Perhaps I Was Redeemed Too Young

 

Perhaps I was redeemed, at too young an age,

In movies it comes at the end of the story,

Your character arc arches toward the final stage,

It would undo all the narrative,

Perhaps rob it of some of the glory,

If our hero was left to grow old,

Letting the bitterness and cynicism unfold,

If the reformed romantic lead,

Grows disinterested, bored,

And finally leaves,

And I was redeemed too young,

Perhaps if the rapture, or Jesus had come,

Taken me from this life of temptation,

To dwell instead in this new heaven,

The arc would feel complete,

The boy swept off of his feet,

Rescued from a life of sin,

Though he barely understood where sin can begin,

In the smallest of smallish things,

That big sin was never what would conquer him,

But the desert of time was what would expose,

His heart to the elements,

The longer it goes,

The more the flaws are on show,

The desert deserts this desert rose,

For faith can flower a while,

But it's only faithfulness,

That can retain the smile,

I suppose this is where the lack,

Shows that I'm grown from the seed that fell in the cracks,

No roots you see, 

And the sun rose, and it scorched me,

It scorched me real good,

With no deep root in love,

I think I misunderstood,

Not rooted nor grounded in love,

Or at least not rooted deep enough,

And my youthful valour is all gone,

The hope I strung out, burned up by the sun,

And for a drop of moisture I've hung on,

But it's now that redemption should finally come,

And finish me off for good,

Instead of stretching me out between what I should and I would,

Well I suppose,

I suppose,

I suppose,

The older I get,

The more the grace grows,

And the glory is all yours for keeps,

If you can find any,

While the sower sows,

And the reaper reaps,

Scream Directions (for a Screenplay)

In all of my youthful dreams,

It never fell apart at the seems,

I would be golden, I had the means,

But now my nightmare arrived in waking screams,

The wasteful composure,  concluding these scenes,

Skinny longings in skinny jeans,

But all of that crap's 

Gone in a clap,

Cut to fat,

(Fade to black)

When I was a lad; a little boy,

I thought the future might hold joy,

Daily/nightly I would employ,

The device of dreams as they were my toy,

Look into the lens now , Don't be so coy,

Pucker up, son, praise, acclaim and fame ahoy,

Smiles make up for the lack,

Of blue-sky's gone, not coming back,

Cut to me cutting hope some slack,

Now cut the crap,

(And fade to black)

A lifetime spent in vain pretense,

That the future held more than the present tense,

That potential held the best defense,

Unassailable, unquestionable in a sense,

The weight of the unknown, could be immense,

The potential heft of what could be hence,

Weighed: found wanting, a has-been hack,

The weight of expectations broke his back,

Pinned with excuses, under attack,

Cut to cancer, or heart attack,

Finally run out of slack,

Shrug to camera,

(Fade to black)

The dream is gone, and the dream is dead,

The dream was a beast that should have never been fed,

On a leash, but it was I that was being led,

And all hope scattered before it and fled,

And I became what I came to dread,

I should have loved God and others instead,

Instead of the pride that filled my head,

Cut to me, gone way off track,

Boxed in whilst the mourners dress in black,

Cut to the smile that will never crack,

Fixed in death, etched in flesh like wax,

(Close the lid)

Fade to black.

(The disparity betwixt the dream the reality. The fake fur trimmed coat of what could be to cover me from the cold of the hard reality of what was and what would be. I pulled up the hood and hid my face in the tunnel vision of that snorkel. Life is gone in a moment. Like flowers we fade and fall. Use your bloom wisely. Love God, love others. Find fulfillment in these.)

A Spit Amidst The Imagining Of A Deluge

 

From a bridge over former glory

I spat into the bed of a dried up stream

Imagining the torrent 

As if in some dream

But my spit is absorbed

With no difference, it seems

But the parched bed awaits

A deluge to redeem,

And the channels of my prayerless heart

Are also dry, directionless and mean,

Come then and return to purpose

Come then and redeem

Rain then and redeem, I say.

Redeem me, 

Redeem.

Redeem away...

(This one is kind of like, ok then God, surprise me. You're a redeemer, do your stuff then. Redeem away....)

Focus

I have a tiny little hole in my eye,

Some embolistic rupture from the pressure

That pushes my blood through my veins,

Which carry it round my body,

When I look at white paper, or a blue sky,

I catch glimpses of what is always there,

But of which I am usually unaware,

A tiny dot,

A blurred little burr,

To the lower left of my right eye's vision,

Putting it overall, just right of centre,

It is always there,

Weather or not I am aware,

And on those occasions,

When I notice,

I try to look at it more closely,

But it evades the capture of sight.

Every time I look directly at it,

It moves,

Being part of my eye,

It moves when my eye moves,

And so the tennis game goes on,

40 love to the embolism,

Game, set and match,

I'll never catch it,

Unless the whole eye goes dark.

It lives in the peripheral.

I have a tiny hole in my soul,

A spot, 

A speck I cannot see,

And whenever I look at it,

The bugger moves,

And I can never focus on it,

For it cannot be looked at directly,

But lives within the periphery.

It is all I can do to acknowledge,

It is there,

And from time to time,

When the environment is bright enough,

It floats around on the edges,

Just to remind me.

Specks.

Eyes.

Planks.

Thorns,

Prayers.

Grace.

Sufficiency.

To My Lord

To my Lord,

I give the meaning of that word,

I bequeath him all the lies he heard,

From my lips,

Knowing the truth of it,

Before I conceived a word,

And yet he heard with a smile,

And loved me still,

Knowing beginning from end,

That indiscretions like good intentions,

And promised mentions,

Were laid thick with ripped up paving stones,

 I stole from my path to hell,

Sure, I intended well,

You went there first,

So you knew,

What good I would,

Or would not do,

You paid my debt,

Knowing how often I would throw it in your face,

Christ is that not the very definition of grace?

And I have the tenacity to call you Lord,

When I have scarcely learnt the meaning of that word,

I bequeath my heartfelt lies,

And all I've come to despise,

And lay it at your feet,

Oh for perfume,

That I were a prostitute with a pot,

To pour on you,

Rather than just these tears

In my unworthiness,

It would be better 

And more truthful by far,

Than the word Lord,

Simply thrown off from the cuff,

Oh Lord Jesus,

When will enough be enough?

(Not all who say to me 'Lord, Lord' will enter. The double use of the title almost infers we are over familiar and complacent, like 'daddy, daddy'. In one sense we should be confident in his affection, but also we should never be complacent. The title 'Lord' has a meaning.)

Disappearance

The disappearance of the day begins at dawn,

Born dying, the sunlight ascends to height,

Night, sees its descending,

The ending of flight,

The light of the sun,

Spawned ending, even as it has begun,

Clung-to moments are already on the run,

Spun leaving the second they come,

We are all of us leaving,

Cleaving, we are, everything, leaving.

Believing seconds are for sentience,

Sentiment settles on our decadence,

To lavish ourselves upon the hours,

Like a leaper lavishes themselves upon the rocks below,

Go, take every second by storm,

Born dying, but living and reborn,

Scorn shame and waste the same,

I came to spend them both alike,

Like the disappearance of the light.

When I Was A Child

When I was a child

I reasoned that although I was a child

The fact that I was a child

Bore no bearing

On who I was

And I had no concept of becoming

I did not feel like an incomplete soul

I was not waiting to be made whole

I was not enriched by what I stole

Nor depleted by what was stolen

I was not held

Or beheld

I was not emboldened 

Nor beholden

I was me

And I longed, more than anything, to be free

My fantasies were winged things

Wolf-raised loners or kings of the invisible,

My longing was for the infinite

Stretched out for ever before me

Never diluted nor divisible

Risible though they found me

Climbing trees

Scraping knees

Caught in rainstorms

Playing windmills in the breeze

They tried to encage me

But they could not

I would not cease nor freeze

Simon did not say

And I never wanted to adapt

That was pure essence

That which you thought play

I was the skinny, day-dreamy cry-baby kid

I was too sensitive

The teacher told me 

I looked at hawks

In books

Paddled with the other boys in brooks

Put people off by my open hearted sincerity

I clung as tightly to friends as I did to dreams and desires

And thus suffocated the air out of friendships

Quenched fires

And retreated 

Beyond the walls

Within the earth

To the inner life,

Perhaps that is why I write poems

Because beneath the crust, and tectonic, melancholic plates

The magma is still moving

Still flowing