Through the darkest, coldest night
This house makes so many noises
Whose ghost wants to keep me awake?
Don't you know I've learned to ignore you?
A knock on the ceiling
I've heard it before
And the creaking sound of
Motionless doors
What are you trying to tell me
Groaning frame
Aging timber
Fighting for footing on a
Faltering foundation
You don't want me to know your names, do you
Would I recognize them?
I lived in this house most of my life
And I've believed that demons came along
Attached to a woman whose soul had rotted out
With her child molesting offspring,
Oh yes, demons tired of him
And bid him fond adieu
As he walked out of the house they soon would call their own
I've seen them work their mischief
I know they're here
I don't let them get to me
But the ghost
Or the ghosts
Are more troubling
They make so much noise
It's impossible not to notice
Almost as impossible to ignore
Put on some music
Listen real close
Beethoven, Mozart
Some other ghosts
For I do think out specters
Enjoy good classical music
I know it's just the house settling in
Buckling and shifting
All houses are alive
In that regard
It doesn't matter
I'm not afraid of ghosts
And demons only marginally
I know how to get rid of them
But exorcisms ain't cheap
these days
Furthermore the success rate is not encouraging
Easier to live with demons and ghosts
On the frijid evenings in mid-January
As there will be no company

I remember tears
The tumultuous upheaval
An unsuccessful exorcism
The years between
I remember the losing battles
Held down
This is where I have existed
I have loathed this dwelling
All the while fearing no other abode
I remember the fever dreams
The visions of ungodly beings
That settled and nested on my bedposts
That would not be scattered
No seraphim or cherubim to stand guard above the headboard
If not for the open window
All hope would be lost
But vultures flew in and out that orifice
Bringing foul air and maddening noise

Shelter me, O Lord
In the impenetrable fortress
Of your Reality
Let not the pregnant clouds of thought
Obscure the brilliant ray of your Light
Shining for all men to see
I shall walk away, O Lord
So I have time after time before
Charmed by angels and demons both
You have always called me back
To celebrate the lessons taken to heart
And to forgive my wandering spirit
I have denied You and disowned You
Questioned the proofs that You gave
My mind is never satisfied
I am so enamored of the seeking
I won't accept the Names You've been given by others
You are the One which defies naming
Too often I forget
You took a Name
And a face and a beating heart and lungs that required
The same air as mine
God With Us
Immanuel
Jesus Christ
The Kingdom of Heaven
Hated and adored
Devoted, dismissed
A name almost as powerful as the God within
Divisive, misappropriated
A sharp double-edged sword, misunderstood
All my seeking has brought me back to You
Even when my mind is convinced You are illusion
My heart burns for You
I listen for Your voice, silence overwhelms
I look for You only to find
That everything else is the illusion
That even my own body and thoughts are part of that illusion
While You are the mind that holds it all in
I do see you...when I close my eyes
I do hear you...when I penetrate through sound
Help me, O Lord
Sort through these disordered thoughts
To find the Cornerstone
The rock of my salvation
And give me wisdom
To cling to it...

When the earthquake comes
I will not move
I will lie still and close my eyes
Let it course through me
So to be reminded
Of the first time
I noticed you looking my way
How you turned
Then looked back
Wearing a different kind of smile

Don't tell me to smile
Exhortations to "cheer up" will be ignored
You don't know how far you're stretching me, do you?
Your head still in the clouds of safety where imbeciles call out to each other
Listen. Listen, do
We're exploring the heaviest things in the world
Too heavy for Sysyphyus to haul
I'm that kid you can kind of see through
The one on the left corner
With the cool bootleg Pink Floyd t shirt wrapping his thin torso
He's got a box of Playboys beneath his nightstand and he's barely 14 years old
He reads and incorporates that garbage into his pre-adolescence behavior
With dreams of visiting Plato's
Retreat
Picking up some bunnies using some of the better Party Jokes
His expertise at 'lingus and 'latio are as well perfected as can be without having actually performed them
But he could sure bust out the ******* Philosophy and would have held his own with the old geezer who wrote it
But he was only 14 and nobody seemed impressed with the amount of ******* culture he'd consumed
They weren't letting him in the cluuuub
Your ****** right he didn't feel like smiling
But he wasn't bored
And he didn't feel too serious
He'd let it slide this time

*to be continued

Could it be nothing more than
A changing of the hands
Maturity, responsibility
No easy transferral
Or could it be the time has come
To believe in something more than we can see
Sit down in the sand and breathe
These years depend upon
The passing on of dreams
All we can conceive
We must train ourselves to live
On the outskirts of
Light and darkness
On the fringe of our own minds
In the place where they all join together
Described but never revealed
There is no air in heaven
We glow
And a mighty symphony
Manifests into an awesome physical being
That morphs and mutates
Infinitely amazing we are forever content
To watch and listen
As we are part of that symphony
Being seen and heard even now
By those who came before us

I take no comfort in knowing
I've won this time
It was just another game
I rolled the dice not knowing
What the bones would show
Bound by rules to abide
I entered into this commitment
Numb and naive
With experience to recommend, not strategy
With no celebration of victory
Still I hold out hope for the next
A prayer for luck and fate
Not for the win
But the pleasure of the challenge