselves at its center, it is the great delusion of humanity to believe that we are important. That, in and of ourselves, we matter. I have been considering lately the possibility that all value is extrinsic by nature, I may have mentioned this before. Regardless, we have no value in and of ourselves, what value we do have we hold simply because it is the will of God. Men and woman are given value because God finds value in us...as opposed to God finding value in us because we are intrinsicly valuable. I know, it seems a fine distinction, and yet of such importance. If we understand that we are valuable not because of us, but because of God then suddenly the kosmos is so much bigger, and our place in it so much smaller. The following poem was actually written to my pride, in a moment of anger and frustration at myself, please read it as such.

A nightmare settles behind my eyes
Its vicious requirements drain my life
Drawing upon my thought and breath
'Til there is none remaining within me
My dastardly heart has wrought betrayal
Its wanton desires lend power to the dream
A reality not present but for
This wrenching, pleading, obsequious need
That pulls upon the hems of my sanity
Cleverly disguised as righteous desire
It worms its way into my every action
Passing itself as love, as charity
As my own unabridged holiness
This delusion clouds my perceptions
Corrupts my actions and seeks only
The elevation of self, but at what expense?
And yet I see it not, for its subtlety
Now I name this beast which lives within my breast
This tired affront, I name thee pride.

What Was and What is to Come

We tend to forget the nature of our salvation. We are overwhelmed by the desperate need to earn that which we have been given. We are convinced of our own wickedness, which is completely true for we are desperately wicked creatures. However, our wickedness was taken into account in our salvation. Yet we never fail to find discontent in that which God has given. Unwilling to move out of our guilt and shame, which was set upon the shoulders of Christ, we feel ourselves unworthy. Having to prove our salvation once and again, in such ways that never allow for the true growth of higher minds into the children of God which we should now be.

In guilt we sit, mired in the darkness of the past
Yet forgetful of that great gift showered upon us
Mindful of our continuing sorrow for wrongs
Long ago committed in days of our lesser beings
We shy away from that greatness presently offered
As sons and daughters of God, certain we are undeserving
Of such monumental praise we stand forth
To denounce ourselves for the crimes of our former lives
Unheeding the notion that such grace as was given us
Requires no works of mercy, no stoic resolve of righteousness
For 'twas the gift that set our Lord upon the tree
Freely given and never earned, what once we were
No longer stands, as such, of any great, nor lesser, consequence
Excepting for the purposes of our own self-flagellation
Let us now step forward, mindful not of what came before
But instead of that which is yet to come, that our lives
Might be a sweetly fragrant perfume in the nostrils of God

The Old Man

We were all born to sin, we have carried it with us since the first day of our lives and will do so until the last. Christians are no different in this, we do not have some strange freedom from our sinful desires that magically allows us to overcome temptation whenever confronted. We do however have a choice, something that we never had before our salvation. As the sons and daughters of God we now have the right to turn away from sin and say 'no'. However this right is not easy to exercise, especially when all we once were cries out to again be ensnared by the coils of that which we long to escape. We may choose to refrain from sin, but this does not mean that we will choose to refrain from sin. Such is the source of our daily battle, the new nature against the old that we might daily die to self and allow Christ to live within us.

There is a wicked man
Who lives inside my mind
He seeks that which should not be
Those unholy acts of shame and guilt
Which drive down righteous lives

Beneath a starry sky of sin
This destroyer sleeps inside
Awaiting the day he may awaken
And devour my heart, my mind, my soul
Drawing them down into the maw of oblivion

That in this I might be lost
And he may finally be freed
To walk wickedly within my skin
Working in the world his dark will
That he should be magnified

Save me from myself
Strengthen my weary mind
Lift up my weakened heart
Cleanse my guilty soul
That I might be free

God

He has many names, Yahweh, Jehovah, Elohim, El-Shaddai, Adonai, Jehovah Rafa, Emmanuel, Christ. He has revealed himself to many men, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, Joshua, Joseph, Samuel, David, Isaiah. He has worked his will in the world throughout history and, indeed, is the ultimate author of history. The almighty God is ultimate to all that was, all that is, and all that will be. Scripture tells us that 'by him and for him all things were made.' This is another poem which attempts to honor who he is with meager words, all that we have to offer can never grasp the nature of an infinite God.

Behold he who spread the tapestry of the sky
Who, with mere words, gave the world its girth
Who writ his will upon the tablet of the earth
And sits now enthroned in the heavens on high

He judges the affairs of men, for he is the mighty God
A glorious magistrate, the maker of all history
His full nature hidden in infinite mystery
Yet, as a simple man, this humble world he trod

Behold Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, Lord of all that is
He stands in glory, unified in oh so holy trinity
Greatest of all gods, single in his true divinity
The heavens, the earth, and all that dwell within are his

So stand we now in praise, and with our hearts we worship do
This great and mighty God, who glories in his holy name
And so with humble words we shall increase his sacred fame
Praising name of holy grace and with such wisdom we our words imbue

Darkly Natured

I have put up a couple of poems expressing various aspects of the wickedness of man's nature. This is another in that series, this poem highlights our tendency towards greed and the pride that drives it. We tend to hold on to the idea that we consistently deserve more than we have. Whatever it is that we do have we can never consider it to be enough, instead we always push on, looking for more, trying to take what we don't have, whether by legitimate means or otherwise.

Blood sticks upon my hands
As mighty Mammon strides across my mind
His great blade sweeping away before him
All those upon whom fall his burning eyes

Black fires rage across my thoughts
Oily smoke rising from long burnt flesh
And through this smoke I lead you, my child
Across the fields of my forsaken ideals

My only child, my beloved, I shall consume your mind
And sacrifice your purity upon the altar of greed
For I am Avarice and Pride
The beating heart of man

Death from Life and Life from Death

First of all if there are typos in this then please forgive, I sliced open a finger on a broken glass today and it has affected me ability to type as speedily and correctly as normal.
My salvation was...unusual to say the least. I make no secret of the fact that before I was saved I was 'a bad person', God did not get a hold of my heart through a message, or a book, or even a friend, though all of these had their influence...in fact God did not really get a hold of my heart at all. At least, not at the point of my salvation, that came significantly later.
When I was saved it was a matter of surrender. I did not love God, but I could not fight him any longer. I gave up and gave my life to him, I suppose this is why the comparison of Christians as the slaves and belongings of God is so important to me personally.
This poem reflects some of that attitude of unwilling surrender to a divine and loving savior.

Exhaustion fills me, draws upon my mind
Leading to wicked desires of every sordid kind
And all my good and godly will do such desires bind
Leaving within me no joy for any man to find

My eyes have closed, my heart has stopped
And now my flesh begins to rot
Living death or dying life, neither have I sought
But one has found, the other claimed, with blood my soul's been bought

So this life I lead is not my own
Nor breath, nor blood, nor solid bone
Within me seed of righteousness was sown
And now, through time and trial, has it grown

Now such wickedness my mind does flee
Night flows away and now the light I see
Hope renewed and joy as well in such divine decree
Chains of shame strike the ground and I find that I am free