Lord
In the name of your son
I pray more than I can bear
I pray not wealth, nor health
But my prayer, so humble so solemn
My heart cries for this
And at the gates of mine own heart
my prayer pulverizes my needs

It is a blessing, a tremendous privilege
If only I would sleep hungry
and my name dragged--
along the streets of the monsters
and if termites nibbled by flesh like beasts
and the remains lit up for the streets of Rome

My heart beckons.
I cry so deeply in my heart
I bleed from the inside-out
and every meat and bone trembles
I need would trade Silver and Gold
I would trade the finest of robes, purple and pristine
and seek this want
burning want

For the world is a pagan temple
and the remnants of joy are defiled
and the beauty of mankind is robbed
Until it is a mass of rotten flesh
and the glory of men is a corpse

Lord,
I want more than currency can offer
I know not of what I want, none does
I want glory shore-to-shore
I want honor shore-to-shore
I want refuge shore-to-shore
I want to fight dragons
I want to walk on giants
I want to slaughter princes of darkness
I want to pound none's chest as I watch them cry
but to look and you, the battler
the victor

Lord,
I open my eyes before the mirror
and I see what you are
beauty
Then I close them
and see more beauty
I see them sinking in their horizons
Heights never scaled
Depths never sounded
Broader than broad
Deeper than Deep
Limits where words fail--
and understanding fractures

Lord,
I want righteousness
I want to stand by Him in the morning
and sleep in his arms in the night
I want to talk like He does
to walk like He walks
to have deeds so rich with Him

I want, I want, I want
a tinker clothed in purity
a beggar having assurance
clothed in the morning
His son! His Son!
getting my warm from scriptura
Until I see Him in His Glory

You failure of a poet!
Tarrying in limp indicatives,
Divorcing imperatives like a faithless groom.
You chisel verses like:
“From yonder, drank the stars.”
You wed rhyme behind every feeble poem,
Instead of stitching soul to your hollowed hymns.

A spider hangs above my ceiling
Ink-black, eight eyes on their torso
I crave a rest on its web
a newspaper, coffee steaming against my palm
But it seems inhospitable
It fancies bugs and flies, not 22-year-olds
and I bet it aches to lecture, with all might
"Get off your bed, you failure of a poet!"
But it can't, spiders lack vocabulary
Or maybe they do

I eat stones for breakfast,
chew them on the road.
But one thing—
I don’t release Barabbas.

On a butcher's list
until I'm broken, broken, broken into 1000 pieces
knees bleeding
lips stop quivering
until the started work finishes!

Crown Him,
With That Crown!
and those Crowns!
all the rest, Crown Him!
I said Crown Him!
until no more, Crown Him!

Until failure upon failure,
Until truth strips the soul bare,
Until discipline breaks the bone,
Until I bend,
Then break—
Again.
Until knees bleed,
Lips tremble,
And I shatter
Into a thousand silent pieces.

See how the faithful city--
has become a *******!
She once was full of justice;
righteousness used to dwell in her—
but now murderers!

Technology is their religion.
The machine is their god.
Power is their mantra.
Progress is their prayer.
Children are their sacrifice.
They serve Moloch!

Eyes fixed on the wineglass—
a slow, burning want.
Fingers skim leather-bound pages,
dust clinging to a revered text.

In cathedral light, I witness:
muscles twitch,
yet no arms move.
Tongue dulled, nose muted—
senses flagged.

Still,
I let the desire thaw.

Young entrails, crisply pasted on the tarmac —
Shotgun shells, spinning on the other tarmac.
One, two, three — weren’t they meant to be rubber?
Teargas canisters, flung at our brothers.

Go fetch!
“I will make a bridge, a dam, a new tarmac.”
Go fetch!
Then our many lots are tossed to the gutters.

I wonder the choice—
of poems I would pen
If I grew up with the fancy toys

I wonder the pose—
my heart might retain
If all friends stuck with a cause

I wonder the loss—
the weight of the cost
If they all treated me like a boss

I wonder the cross—
so cruel, so lost
If from the cliff I took a toss

Warheads
Crashing over our heads—
Sky-missiles
Falling on innocents.

Kings with unbuttoned shirts,
Princes cloaked in acres of influence.

Children sleeping on woven mats,
Mothers burning sticks of incense.

Gnashing of teeth—
Who shall unravel this myth?
The nearer our ends,
The clearer the path for the saints.

The crack of whips,
the clatter of wheels,
galloping horses
and jolting chariots!
Charging cavalry,
flashing swords
and glittering spears!
Many casualties,
piles of dead,
bodies without number,
people stumbling over the corpses—

Then be undone.
Then remain unfinished.
Then stay less than.
In the name of your victim.
In the vein of your false persecutions.
In the frame of your sacrificial narrative.

Father
father,
can you hear?
I come undone
fountain of mercy?
I come stained, My soul trembles low
now, in your sons name

The words flow—
a river running endlessly,
rushing through rapids of bias,
crashing down cataracts of prejudice.

The cat’s out—
out of the bag it leaps.
See that wild, spotted thing?
It’s called poetry.

The beans spill—
tumble from the plates of the young,
passed hand to hand,
from youth to age—
never the reverse.

He held my hand at first spark,  
Guided me through worlds gone dark.  

Shielded me from lies that bite,  
Kept me safe from jealous spite.  

He chose my voice to light the flame,  
From whispered truths to halls of fame.  

Man and beast have cursed His name,  
Yet none can dull His boundless flame.  

You’ve met Him—so have I,  
Jesus, Lord of earth and sky.

It's a free world,  
You choose when you're born,  
then fill a form, an early warn.  

It's a free world,
You apply to meet your end,  
Just sign the sheet and send.  

It's a free world—
so they all say,  
We chose to struggle every day.  

It's a free world,
We picked the pain, the loss, the mess—  
Of course, we chose our loneliness.  

It's a free world,
love.

The poets I saw—  
the ones they envied,  
clean-cut skill,  
perfect in articulation.  

Lips of orators,  
Shakespearean quills—  
bequeathed to their palms,  
riddle-rs.  

They pen on how to change generations,  
gain the strength of bulls,  
surf tsunamis,  
**** racism.  

The poets I saw—  
I can't unlatch their shoes.  
I only type as I wait  
for my soup to cool,  
with a tear and a red cheek.  

I only write  
to simmer the screams  
in my head.

In the day  
when sundry eyes cast envious glances,  
we share the same couch—  
your head resting in my lap,  
your temple syncing with my pulse.  

In the night
just you and me—  
or you and me separated by screens,  
your breath curling like a rattlesnake,  
your vampire teeth peeking through.  

You don’t reply.  
You answer in your head—  
or not at all.  
You skip my texts like stones on water.  

And I—  
I cannot cry.  
That’s what I know.  
I’m a man, darling.  
I have manly genes.  
So I forge words.  

I write them until I cannot,  
until the rhyme dries up—  
when all poets sleep,  
when my foes grow tired of watching,  
when creatures of the night stop chiseling the air.  

Still,  
I type—  
through the silence.

I'm not a poet
I'm just emotional
twenty-something emotions
those hit hard

I'm not a poet
only a sleepwalker,
my fingers burning to type
my laptop keyboard so well-lit
so I fall into the desire

I'm not a poet
I just whisper to a quiet altar called Hello Poetry
a fatal attraction
so I type
welcome to the cult

One Brutal Friend
Closer than my own spleen,
he calls me buddy.
“Hey, buddy!”

As if struck by a fever,
a silent malady,
he changed—
morphed into a beast,
a movie beast.
An ogre.

Where did the grandiose come from?
What street did you drag that arrogance down?
A lack of empathy,
a thirst for admiration so cruel
it drowns reason.

But he wasn’t born like this.
I knew him long ago—
when “the floor is lava” was gospel,
his bike had no spokes,
and breaking curfew was unthinkable.

Now he calls me.
Then hangs up.
Then calls again—different number.
Games.

I don’t like it.
Don’t call my second phone.
I stole it.

You don't know how wroth I feel,
You don't know.
It is better to swallow my own *****,
Gurgle my own bile down this sore throat.
You said you're ugly?
Can we trade?

It is better I wouldn't be this,
It robs my peace.
But it's not the first time,
Is it?

I took the spear,
*****, rusty spear, ugly.
I throbbed my own gut, repeatedly until I stopped bleeding.
And when my guts were hanging on the floor,
I waited till the crimson dried.

And when my entrails lay glistening on cold stone,
I took the Spear, and hurled it towards my creator.
Ooh how I repent!
I repent my God!
My heart is broken. Fragments.

I have one to blame, yes I do.
I.

But I have one to thank,
Him will I highly glorify, highly exalt.
pure as a lamb, mighty in glory.
Christ! Christ! Christ!

My King and My Lord I repent.
Can I put this filth on you? On those anvil shoulders?
Yea?
Why?


I repent!

"From dust to dust", they say.
so what are we?
wet clay?

Nah, that's not me.
I'm a ***,
Sculpted in the palms of the Divine.
Designed in holy thoughts,
Crafted craftily.

And so, the ***.
Marred in the hands of the potter.
Tempted to loathe itself
and cast it's image on the ground,
let's weep.

But then something,
The vessel that was marred in the hands of the potter,
was made into a new vessel.
Praise the Lamb of God!