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Wind

Too many pieces blowing in the wind
Up and down, swirling round, then finally descend
Every tiny detail, each to it’s own end.

Is this the upside, right side, down side?
Why do I feel I’m being taken for a ride?
Fitting every piece with nothing as a guide.

 

I’ll quit and leave this up to the wind
It must know which are the right ones to send
What difference does my effort even make in the end?

So I lay down and simply watch them flow.
Then beyond,my eyes catch the sky where it glows.
Transfixed within, matchless peace will grow.

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Time-Released Moments

Some moments in our lives are time-released. As we go through them, their significance seems minor. Or perhaps they are painful and appear altogether meaningless. But as months and years separate us from these events, the memories begin to open up and divulge a wealth of insight we never imagined existed.

I’ve been contemplating the time-released moments quite a bit. At times, I get the feeling that I’m living one of those moments… that something going on in my life has so much more meaning than I can readily absorb in the now. I’m hiking on apparently dry, desert ground… but somewhere beneath lies an underground stream of the coolest, cleanest life-giving water. But even when I try to force myself to dig below the surface, the ground doesn’t give. It’s as if this mystery stubbornly faces me off with, “I won’t give it up until the fullness of time.” So I relinquish. But somewhere in my heart remains the seed-thought that this moment will come alive to me… sometime in the future.

One of my dear friends is preparing to begin an overseas missions term and we had a talk about the time-released moments in her own life. She says she can see so many little, insignificant things that now make up her recipe for success. These include camping with her family, growing up in a culture where adventure and determination were high values, and even some painful mistakes and consequences which refined her.

I suppose that’s one of the reasons that pacing your life is so important. If we periodically take time to look back and reflect, we can enjoy the brilliant fibers woven through the tapestry of our lives. We can see that someone actually knew what he was doing when he saw the big-picture and called it good.

On the other hand, if we never slow down to consider things, we may miss the beauty and only ever see the frustration of the moments of the now.

As for me, I’ll choose to let myself believe… that perhaps the things I’m going through, for all their monotony and pain, might just have a greater significance than I think.

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Tempest

Scattered pieces entrenched in grimy muck
Sluggish, immovable
Cry out to them saying, “move!”
Nothing
Goad them with a stick
Nothing
Lure them with luscious promise
Nothing

I had almost relinquished hoping
I had almost stopped moving myself
I had almost lost perspective
I had almost joined their like

Oh catalytic tempest
That started in their midst
How suddenly you birthed
And stretched your arms of wind
With swirling power hurling
Without, around, within

Now looking in your wake,
The muck is nowhere found
And every piece has fallen
To a new place in the ground
Or maybe changed directions
Or splattered a new shape
And none has been untouched
No being could escape

Oh catalytic tempest
I would not think you up
But seeing all you’ve done
I’m speechless to my gut
And knowing I could never shake
Those pieces from their rut.

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Blue

Blue
Like cotton candy wisps
Like berries on my lips
Or water with chlorine that makes me dry

Blue
Like rainy inside days
Like never hearing praise
Or boring mundane life with no surprise

Blue
In style all its days
Popularity it craves
In lonely missives and in restless nights

Blue
The sand is coming in
Your days are numbered when
We let you swim so freely all you like

 Blue
A memory it seems
Or was it in my dreams?
My life was plagued by such a parasite

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Frozen

If you look down the road you’ll see where shouts are frozen
And standing in the window here, where hearts fly by unnoticed
I’ve spotted the suspense as it moves along to reckon
All of every beauty is sucked into regression

Grass, sky, painful to look
Eyes would cry – they’re frozen

It’s a long way down the road to another human laughing
I cannot breath to cry for all
The glazing overcomes me

Grass, sky, painful to look
Eyes would cry – they’re frozen

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sustained

I do not toil in vain.  I purposefully press forward and beyond. 

I drive from an inner place that cannot be summed.

And the swishing and the swashing of distracted delay may haunt,

Yet carry, carry, carry on and on.

 

Sustained in a clearless muddied and perfect

Adrift in a boulder billowing allong

Unnerved by a calmly careful whisper

Sustained in a hollow smuthering embrace

 

You may look for the end but it doesn’t matter here,

I push and the pushing will push you to the capping again.

Swept up and toward the sky we fly, fly, flying along the way.

I thrive because the candle won’t wane.

 

Hooray!!!!!!!!!!!!!

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Out

It’s a sweetness within me that aches for expression
Why do some things never tire of blazing forth?
And they always have a hunger to be seen
Hunger that doesn’t know what food is worth.

To express is to risk rejection
Once outside it’s fair game for doubt
And will be valued by responses
And lives or dies by someone else’s thought

So two kinds of people emerge
Those who create with open understanding
And those who critique the created from without

Where is the person who can admire?
Free of comparison and contrast
Able to see beauty in various places
Willing to walk with me along my path

Maybe to find these treasures
I must venture to somewhere beyond
Into places where beauty distinctive
Draws me into its bond

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Praise

PRAISE

God of heaven
Who came to dwell among us and now lives within us

My all in all
Creator
The one who stirs my heart
The brave and valiant champion
Sheltering me from harm

It is you alone who embodies beauty and strikes the resolving chord in my anthem
To dissolve the cries with laughter is your heart

It is you alone who knows the answers and solves the riddles that perplex me
You create a bigger picture from each part

When I think of how many sorrows upon sorrows I throw at you every day
Resounding dissonant clashing metal in my heart

I would like to be lost inside you in a crystal calming cavity
Would you lose me in the depths of surrender at the brink of everafter again?

It is not for humans to find perfection
As we coddle the gaping hole within

If I could be one thing it would be a striking reminder of your glorious presence
And slowly getting closer is an art

I leave the job to you again

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Poems for Coffee

These are the ones I read for the coffee house at Pathways last week.

Magnitude

When you whisper I cannot hear you
Are sighs and tones meant to convey?
Then what is it that creates such magnitude
For two singular swirling masses at bay?

Each swirls in color, it’s beauty distinct
Playing solos on comets with natural instinct

But move them together and sparks will fly
One supercharged firework tumbling through the sky

If I speak will you believe me?
Will it even be real that way?
How do finite volatile pieces
Find precious words to say?

 

Somewhere

Somewhere we cry when it slips from our grip

“Just missed the gold medal”

“Just shy of first place”

And everyone laughs at the dread irony

Of what could have been

Of what shouldn’t be

 

So drinking in pride

So going the way

So laughing sporadically

And falling on our face

 

Somewhere we cry when it slips from our grip

And find all along

Everything we hoped to miss

And all that we needed to gain

Was at the end

At the bottom

From whence we came

 

Healing

You, standing there
I knew the many colors of your muse
Now all your words come out in blues
In a place so small
It chokes your breath
And won’t let you stand up tall

You, sitting there
You’ve chased your life away
Sorrow beats the rhythm in your veins
You cling to the past so tight
If I hold out my hand
Can healing come tonight?

 

Parallel

I jumble the pieces of the puzzle and ignore their fitting stance

I want to be so many things but don’t know what I am

At first it’s hard to walk on land if all you’ve known is sea

And changing the workings of my mind is so out of reach to me

In quicksand if you thrash about you will only drown

It’s hard to rest and wait for change when flaws are all around

Baby wants to jump right in, but mother knows she’ll sink

And maybe someone holds me back for reasons I can’t think

Swell

Something swells inside of me
Like cloak-covered dream
Like clouded memories
And the music, the band,
They all fade away
Til it’s me in my head
On this beautiful day

For the first time in a long time
I run around in there
And I’m happy to see
There’s plenty of air
With a brilliant crescendo
I find at last
The breaking is the mending of my heart