So tired of playing
The same old worn out games
With a nickle and a song
Lifting my own name

Thinking out loud
That I can save myself
You see if not me
Then I ask who else

I'd be rich if I could
Sell off all this shame
Bottled tight up inside
But can't give any of it away

I keep holding out
One of the proud
Jesus is for losers
That's what I'm all about

He takes me just as I am
Down upon my knees
Jesus is for losers
And yes that would be me

I show up right on time
To my own open grave
Stinking to high heaven
Where sin has me its slave

Find I'm drowning in
My own wishing well
Thought back then that I could swim
These days not so well

Got it all locked up tight
Yet I myself have no key
In which to open up
This hardened heart in me

Randomly beat
Facing defeat
Jesus is for losers
I'm pointing fingers at me

Wondering at how
I became part of the crowd
Jesus is for losers
I'll take all that I'm allowed

Never much
On push and shove
Jesus is for losers
When you've had enough

Just as I am
Least we forget
Jesus is for losers
Are we not all there yet...

The road tore,
just in two.

The colors
are yours,

brush me blue.

I'll go.

Your streaks
will be the boot marks
on my back,

and the other cheek.

Your rancor
will color me.  

But I'll make it,
all,
Holi.

May I go back to You?
     I'm sorry I've strayed. The wrecked trail looked so strange, and this stubborn heart of mine can't resist the foreign, the deranged. I'm sorry. I strayed.  
     I've bawled my eyes out so fiercely. I cannot seem to shovel the snow off this path, or tuck my hands back into the warmth.
     Take these ice-burnt palms of mine; take this lousy shovel, the pen I tried to use to uncover those layers off me; take the need for nicotine, for the viscous cycles that bound me in a life of backsliding, no ears to hear or eyes to see. Guide me, Father.
Guide me home,
set me free.

Maybe its time to put these rabid dogs to sleep.
They’ve mastered the art of barking at midnight.
My eye-bags have sagged for eternity.

But You touch the heavy heart,
the one that sags just the same.

It heals, expands,
and breathes.

I forgive.

[A prose poem]

I see a palm reaching out for me, from the pitch black.
     I try to sleep and close my eyes, but I still see this palm, trying to cover my face or scratch the skin it hates– I close my eyes and I still see it.
I know where this palm came from.
     I know it from the time the backdrop was not dark, but a horrid party at a lonesome house where I had too many shots. I know this palm will try to take whatever it wants, and it’ll crook its fingers and slide wherever it pleases, without caring to come back to my face when the tears roll down; it does not care to treat them, it does not care to wipe them. It does not care.
     Its been more than a year now, and still I go to sleep and think of hands. Of the word “no”, and how useless it is, just like trying to get some good sleep now. I close my eyes and try to forgive every one of those fingers.

You peel open my chest–
how beautiful, Lord–
You turn this rotten apple,
to color.

It's as if You slid a silk sheet over my chest,
or placed Your big palm over my hunched back;
or kissed my knees after their knelt espousal.