walls go up like tinted glass
Each blurs the view more than the last
the tinge of blue turns Midnight
as each panel raises up
Alas!
we’re separated
as I spread the molten soda-lime
upon the molten tin to add another
to my rows of perfect pain
I’m powerless
to end this game
I’m powerless
to stop my hiding
Rescue me with Your sledgehammer of Grace
protect me from the shards
of a silent broken heart

my heart shivers and shakes
like a little bird succumbing in the snow
I clamp my hands over my ears
“DO NOT FEAR!”
plays repetitively over loudspeakers
I’ve heard that doing the right thing is always the hardest choice
It’s not
maybe it is
But I’m working myself harder than God ever would
it’s my own hands amping up scatters of truth to terrifying decibels
my own hands pressing play for another episode

All day
it’s been like this since Friday night
Like little pinpricks
short stabs of adrenaline
giving me an increasing amount of jitters and pain
with no beautiful passion or art to show for all the hormone fireworks
I’m not depressed
I’m not anxious
but I’m suffering directionless excitement
My journey of healing has brought me to this mountain and commanded that I climb
So I climb
I have no choice but to rise
Reaching up with bruised and blistered fingers
it’s the only way to leave my ruined body behind

I’m walking through the desert
Following faint trails of pioneers before
Sometimes stumbling in circles through furnaces of sand and cactus
I haven’t seen my destination
it’s place isn’t marked on any map
I don’t know where I’ll find water
I’m a wanderer and I don’t keep it on tap,
I lose my sense of time
listening to the dune’s eerie song
All I know is that I’ve been trapped here
too long
I live for the moments I crest the layered plateaus
and can finally see the distance
of wilderness I have travailed

Pulling barbs from deep within your heart
Feel your soul be ripped apart
And all the miles of chain you swallowed
Must be thrown out
Screaming as they entered in
Your ears, your eyes, your mouth, your nose
burning down your skin
And the pain thickens in your head
Like blood pooling on the ground beneath the dead
Dripping down into your sight
Inkiness  
as all the grime from past clouds of smoke are washed away
In a Tidal wave of grace
your ribs are bruised and crushed
In the Violence of Love
Ready to take the poison hidden in your bones
Dig Deep!
Let your old, iron stomach throw up
all the nails
whose place is in the wounds of Christ

The best part of getting older
is looking straight into strangers’ eyes without fear
Oh the joys that the iris brings
what confidence of soul and spirit
Breathing with a lifted chin and open chest
Seeing the honesty in others’ happy and respectful gazes
All the truth I had missed
Now spread out before my sight