A Lament for Babylon   (free verse)

I'm only asking for the privilege to unplug
from this beehive you call society
and have an original thought,
to hear the voice of God again ring loud and clear
in this godless world you have created.  
Well, that's not completely true, you have a god, 
Mammon, and you worship her well, 
enveloped by her scarlet robes of splendor.
You almost destroyed me, bringing my soul
down to hell and my life into ruins.
Babylon, you are so beautiful, you come to me,
outwardly as a friend, but inwardly, you seek my destruction.
The smell of your costly perfumes and unveiled feminine
charms are tinged with the bitter scent of death.
You haunt me with your beautiful eyes,
your riches and power a flame no man can resist,
but you are a harlot, fair Babylon,
a city destined for doom and betrayal.

How can we be friends any longer? 
You are darkness and I seek to follow the light.
You must be seen for what you truly are,
and not what you beguile us to think you are.
You entice me with your charms, you intoxicate
my weak will with all your sensual pleasures.
How can light and darkness be friends?  What comradery
is there between you and the most holy God?
I must see you for what you truly are,
not how you desire to appear to me.
I must turn my back to you!  We are cut off, one from another. 
Jesus has driven a sword between us.
Why have I welcomed you as my friend when you have
brought me nothing but pain and misery, 
sorrow and destruction?  In your impending doom
you have been plotting my downfall all along.

These hands that once caressed you, once held you,
are clenched in fists of rage!
This heart that once languished and longed for your
affections now despises and loathes what you are.
I have seen that some things live only as other things die - 
it is the way of our fallen world.
If I will live then you must die, and I must be the one
to do the deed, to put to death what I have cherished.
The hammer, the nails, the cross have been provided - 
but it is solely my task alone.
It falls to me alone, my portion, the disagreeable act
of hammering each nail into my flesh.
If I will live then I must die, if I will be resurrected
then there must first be a crucifixion.
How long it has taken!  So many years have passed
that my eyes would open long enough
to catch a glimpse of you as you truly are -
you harlot, you whore of all the nations!

Living inside my soul, a raging fire, a writhing parasite,
like a worm coursing through my veins,
sucking the life from my soul.  
Babylon, would I once that you were pure, once again a virgin.
Many nights of forbidden love we spent together
as you spread your robes for me beneath the stars.
But now, you must die.  These flames that sear my soul, 
my conscience, to be quenched by your passing.
The bonds of lustful greed, by your death, are broken.  
Your fires will rage no longer, and yet the tongues
of a new flame will kiss the sky, blocking out the night.

       Love You Like That (free verse)

I could let go, my flesh wants to let go,
but the Spirit tells me to hold on.
It's so hard, loving you like Jesus asked me to,
a hard love, to the death, to lay down my life . . .
I'd have to crucify my pride and put my selfish
desires aside - to do a thing like that.

If I would let myself love you like that,
 I'm afraid I would be lost, 
used and thrown away, so misunderstood.
It would be so much easier if
we could go separate ways,
I'd have my life, you'd have yours - 
but that's not the love that Jesus intended
should be between us - He asks so much more.

A new commandment, that we love
one another as He loved us,
a hard love to the death,
laying down our lives for one another;
and when we disobey this order,
the holy will of God, 
we walk in darkness, 
blinded by the darkness.
You see, knowledge makes you proud,
sometimes arrogant, 
but love just lifts you up,
higher and higher.
Love edifies the body.
Knowledge will talk and talk forever,
but love simply does.

                         
                 Coleen

You never talked a lot -
you were so quiet, friend, but that smile
could make me cry and laugh
and feel like living was worth while.
By yourself, so alone
in your own little world, you'd walk,
how I wondered what your story was
and why you'd never talk.

You'd sit alone in the same little chair
staring at what seemed to others, thin air
but you saw a world that they could not see,
a world of wonder and magic, wild and free.

Was I there to teach you to talk and read?
To empower you to ask for the things you need?
Was I there to teach you to fight, not to run?
Was I there for your pleasure, there for your fun?

I can't help but wonder who the real teacher was,
that I was your student and sent there because
the things that you taught me were greater, I knew,
than any of the things I ever taught you:

To trust and to laugh and to love and to smile,
to forgive and forget and live life with style.
To see the splendor in a ray of sunshine,
to notice the song of the finch in the pine.

That love, the greatest thing one can know,
knows when to hold on and when to let go,
that humility and faithfulness,
the meek and the mild
are things God wants of grown-ups
and not just a child.

They say that you'll never stand on your own,
they say you can never make it alone,
they say you're a burden on society
and that you're a liability

but I say you're an angel
placed here from above,
to show us the meaning
of kindness and love.
Do they not see the light
that shines from your face?
Are they blind to the joy
that you bring to this place?

I pray for them, that God will open
their ears and their eyes
to see the clouds in the sky
and hear the crow's cries
and notice the sparkle of moonlight
and dance and run, 
but if they don't, Coleen,
you just keep shining
like the morning sun.

If they do not notice, if they can not see,
it makes your songs no less a symphony,
if they can not hear and they can not feel,
it does not mean that your world is not real.

If they are so blinded
by their lusts and their greed
they never notice
the precious, tiny seed
in your heart, it does not mean
that it was never there
because theirs were choked out
with troubles and care

Your soul will blossom, you yet shall bloom
while they rot in their self-made,
grown-up's tomb.
Beautiful child, little angel I see,
I'm so grateful for all
that you have taught me.

                            My Day in the Sun

How do I choose, how do I know?
Is there a meaning to madness
or some way I could go?
A time to take a stand, 
a time to step back
and a time to recover
the thoughts that I lack.
They come and they go
and they worry about their clothes
and what color they'll paint
their white picket fence,
and what kind of coffee
they'll buy from the store 
and a thousand things
that don't make any sense... 
but I'd just be happy
to find something to eat, 
maybe a nice dry box to sleep in.
 
I lived in a little old shack in the woods, 
I'd come out and visit from time to time 
but I never outstayed my welcome. 
Just a day or two and I'll disappear - 
with a "Thank you mam"
and a "See ya next year"... 
I had no choice, I was given no voice,
yet I loved when all was said and done, 
I had my day in the sun!

                         Her World is Silent

Her world is silent.
She looks.  She waits.
She listens with her skin
to each tap on the tables
and wonders at their words
like fantasies and fables.
She gazes around the room
at all the open mouths talking,
smiling and frowning
and chatting and squawking.
The look in her eyes,
that expression on her face
as she tries to interpret
what goes on in this place
fills my heart with admiration
and yet a little sadness
that her world is so separate
from their laughter and gladness.
Yet she possesses a world all her own - 
she's a symphony of flesh and bone
and she sings such a beautiful
song with her eyes
it makes their audible notes
seem but lies.
Her world is silent,
she hears not a sound
as her feet trod the turf
of the grass-covered ground,
but in her black silence,
her blissful repose
she captures the fragrance
of a scented rose.
She feels their vibrations
with her trembling hand
and tastes the bittersweet
odor of sand.
Her world is silent,
they feel so sorry for her
as they bustle and rustle
and strive and stir
but it is she, 
who hears not a single sound
who walks with her feet
never touching the ground,
she enters an ocean,
calm and pure,
beyond any that ever,
hearing, endure.


                   You'd Never Guess

You'd never guess by what they say
that maybe he knows more than they
or that the thoughts inside his head 
make him more than all those things they said.
Without the gift of speech, 
still somewhere just beyond their reach
if they could just unlock his mind
what treasures would they find?
They stamp their labels on his soul
and say he'll never quite be whole,
"He's retarded, deaf, autistic,
traumatized and goes ballistic..."
so he's somehow incomplete,
a waste of a perfectly good seat.
But his eyes, they have a spark
that tells more than all the charts they mark,
that he is precious and alive
and nothing that they could contrive
will steal from him this gift
that gives my soul such wondrous lift.
His child-like faith, his child-like heart
his innocence at the start,
his laughter and his tears
and his seizures and his fears
do not make him less a life,
nor his troubles nor his strife
make deficits of human kind
or demean the value of his mind.
For each life upon its birth
has within itself, its worth,
nothing is to be discarded,
life must be treasured, kept and guarded.
They throw away their brother 
since he lacks an arm or leg,
since he can not walk or talk, 
since he can not plead or beg, 
yet fail to realize, though he may not hear, 
though he may not see,
that he feels, and they themselves 
are just as frail a form as he.

                          The Rehearsal

Rehearsal begins... 
People are rushing, bustling about,
they scurry and laugh and yell and shout,
she sings her song yet they pay her no mind,
they laugh and chatter among their own kind,
yet undaunted the melody pours from her lips
as soft and as frail as a trembling kiss.
They ignore her...
I close my eyes to shut out the cackle
of their chatter and babble and meaningless talk,
as her silver notes, my ears, unshackle
and breathe on my dreaming soul as I walk.
I see them, falling, twirling, they dance in my head,
flakes of snow, cold and pointed, perfectly dead
and falling, falling into this night,
gilded with moon beams, fashioned from light
and pause for a moment, if to observe
the darkness from which they drift to serve.
Dancing, dancing in this place,
a world that you and I now share;
falling down upon your face,
eyes closed they fill the cold, night air.
Till the dawn comes through your veil,
your lips, my ears, I listen, you sing,
this wedding of souls has here, set sail 
our hearts to lay bare everything.
The nakedness in our souls,
your melody, my heart, are entwined,
and with clothing we are covered,
woven of your notes, divine.
I see your soul, your eyes of youth,
your hopes and dreams and expectations
fill my mind with memories of
my own such imaginations.
I feel the warmth, a trembling embrace,
a passionate heart, and tears on your face
as you take my soul with your music, by force
and leave me breathless, speechless and hoarse.  
My thoughts, adrift, are captured
by tender notes, this melody you compose,
and the music opens doors to us
that to those who will not hear are closed.


                            Princess

You created this society - 
appalled that I can not fit in,
you gawk and laugh and ridicule 
my awkward, backward spin.
Yet there is something that I have 
that you can not perceive,
the power of God works mightily 
through His children who believe.
It's not based on being strong,
in weakness it can flourish;
it's not based on being wise,
through faith it still can nourish
the confines of a foolish heart
to confound the wise who understand
even the foolishness of God
is far beyond the scope of man.
If the last are first and first are last
what things will we lose in the past?
This world you made and blindly think
that somehow you are in control
when in a moment, in a flash
you could loose your very soul...
"Oh, that's not for real" you say,
"such childish things don't count today".
And you say we're getting better,
it's the age of information
but amidst all the technology 
we lost a generation.
You just won't look around you,
close your eyes, fingers in your ears,
in with the new, out with the old,
don't fester superstitious fears,
but the love in people's hearts grows cold,
stone cold, stone cold and hard as ice
in an age where men are ruled by mice.


                               Pride

Pride brings destruction causing men to despise
so I pray for discernment to open my eyes
and I wouldn't assume to know it all -
a haughty spirit comes before a fall.

Can I remove a speck from my brother's eye
when there's a log in my own and I don't even try?
To judge another man's servant is not my place,
all You've asked me to do is seek Your face.

Still, I point the finger,  so help me to see
that what I hate in others can be found in me.
Let each man work out with trembling and fear
the salvation that God has given us here.

If you believe that Jesus is the Son of God,
that He died on a cross and rose again,
if you believe that His blood is precious enough
to cleanse your soul and wash away your sin

and if you pray to God daily and read His word
and try to put into practice all that you've heard
then you are my brother, though we may not agree
on all the little things, you're still family to me.


                             The Passion

The passion that abolished Hitler's holocaust,
the passion that destroyed the yoke of slavery
is growing colder by the minute, frigid, frozen, lost
as the flames of love are quenched by our false piety.

History repeats itself - its warnings speak "Beware!"
the society of soulless ones who forget how to care.
In such fertile sod atrocities take root and grow
and holocausts and slaveries become the things they know.

Where is the passion, the fire that once burned so hot?
The voices of the dead cry out "Forget me not!"
The chilling comes upon us, we are turned by its frost
to the darkness, to the night, we are hopeless and lost.

The memories of men who gave their lives to set us free
fade into the void, the blood they shed for liberty.
They gave their lives and happiness to another generation
in hope that they might rise up into a stronger nation.

To us this freedom comes so cheap, 
we don't remember what it cost,
we grew up in the blessings of
what those before us lost.
They did the work, they sowed the seeds 
we reaped the fruits of all their deeds

(but I can't help but think we are somehow weaker, 
weaker without the struggle.)

The voice of their blood trodden beneath the soil
still cries out "Freedom is not cheap!",
it must be guarded with the vigilance
of a burning understanding
if the blessings of liberty one wishes to keep,

with clarity of vision and resolve of purpose
else the work is in vain,
yet in these troubled times of broken dreams
that vision seems to fade and wane...

Some sell their freedoms for convenience,
their liberties for cash,
and the work our fathers labored for
has long since turned to ash.

Rise up, lost generation,
understand its price and worth,
that government of the people, by the people
should not perish from this earth.


                           The Big Picture

Just when I think I got it all figured out
and my narrow mind says "That's how it's gonna be"
I realize God is greater than my small ideas
and life is bigger than my plans and theories,
an unexpected twist and turn and anything can happen
cause I can't see, I just don't know the big picture...


                               Rainy Day

God rides on the tops of these bloated clouds
in the lightning and thunder His glory enshrouds,
through walls of water I fill with wonder
and hear God speak to me in the thunder.
The falling drops cleanse my heart like the blood
that flowed from Jesus's nail-scarred hands,
soaking the desert of my soul
with the water that floods these thirsty lands.

When the wind begins to howl and moan
my soul no longer feels alone,
feels like the breath of Your precious Spirit
blowing through my hair, I can feel it and hear it,
Your voice speaking to me in rivers of tears
that fall from the sky and wash away my fears.
I can smell the fragrance of the wind
and rain on this storm of love that You send,
shaking loose all my complacency
and fixing my mind on eternity.

I feel kind of sad as it drifts away,
"Come back soon..." I hope, I pray,
as the gloomy nights of my dark despair
are swallowed up in this wet, misty air.