dragons and goblins
elves and men
stories that are woven from now
until then

guttering, sputtering
the howling of winds
everyone talks of that dream
the night bends

simplicity dwells in the
smallest of things
when shadow and silence
true finity brings

all up in the air
all fallen below
each whisper of heartache
is death without blow

no heart can flutter all alone,
nor devils fly in space,
for all the travels of our minds,
are blazing with a trace

no farther dragon's head will fall
beyond the wing of night,
for someone somewhere knows
the light
and fills it with her song

before, before, those blessed words,
it's all the last of all,
for something burns me deep inside
with fire and glowing coal

forged in brilliant heat we sing,
left to die in fire
but no one knows the things we've seen
nor felt the dark desire

"forever and forever"
says the wingless watching eye
and tomorrow will be sooner
than the dying of today

death stretched out like nobody's business
lost in flickering light
dust to dust and ashes to ashes
before the falling of night

"don't go away" she said with a smile
"don't let the light die in me"
and she took me and melted each strand of desire
and left me empty of me

+
formless fury, bleeding pain
don't awake this dragon's bane

The world is far more
alien,
than I supposed before.
All it takes to see this is a trip to
somewhere
humans aren't supposed to be -
the sky above, or foundering
in the deep, deep
sea.

The truth is, we've only got a tiny window of the
space that's on this earth,
and while we call it home,
there's far more we can only
glimpse and stare at
from afar.

There's a world above the clouds
that no one could have
ever seen,
(if we never made a flight machine, that is)
but always it is there, regardless of our eyes.
And when we've tumbled through
that air-space and
come down,
well, it goes back to being what it
was before - the gentle
undulating whiteness of the tops of
clouds and plains.

From a distance, it should be solid,
one thinks. A planet
of white rock, with blue sky
overhead
              and sun.

The tall and gentle creatures
that should live here,
soft of foot and hibernating
for years, perhaps,
in crooks and hidden crannies
- Lord only knows -
white of skin and eye and bone,
matching the world they live on,
unchanging and yet
never same.

But no. There are no creatures
in the clouds.
None but us - and we don't live there;
no, we wouldn't dare.
We'd die, if we ever tried.
And that's the point.

The world that we call "ours"
is just a sliver, just a slice
of everything this world is,
and all that lies between.

memories, like ashes flung
across the web of time -
are half-burnt logs where dreams still
sputter;

and I bid them all goodbye

no one knows the sorrows,
nor the joys of light unseen,
when stirring through the ashes
of yesterday's dreams

farther than an ocean spread
the eagle eye has seen,
but never can the keenest
pierce that gray and ashy sheen

the past is gone - a mirror
of our present selves, I think -
the things we see there
gratify the darlings and the beasts
+
memory, like ashes flung
across the net of time -
are proof that life one time
was lived:
that fevered dream of mine

now dead                      

below the surface,
where the dust is soft and blows
in the gentle gentle breeze;
below the hardened crust of teardrops
raining down down
through the trees:

there the shifting ashes lie;
the happiness of dreams,
the lifting light of love's delight,
the lightning at the seams

and there I roam,
a lost forlorn,
a citizen of dreams
that long ago have burnt to ash
and scattered all my things
+
memory, like ashes flung,
across this web of mine,
with shadows in the corner comes
and wakes the dragon Time

each forward step                          
              a drop of fuel
                 each hour
a log of pine

and always always flickering
that fire we all call mine

till memories, like ashes flung,
across the wrinkled line,
fill up the span my steps have spun
and dry the noonday sun

+

and I stirred the fire to flame again
and thought of her no more

floral patterns
sink their scented teeth
into the canvas of reality
swirled upon a
foreign land;

eyes unseen relay it
to my slipping soul
askew to all
the blinking lights
behind me

You set my soul at rest.
Not by relaxing any standard,
leaving any stone unturned that I
should consider.
Just... the way you look at me. With
patience, confidence, and that strangely
tender hint of longing.

How can I hope to give myself to you,
when my daily life is such a
weak and constant trouble?
A constancy, a refuge to relax in
- as you are to me -
that's what I want to be.

But. Storms and God above.
That man isn't me.
Not now.

Sometimes I let myself wonder what you and I
would be today,
if I were a better man yesterday.

nothing quite so terrible
as a man
who thinks himself free
when he is not

no terror quite so piercing
as a whisper
when he thinks himself
alone

so different, these two
moments
yet they both are filled with lies
there is a fatal weakness
in our mortal failing
eyes

we do not see the truth
of things - not one thing
breaks the dark

darling, won't you come away
with me,
let's lose ourselves;
in the dying of today
let's drink more deeply
than we've ever drunk
before,
let's open up the corridors
that long have been shut up
to ourselves,
and pace their length together
with God

Monsters dance
in my shadow,
step by calculated step
as I stumble like a
              half-spent top
                              and wobble in the
                                          splintered grain
of aging wood beneath

I've been spinning for too long and I'm about to topple, but
I don't quite fall
don't quite fall,            
don't quite                                
                fall.

But still behind me, trailing like
the shadows that I drag behind me in the sun,
there's a hounding pack
of demon's spinning with me
on the floor.

Oh deliver from these wretched
sons of hell and God's
great curse.

Come and save.

Whisper, shiver,
Quake with fright,
A devil's voice is heard tonight.

Shifting dreams of
Usurpation
Fill the leader of
this nation.

"Come and make
These voices leave,
All this wicked
Whirlwind relieve -

Your music has a
Soothing power,
O'er this demon's
Constant glower

So come and sing,
You shepherd warrior;

Come and frighten
My destroyer."

Up on Grandma's kitchen shelf,
a temptation crocked and lidded
tight:
her cookie jar, it beckons me,
well-worn, once-cracked, now-mended -
not with mud new-daubed,
but gold
in every crack

it gleams;

but that is not the treasure
that has seized my heart.

Nay. The treasure is inside.

One time only did I reach within,
one time many-scolded.

"Not for you," she muttered,
gummy, toothless, ancient hag;
"Not for you," she growled.

"Not for any fingers seeking just to
fill their ******* mouths."

And I wondered as she said it,
as I've wondered always since,
at the force and heart within her words,
for the cookie jar was spent.

Empty. Not a crumb inside
- I felt it all around -
empty, all the cookies gone,
to places I had never trod
- in waking hours at least.

Empty - not a crumb inside, but...
...something brushed by me.
Warm and soft and...
...gentle,
like an angel's kiss, or wing;
the golden glitter of a teardrop as it
hangs in sunlit dream.

That - that feeling
is what brushed against me
(wrist-deep and guilty) in my
Grandma's cookie jar.

She bound the jar with leather
and shelved it up much higher,
and scolded me from morning until night.
But heart aflame and
eye caught in wonder,
the magic had bound me up
tight.

I dared not take it down again,
I dared not wrest it's slumber
with another groping, clumsy
hand;
but my eye and heart were on it
and as years passed,
hunger grew.

+

When Grandma died - a miracle,
considering her spells -
at last I dared to keep the jar,
up on my own cook-shelf.
And slowly I unbound it,
leather strap by leather strap,
as the days turned into winter
and the star-symphony danced.

Three years it took to free that
crock
(her spells had hardened
by some brew brought on by
death),
and when it sat untarnished, free,
once more the gold
did glew.

Humble earthen vessel, uplifted
by destruction
and the searing introduction of a molten,
fiery grace:
a simple cookie jar it was,
(this I knew)
and empty as a floor too-swept and clean.

Yet still I longed to feel the
brush of life once more,
glimmering like a secret in
the depth of that fair jar.

So I dipped one little finger in,
crossed the plane marked by it's mouth,
and waited for the magic of
the past.

It came near by gradual nibbles, a skitter-fly
ashamed
to be acknowledged, so it seemed;
but gradually one finger became two,
two three,
and three a hand.

Skitter-fly no longer, the golden pulse
it surged,
stronger by a hundred-fold
than ever I felt before;
and coiled betwixt my fingers
like a honey-snake
and warm.

I knew it then, the cookie jar,
and the cookie jar knew me.

Desire birthed and twirling,
fostered long, but now set free.

I sighed and let the crocken lid
fall back down in its place,
plunged once more the jar in black, and
emptied now for me, it sat
up on my cook-*** stack,
and winked no more
- no more for me.

After that I set a rule up,
for small-kin in my home,
that the cookie jar was sacred,
as it was in Grandma's time.
And any hand that snatched from it,
would turn-about be smacked.

+

And then I sat and waited
for a grubby little hand,
to reach down into empty space
and spark again
the gloam.

little blossoms
by the busy road,
growing on the spew of industry
are more beautiful to me
than gardens
cultivated, purposeful,
and green

the wild, road-edge flowers
have no reason but themselves,
a purely unprepared oblation
welling up in beauty
at the whispered voice of God

but those other blooms - those hot-house beauties
are simply what they are
supposed to be.
Perfect in scent, in shape, in size -
everything just so, and just so much
less free.
I sometimes want to say it isn't beauty

but every flower has a name,
so who am I to say
that some are better
than the others?

We're dancing on a
knife's edge,
you and I.
You know it - I can see
the sparkle in your eye.

But do we care? I suppose
there's somewhere deep
down in
where mind sits at its desk
and all the glaring danger signs
flash red.
But on the surface, there's a
bit of gold in knowing
where we stand
for now,
and being free to dance the line
with comfort in your friendship yet
excited
all the same.

We know where we stand:
it's not together,
so we're free to tap the
dance floor lightly
and
smile into the night,
because our words are sparring
in -
well, let's say they
might have crossed the line.

But just our words.
We two?
We're standing side by side
(this side of the line)
and laughing at them,
pointing out the silliness
yet somehow still content
to stay and watch them
anyway
for lingered moments that speak
more deeply
than the words themselves could ever do.

infant son of lust and power,
union of a king uncrowned
and wife of Gentile warrior -
I shall bear the burden of my
grieving father's sin

the prophet spoke, my fate is sealed
the sickness set upon me
- this terrible privilege of atonement -
will consume my
tiny life
and I will die

but my father?
he shall live

and from his ***** my brother
shall come forth
that other Son in whose shadow
I shall stake my
checkered hidden place

Solomon first,
and later, when the sun
bursts forth,
our mutual fulfilment:

Christ the Lord

it fades away, but not because it’s gone.
time does not destroy
nor years the pain unmake;
scarred and scarring.

layered pain:
a heart’s a frail and terrible thing.
accumulated horrors
in the attic of the mind
forsaken and forgotten
in light still burn the eye.
time’s circle turned,
by day and night unfurled
does not the bleeding wipe away
but distance adds and
layer stacks on layer.

don’t deny the hollowness
the bleeding in your eyes.
with falt’ring step and screeching voice
it’s gone before a sigh
without a whisper,
clasped in hearts aboil,
hanging, sinking, thoughts uncurled
like bleeding bits of earth.

drown this terror,
dye that gold
don’t deny the doubter’s goals
flying, denying, it’s all the
same to me,
filling up the measure of a broken,
settled gleam.

inching forward, step by step,
we look above for light and hope,
denied this life we drink;
and blight
devours in the night

sanctified by fallen gods,
a dripping-honey angel
stooping, breathing down our necks,
to free our death’s sweet
struggle.

Alone, alas, ‘tis not to be, this dream’s
a fatal liar,
for nothing that we see tonight
will ever meet His fire.

Denied, we died. It’s time to bleed
in fire.
Watch it hiss. We kiss. We fly.
And speak of our desire.

They spoke to me, splintering words
In the broken-breath hiss of desire,
Holding my gaze with the glow of their swords
As they circled and circled my fire.


"We are they who devour the dawn.
No god can hold us, no chain and no bond.
We are the breaking and we are the end,
All those who see us will tremble and bend.

So careful now, careful now, watch where you tread,
Your life is our substance, our butter and bread.
Living or dying, our reach is not stayed,
Darkness will come, it will not be delayed."

Doctor says the voices
will someday go away,
but I don’t mind.
Sometimes they scare me, with
the way my heart rattles - a can
rolling in the back of a van
around a very fast turn.
But this is only because they are very
scared.
I know it’s true.
And when they are silent,
I like to picture them like
sleeping dragons.
I tuck them in, and
kiss their hot foreheads goodnight.
The scales feel like glass beneath
my lips,
And I think of just how fragile they are…
…just how gentle I must be.

The hospital is dreary;
my bed is a comfortable
prison.
But the voices, some of them anyway,
make each day a carnival, and
nighttime has always been an adventure.

Mother sleeps in the chair
most nights. But it is
the voices who tickle my toes
and make my heart giggle
in the dead of night.

Doctor says I’m dying, but the
voices laughed at that.
I don’t know, myself. Sometimes
my hand flickers in the
moonlight, and
I can feel them tugging.
“Nobody else listens,” they say,
“No one else has ever kissed
our heads goodnight.”

If I die, who would listen to
my sweet and frightened voices?

Doctor says I’m dying.

Nurses say I need to smile,
(as if lying is good for my health).

Mother saying I’m fading
(in whispers behind curtains,
so I will not hear her despair).

Father says I’m very brave,
(even though his eyes
are very scared).

Sister says she’ll miss me.

Brother says nothing, only stares.
He’s one.

All these voices echo, and some days I just
want to be alone.
Just me and my own voices - not theirs.

+

Darling says the voices
are getting louder.
She turns away from me
when I try to smooth her hair.
Her eyes are accusation
for the moment that they rest
on me.

Darling doesn’t eat.
She murmurs and laughs in
her sleep,
waking me. This chair is not
for sleeping.

Darling is fading.

+

“Hi.”

“My name is Albert.
You can’t see me now, but
I have blue fur,
and my eyes are whatever color
you want them to be.
I’m here to make the voices go away.”

“Which ones?”

“The ones that break your heart.”

“Okay.

You are one of the voices that
I love, right?”

“Yes, darling.”

+

Darling’s bed is empty.
Doctor says the cameras
cannot find any trace of her last night.
I am lost.

The sheets are folded neatly,
but I did not wake.

+

Albert says we can play here
forever.
There are no hospitals, no beds,
and the sun always shines, until
I kiss it goodnight.
I like it here, with my frightened friends.

I met George and Annie and Bob, and the
funny one with sixteen horns.
I call him Poke.

Oh.
And the voices are gone.

They say you never know
just who you are
until you sit with darkness
all around,
but I think differently.

What we become            

alone

                            is no measure for humanity.

isolation throws our shadows into focus,
brings out the demons
where they can see to play;
but that 'self' is no more true
- and no less -
than when we laugh with the
companions of our fight

if you want to see your own face
truly,
and not in a carnival mirror
you must be willing to find a
kaleidoscope
of
answers.

some are masks, and some are
true;
some are old, and others
new;
some we have as ****** upon us,
some we craft with hands made new,
hewed from sinew, heart, and realized
with ***** soles...

Some of our faces are beautiful.
Some aren't.
Some of our faces have broken.
Some healed.
Some of our faces are worn out and tired imitations of what they ought to be, and some of our faces are clean.

Some of our faces are seen only in the dead
of night.
Some of our faces...
                                         ...well, some of them are a
beautiful impression, so we use them more often,
and try to forget the breaks
that happen in between.

All are true, and all are you. Don't let the
hidden faces
you wear in secret
define you.
You are more. No less, it is true.
But more.

God! Far more than those.

It's as if the world is trying,
cloud by cloud,
to create the fairest fantasies:
A cloud-bank seen in morning adds
an unseen mountain range,
and shadows played on fluffy depths
silhouette a half-imagined grove.

If I seize these dreams and let my heart fly
into these impossible what-ifs,
it seems to me the world's
a far more magical place.

The earth is full of possibles,
I see them all around:
Misty heights appearing
with the coming of a cloud;

in the dancing fire,
there's a world of half-seen dreams,
glowing canyons heated
high and uncontained;

damp sand, dripped, like wax
will build a fairy castle
for the froggies and the flies;

in the wrinked mess of twining roots,
the hollows and the leaves,
a hundred tiny hovels - undiscovered -
with a beauty all their own;

frozen mud, crystal-crusted,
palaces of earth and ice
stretched by nature's freezing *****...
they lay bare beneath our feet if we will
stoop to look so low;

and frosting on the windowpanes,
growing like a portrait of a luscious
2-D land.

They are tiny pocket worlds, all of them,
universe unshared
yet no less fair for the eyes
that do not see.

Beauty unseen is beauty nonetheless.

But how much happier the man who
looks about him for the whisper,
for the quiet, crystal piercing of the light
that shines just barely on the other side
of all that can be seen.

Tiny pocket worlds all, and completely
unexplored.
But you and I can walk there,
if we tend the fairy dream.

I, too, am expected to topple the Dark Lord.

The heart and soul of my faith
is the making possible of a way to do so -
the impossible rendered possible
by the sacred influence
of an impossible sacrifice of the divine.

Yes; I, too, am expected to topple
the dark lord.

How has it been so long, and I did not
see it?
The impetus of fantasy is to action  -
the Ordinary obtaining and
achieving the patently Impossible through
faith, activity, and whole-hearted devotion.

Do you believe that fantasy is worthwhile?

Then you believe that you can change
the world.

The heavens warred
above us,
for decades at a time:
with blazing lights at midnight,
and
shadows stalking past at noon.

We took shelter in the depths,
left our children in their
graves.
The old and weak among us
fell beneath

the dying
of
the gods.

Towers tall as mountains,
walls once thick and strong,
cities split like gemstones
by the fountains bursting through.

Scorching heat,
flames born of wind,
the air around us burning,
the deepest depths our
only
refuge from the fallen
fusing forms.

Cold, both long and bitter
followed,
all our caverns covered over.
Unceasing was our journey
and to stall was
certain death.

In time the final judgment came,
and heralds marched the skies.
The soft sweet glow of
sunset,
and the trumpet call of
dawn.
Day by day the rivers swelled,
and life crept up again
through white.

The final moment of the battle came,
with the shudder of a curse,
and the body of a demon
flung from God's sweet
afterglow.

His body left a trail of ash
wind found the bits and swept them,
day by day they sifted
ever closer to our earth.
The rest of him, a smoking wreck,
destroyed our tallest mountain,
fire rose from it
for years,
and then settled into smoke.

Until the dragons woke.
Then came the end.

The heavens warred
above us,
for decades at a time:
with blazing lights at midnight,
and
shadows stalking past at noon.

We took shelter in the depths,
left our children in their
graves.
The old and weak among us
fell beneath

the dying
of
the gods.

Towers tall as mountains,
walls once thick and strong,
cities split like gemstones
by the fountains bursting through.

Scorching heat,
flames born of wind,
the air around us burning,
the deepest depths our
only
refuge from the fallen
fusing forms.

Cold, both long and bitter
followed,
all our caverns covered over.
Unceasing was our journey
and to stall was
certain death.

In time the final judgment came,
and heralds marched the skies.
The soft sweet glow of
sunset,
and the trumpet call of
dawn.
Day by day the rivers swelled,
and life crept up again
through white.

The final moment of the battle came,
with the shudder of a curse,
and the body of a demon
flung from God's sweet
afterglow.

His body left a trail of ash
wind found the bits and swept them,
day by day they sifted
ever closer to our earth.
The rest of him, a smoking wreck,
destroyed our tallest mountain,
fire rose from it
for years,
and then settled into smoke.

Until the dragons woke.
Then came the end.

i didn't mean to find a flower
on my journey through the forest
but there it was
trying
to bloom in a
crevice of the rock

Every time I set pen to paper
I am struck with the vastness
of the world that I am entering.
Sometimes I stand on the brink, unwilling
to hurl myself over the edge of
what has already been made
into the long dark of uncreated
nebulae and whispers of
story that run through
my fingertips as intangibly as
starlight from above.
The possibilities are endless. It's true.
And the sheer immensity of creating -
such a lost, divine, and yet
most common art -
it pushes me backwards with
hands given substance by
nothing more (and nothing less)
than my own mind.

Is it hubris to create?
Miserable makers are we,
unfit to be gods
of anything, let alone the
vast, untamed beauties
which ramble in that long
and undivided brightness
of imagination.
We are unworthy all,
and I most of all;
the hand that spells out majesty
has broken heartstrings,
plucking at them
day by day
and clutching at the tattered ends
when at last they failed.

Yet still the world of what could be
expands like stars in space,
every time I step up to the
portal of that world
(the unmarked page).
What is this gift, this mystery?

To write love and darkness,
joy in misery,
these hands - this ****** ink of mine -
is able still.

Grace.

The word should be
blank,
when this hand tries to write it.
And yet the ink still flows
and forms the shape,
a living testimony
of itself.

So here I stand, one small pen
in hand, like a bucket meant
to catch an ocean of rain.
And my inevitable failure
is somehow
still,
an overflowing success.

One moment of that other world captured is enough
to stir the hearts of men,
and turn them from their gold to things above.

every moment I sit
on the edge
twiddling my thumbs
right next to insanity

tender lies, spoken
in whisper,
root themselves within
and spread moments of weakness
all dolled up as
strength.

I know the thrill
of falling

deeply

into the heart of
abandon,
headfirst, the warm
and gentle darkness
keeping my eyes in place,
fixed upon it:

my broken and perverted
crucifix

many hands stretched out to wound him,
reaching for the God of Souls.

so mine reach out to claim her,
clamoring
for the sweet ungodly savor of my
goddess
and the beggarly delighting
of her tender gaze on me.

perverse pageantry,
the ritual of very God above
imitated in the wasting
of this ******'s
soul.

stretched out for all to see,
just like he.
pierced through and bleeding
from head, heart, hands, and feet -
so she is pierced
for me.

not to save, but to delight.
uplifting?

bringing low
+

blasphemy, you say?
indeed.
of the deepest and the darkest
dye,
conceived in hell, the devil's spawn of this idea
swam upward to life through
layers of molten lies.

they burn, unceasing.

If you could tear one part of you and cast it far away, what ***** would you...

...fool! think not
escape to find without a light
trust not
the fickle heart to leave any part of you to lie severed
in the cold for long.
you'd search for it, and find in reunion cause
for celebration of the
darkest kind.

lay flat instead
upon the sun-pocked surface of this lightless planet
that you call a soul.
lay bare your helplessness
to the falling stars
and take the fatal blow that falls down
from on high.

no life without death,
no freedom without a brand
new set of chains.
do you actually believe it possible to change,
without such bitter pangs?

undo your only hold on life
and in the process gain
a claim to thrones eternal
and the everlasting
flame.
+

shadows of the devil's crucifix are haunting me.
desire, love, and beauty lick their lips
and wait for me.
but shifting like the broken
veil within, the pageantry I see
unfolds,
mist falls away; reality breaks free.

the shattered, broken
body of a god,
hangs limply on a tree.
lightning flashes, and a flood of unrefracted clarity
destroys the feathered patchwork
of my soul.

held aloft before him,
I scream.
forced to watch the devil's prodding,
dancing in their glee

I can never, never be free.
compelled by love more fierce than fire,
inflamed with all the agony of
purifying blood,
I lay a hand upon him,
and I weep like God above.

all this for me;                    
         all this,
                                            for heaven's enemy.

When my pen hangs over the paper, just before
I set about to write, but haven’t quite
decided yet, there’s a flash in my mind of a
thousand possibilities - all the things that
I’ve so long dreamed of writing, and more;
while empty, wordless day
follows empty, wordless day,
all the things I fear will always be an
echo in my mind
resound.

Of maidens pure, opening the door to find their
****** ‘trothed come home
to kneel at her feet
and die.
For he fought well, and nobly held the foe at
bay, and came to tell the
tale in his own blood.

Of men wandering from themselves, broken
and restless souls unhinged from any tie of
hearth and sudden infants’ squall,
or love that lasts past morning.

Of hidden forest rivers fit to burst from
aelven-home, and carry all the sweetness
of that place to mortal ears, and eyes, and nose.

Of mysteries so deep they span the starry sky
at night, looking down upon the speck of one
night-eyed man, and knowing him alone
of all his fellows.

Of birds that whisper from a golden god above,
of dragons dark and slumbering, with scales of
ore and gold.

Of a crystal statue chiseled, by a blind and
tender hand, in the shape of hidden beauty,
then revealed through all the land.

Of a toddler and a giant, of a flower
barely bloomed, of a man, and of a woman,
of the beauty of a tune.

Dreams, all dreams. Things that haven’t
yet come true. Not until I write them,
or I die before they’re through.

Just before ink meets page, this cacophony of
images resounds, and almost as if frightened,
I pull back.
All of it. I want to write all of it. I want to
lay it all down on paper. But it takes so
blasted long, just to make sure each word
comes out right, and to do it all -
all at once - is too much for any pen.
I fly too high; sometimes I forget how to
spell; how does one write the entire
dictionary of the human soul in just
a story?

He walks with me.

God the one and only monarch of all that is above,
below, and in-between,
the omnipresent majesty -
He walks with me.

Step by pitiable, dragging step, through murk
as deep as my soul's neck
and drowning in sorrows larger than
any eye can comprehend; and
walking by the babbling brook on
soft and springy green
(and yes, one day up in
the very clouds) -
He walks with me.

Pleased as man with men to dwell,
pleased to die and free from hell,
undergoing all the trials,
tribulations and temptations,
every waking moment I have lived
known because that Man lived too.

Now I lay me down to sleep,
now I rise and start to weep;
now I feel the joyous thunder,
now I cower on His shoulder;
now I lift His name on high,
now His hands are holding me.
Every broken part of me,
every soft and shattered dream,
all are safe in His embrace
and I am quickened in the race.
Because He walks with me.

I am lost and I am broken,
I am weary of the fight,
I am curled up on my bed
and thoughts are swirling through
my head.
But.
I am kept, and I am woken,
daily by a whispered grace
hands of healing lift me up,
and wash the tear stains off my face.
Depths cannot divide, nor heights bring
distance,
everywhere I go, there is no difference
for
He walks with me.

i like making homes of
places i have never been
before,
and likely never will again

you must sit still, after you've
found your momentary home
and look around as if this is all
you've ever known;
all the reasons you love
other places
now originate with
this one, in the moment
where you are
right now;
at least, that's what you
have to tell yourself
to make it feel like home

i've made homes of fallen logs,
(a new one every time)
and i've made homes of houses
where my friends have called me
theirs,
and i've made homes of tables
that we sat around
all night,
and i've made homes of faces,
kisses, hands that hold mine
tight;
and i've made homes of bedrooms
where i lay alone at night,
and restless roll through
hours of the
day

and i've made homes of feelings
- when God comes close to me -
when all the joys and sorrows of
this world have all bled through,
and i see the other side
of the page,
where the light shines

i've made homes of many things,
i do it easily,
but the one things that i
haven't done,
is make a home of me.