How the hand you extend is marked with scars
How familiar you are with rejection
How beautiful are those discolored stars
How none have been touched by hate's infection

How many are tears that drip on your chest
How much heat they hold, all stinging and strong
How much love they hold, how much do they bless
How strange that they're for the one who did wrong

How much do I ache when I meet your gaze
How my heart feels like it's all out of joint
How much does it break as you gently say,
"How could all you've done ever be the point?"

I burst my seams trying to hold your gift
A miracle hug across a great rift

I was five hours through my trip of eight
When I saw through bug guts light tearing cloud
I was thinking about clips sent my way
Of her play with the offspring of her own

Laughing without regard for somber weight
Which hung on us like a funeral shroud
Her spirit was ready were it the day
She was prepared if then she would have flown

But how it closed with a coffin lid’s freight
What tears under such sorrow we allowed
In front of his daughter dying he lay
Soon enough I’d have his pictures alone

In the light I saw insects smashed to death
“Three hours left” I said under my breath

Lightning tongue
Brother tree
Strike the dirt
Breaking free

Roots emerge
Like a snake
Snap like cords
Crack the lake

Speak sword-tongue
Cut me loose
Catch me with
Holy noose

Let me not
Plead, "Away"
YHWH God
Lord, please stay

Earthy tongue
Gentle words
Friendship won
Nesting birds

Turn about
Long ago
What's that sound?
I don't know

Dove wing tongue
Remind me
Of all that
Love spoke He

Calm me down
Know my groan
Report back
Glowing stone

Let me speak
Orphan tongue
Granting me
Only lungs
Solely You

There she lies curled on a cold concrete slab
Eviscerate midsection gushing blood
And her face and clothes are ***** and drab
Ruinated thoroughly with thrown mud

Sometimes I wonder if we're wielding rage
In service to the worship of our self
Never realizing our flaws and their wage
Tucked them away on an overlooked shelf

Hearing her husband's heart-weary crying
Ever we play the unsatisfied spouse
Villains pursuing which leaves love dying
Ever we plot to be first in the house

I guess you're right as I stare at the floor
Left gut-stabbed, she can't hurt us anymore

Some of them say we were split at the start
Off I go stumbling, a half-cocked Cortes
After Venus who has part of my heart
"This gold is for God," my grinning mouth says

Some of these brothers were split right in two
By saw on the rawest end of the deal
Standing right next to that heavenbound crew
Of me does this old world quite worthy feel

Some of my feelings are split as of now
I want to stand, ask, and be justified
But as indignation pulses my brow
Holy teeth rake and scrape out the inside

Perhaps I'm just grinding salt into flesh
Trying by brute force to make the two mesh

I sit with my sin held out
Filth mucks up my hands
And still He sits, not leaving

"Lord, surely I must do some-"
Laughs, touches my hand
"Simply be in what I've done"

"The Lord has Coffee with Me"
Omaha, N-E
April the twelfth, 'Twenty-Five

I look upon Him
He looks back
Peace and joy mingle

He abides in you
[Vine and branch]
You abide in Him

Mug heat radiates
I boil in my regret
The phone is right there

At Switchback Coffee
Colorado Springs, C-O
April the nineteenth