“Why seek the Living One among the dead?“
asked angels to a few who‘d watched the Lord
be crucified—His blood and life outpoured,
“He is not here! He‘s risen as He said!“
In days before these women wept in grief
as Jesus‘ lifeless body, wrapped in shroud,
lay buried, guarded, sealed from Paschal crowd,
but by God‘s plan entombment would be brief!
His slaying served full payment for the debt
incurred against Himself by mankind‘s sin.
His raising proved His sacrifice the win
to satisfy God‘s wrath, my debts forget!
Because Christ Jesus died but ever lives,
the sin of all who trust Him God forgives!

do you remember when we use to play the nights away and find comfort in each others arms—now it's just a cold and desolate day with the sun set in my eyes and rays in my blood stream; and when i'm alone, i can still feel your eyes set on destruction as they stare me down into a little war path of lusted rage. it was you that held me when sweat matted my skin in drops of rain, when blood coated my lips in passionate ***; it was you that varnished my skin into the glass tiles when i rocked back and forth in the middle of my bath tub waiting for the ground to descend into nothingness.

and now it's you, that disbands my brain like an array of dying stars in the sky we once painted together with our trembling hands and bloodshot eyes. and now, it's me; it's me that stands in the middle of the street with blurry cars running by like angry lions in heat, fighting for the heat of the moment because they're too ******* stupid to eat their way through the decayed animals that are too far gone into the wilderness of disaster—and with their bones like melted clay in their stomachs, i stand in the middle of a highway with my hands thrown aside like a cape of darkness.

was it that your were too tired of spending contagious sad nights with me that you had to pack your stuff in a tiny suitcase that could barely fit the words I’m sorry into the brackets of their shoulders. maybe it was the way i scratched your back during steamy tales in between the sheets that scared away the words i love you from your mouth—or the way i had to pick up the pieces of the faulty mirror for you to even utter my name from your rocky eyes. i think it was the stitches in my marred bones that threw you off guard; they were too weak to carry your ego on felted silks because while you thought art was an object of disguise. i thought it was an object demanding to be felt through brittle streaks of dull colors.

it was when you shouted at my writings for feeling too much when i whispered that my words were messages in disguise because our feelings were too much to handle—and that’s when you broke the handle to the cracked, wooden door that held more blood than the inside of our hollow scar tissue. it was then when i realized that—

my fingers hurt from unbuttoning your skin, unzipping your veins into two split pieces of heated metal that slice my wrists open with uncertainty. it was the lines that the scars created that dismembered my wrists from my hands and clawed the nails off with broken bites of disintegrated love into my knuckles—when the cemented wall hit my fist with action-packed wrath of fervent wisps of outpoured whiskey into your mouth, into my breath, into your eyes, and into my clenching veins is when i knew the nights we spent were only tales of childish foreplay—heavy innuendos of vapid, misused paint on cracked paintbrushes and oil-based pens.

i’m tired too. i’m tired of my bleeding fingers used to scatter your drops of paint onto the pallet of my skin while i had to sew the seams of my veins into a cross so maybe I could find a way to God while my God was too busy fondling the idea of pain into my eyes. i’m tired of my oil-based pen handling my hand with sacred demons barking at the nails stuck in my brain while my brain fights for some sort of unasked forgiveness that i didn’t know i needed.

it was then that i realized that the milky ways in your troubled soul carried out the stars in my name—that’s what sold me the first night we met—only, i wish we hadn’t met.

Paint a bitter picture
with a letter full of truth.
Let it be offensive.
Let it be uncouth.
Even if it hurts me
Have your feelings be outpoured
because I'd rather be
rejected
than to simply be
ignored.

Take me
Take me from this land
Use me
Use all that I am

Send me
Send me where I must go
Let me
Let me make others know

Give me
Give me to the lost souls
Show me
Show me all of my roles

When I only want myself
When I'm caught in something else
I'm not looking for what's right
I'm just giving up the fight

When I lose track of my way
When I let go of my faith
I'm not hopeless in Your grace
I'm the one You came to save.

Pour me
Pour me as an offering
Wear me
Wear me down and I will sing

Use me
Use me, use me Lord
Take me
Take me and my life outpoured

When I seem beyond return
When my life has ceased to burn
I am never out of reach
Lord please give me constant peace

When I forget why I'm here
When my focus disappears
I am being made anew
I can still be used by You.

Use me
Use me, gracious Lord
Take me
Take this life that You've outpoured.

Sister, I tremble in the shade
Of your impending absence feared
Its shadow looming ominous
Sister, does anything ever die?

Brother, this place that we have made
Our garden mutually beloved
And all things must pass to dust
Brother, is permanence a lie?

Sister, if the leaves are golden now
We may be sure they’re soon to fall
We are not immortal evergreen
Sister, you won’t forget to pray?

Brother, though I know not how
I’m sure souls needn’t finally part
But did the poet weigh his words
Brother, can nothing gold e’er stay?

Sister, gold is too precious for rust
But listen to the call, ahead
We cannot neglect our course
Sister, are you glad you came?

Brother, although part we must
And suffer heart-strings joined to cut
Love, still whole, knows no regret
Brother, you won’t forget my name?

Sister, though the country’s breadth
Brings doleful separation on
Love’s memory scorns the divide
Sister, is it not true?

Brother, O, it feels like death
When love bridges the awful gap
It splinters, weeping, grieves the loss
Brother, what can I do?

Sister, dear, look to the Bread
The cup divine, I am outpoured
Souls mingle in the Victim’s blood
Sister, shan’t we run this race?

Brother, I see now in the Head
His every member blessed and joined,
And so unbound by space or time
Brother, there we shall embrace.

I know you're sitting there now-
Close by, at his bedside;
In that white hospital room,
Watching the ebbing distance in his eyes.
He's in a state of drifting, floating,
Here one moment, gone another,
And sometimes you wonder where
He floats to in subconsious slumber.

And from months of running;
Chasing currents of flowing streams,
You heavy heart grows weary
Listening to his slowing heart beat.
You've been holding on so long,
But now you watch him slip away:
Like water out of your palm;
Like light at the dusk of day.

Of all of a father's love outpoured,
I pray you'll hold on to his memory,
As the arms of life's oceans pull him in:
Out of your arms, out of your reach.

-c.t.

You are the vine I am the branches
Connected to you the source of all life
You are the vine I am the branches
Connected to you I bear great fruit
You are the well source of living water
I am a cup for your blessings outpoured
You are my shelter strong tower in the storm
You are the rock my salvation
You are my solid ground and firm foundation
You are the source of life everlasting
You love a sacrifice of praise and prayer and fasting
Apart from you I am nothing I am empty
In you I live and breathe and have my being

always a return and as moving forward:
alway in retreat,
  to just quote empedocles:
         will you not end the terrible sounds of your ******?
do you not see that in your thoughtlessness you
are eating one another?
      indeed: what is the ego: if not a second mouth?
can i concede that this might be poorly written?
well: listen to a dialogue on scientology,
         conducted by joe rogan interviewing
a documentary maker louis therou(x), and try
to imagine how ****** writing can become a forest-fire
in society... i'd agree with you that heidegger
was terrible at using language, but then his magnum opus
took me 2 years to read...
                       and if you're interested in
the history of the third *****, outside of content,
it would be better for you to read the context of a hopeful
university professor than, say: reading the mein kampf.
          just saying... i'd **** out the politics of the zeitgeist
and look a bit deeper into the affairs...
    or how germany degenerated, what, given the treaty
of versailles?
                          how desperate people had to become
to later turn into: a volk of beethoven, schubert, schumann...
and the dr. satans of their days that numbered
  a span a 6 years.
                              i abhor psychology, i really have
not competent theory in this realm of learning, i'm sure
there is a competent cohort in some stratum of society
that could explain: no soul (psyche)... so these theories
better than i could. yet back to the greeks...
            psyche                  and narcissus -
a sound marriage?
                                  given these times... yes...
in that much needed allegory...
              originally it was narcissus and echo -
                                             but those days are seemingly
over: there is no longer talk of psyche and cupid -
             the suicide rates of teenagers?!
                         i have no need to treat the ego as a concept
that becomes a tulip, a rose and a field of lavender
  with freud, or c. g. jung... i need not these mental
stratas, these levels of codification:
accordingly with empedocles: my ego is just a second
mouth...
               that's it... there's nothing else;
and according to what is "good" quality writing...
             no one cares if ezra pound what he wrote, as if
he was writing in a telegram mode... but they sure as hell
give a **** saying: oh ya ya... t. s. elliot: fan-*******-tastic!
     even though ezra was the editor of the wasteland...
  so is "good" writing merely something pop,
and therefore simple? appealing?
                         to me: good writing is difficult;
      no one cares whether kraszewski is good,
                      most find him a bore, as a historian they
prefer to ref. pavel jasienica... why?
                   the former outpoured 30 books... the latter two...
and both wrote about the same time period of
the rise and fall of the polish-lithuanian commonwealth...
i'm all for intricacy, i don't like neat properly folded
napkin talk...
                       there's no need to stand for manners
and etiquette in general in writing... *** is never neat:
it's sloppy...
                                 unless you pay for it, so it then
becomes a contract... which doesn't mean that i sometimes
didn't leave the brothel after an hour and did have
an ******... and the ******* would look at me
with this horror of: huh?
                      jerking off? well: i wouldn't say
24 times a day... that would be pointless...
                            but the cult of the wendols -
which, as you might imagine, is borrowed -
                                       coincides with what happened
two years ago? it might be three or four; this english
politician found it abhorring that a woman was found
breast-feeding in public...    what the ****?
                                       can i have the other ******?
i dare say no one has really concerned themselves with
this realm of sexuality: of a husband competing
                    for the same affection as a baby might -
i'm not sure about the reasons for trying to explore this
very "sensitive" realm... but when a woman films herself
doing sexualised provocations (""?) and posts them online,
in the public sphere of things...
                                     you're thinking: maybe that
"parasite" (because that's how we're born, via the parasitic
route... that's not new... white tadpoles in some juice)
        well... that's the eroticism of the cult of the wendols:
i'm borrowing from cinema to understand something...
           there's this politician having a *****-fit when seeing
a woman breast feed in public...
   and then there's me and: the annoying brat screaming!
a baby screaming!
                            i can, but i don't have to look at the woman
breast-feeding: sure... she's pregnant and she's doing
this upper-body only dance...
                             i have a sheep-belly (socratic term
for bloated from alcohol) - the ****** element disappears
when the baby is ******* on it...
                when she's still pregnant and feeling *****
after walking the ****** Gobi desert for 9 months?
      well... you certainly can't feel guilty doing it
on a regular basis... given the chance that when you
imitate circumcision, the veins enricling that "excess"
could suddenly be ruptured... imagine that...
        death... by pleading out via a throbbing ****.
in the film, the wendols have a torso of a pregnant woman
dangling from their necks...
                  my, that really would be a rare paganism,
what with the original paganism and those *******
statues. (13th warrior... iraqi joins 12 vikings to defeat
the cannibals).

Halfway through the year time crept
Days seemed to flash like thunder
each vanishing by to its paradise
Sometimes I wonder about the days
If they will reappear above the mirage
far beyond the ever breathing skies
above the unreachable starry skies
above what is unfathomable and unattainable
and if these days sat on a mountain?
would it ever sink or be weighed down?
submerging below the strata and volcanic tension

aren’t we all stuck in a driven world
where souls are trying, prying, crying
each trying to find a place, some freedom
a resolution above all the substitutions

Yet as she sat at the fountains of love
all she could find was second class crowns
rusted copper coins sunk at the bottom
and all their wishes echoed eons ago
articulated with tainted rosy promises
pardoned within a series of mysteries
as if happenstance as delicacy was outpoured
and as she sailed, willowing voices unfolded
and all she could visualise was the future ahead

Gaze into the heart of love
Pierce the veil of the inner chamber
To find a treasure more precious
Than all the riches of the earth
Sacrifice and pain are there
As are pure joy and blessed life
In the heart of love is loss and gain

A heart of love does not leave because you tell it
It carries you when you can’t go on
Gives you strength when you are weak
And helps you find the path you seek
It reaches out to catch you
It gives comfort and warmth in the cold dark place
And sometimes it stays near, but gives you space

The heart of love is selfless seeking the other’s good
It does not take, nor ask more than it should
It requires no reward, but a happy heart is riches outpoured

How I wish that I could help you; make you whole again
But even if I could make it better, what then?
I wish I could give you comfort; tell you it’s alright
But it’s not right now and you are stuck in the night
I wish I could give you hope; that all will be well soon
But I don’t know when life will be back in tune
There are many things I don’t know lots that I can’t do
If you let me I might help, but that is up to you
There are some things I can do promises I can make:
That I will be here however long it takes
I can offer you my shoulder I can offer you my ears
I can offer you my hand, and a hug to calm your fears
I can offer you my patience and offer you my time
I can offer you my friendship and all that is mine
I would offer you the world the very sun if I could
I’d go to any length to hear and know you were good
Forgive me if I come on a little strong
It’s just that I get anxious when I hear something is wrong
I internalize, I empathize, and yes I slightly obsess
It’s a blessing and a burden though I must confess
I would not have it another way it is a part of me
It is my heart of love a part of my identity
And so it is and here we are: the most unlikely of friends
And may the parts we play in each other’s lives...
Never find their end!

Rest easy in the loving arms of the Lord
Healing begins: the merciful heart outpoured
Find peace in the Shepherd and Savior
Lamb of the flock and part of the fold
Honesty is the first step on the long road
Forgiveness the second on Life’s Healing Journey
Take comfort for you have the light of Christ
Be still be quiet be calm
Let your life be a Psalm
When I am near you, my soul finds rest
And out of the darkness I see how much I’m blessed
My burden is easy when I lay it at your feet
And when I look at you my joy is complete

My little steps leisured my way
Under the enlightening moonlight
Basking and bathing
Under the neighbouring sun
A surging sweat outpoured from inside
I cradled along asteroids
Beaming with flashes of lighting
Puzzled with a deep void
While a hard stone hit me at the back
A pricking and piercing of needle
As I shivered , tangled in a constellation
Life was still full of mysterious magnificence
I collided and crushed against a wall
As my time went backstage..

Come back to me with all your heart
Don't let fear keep us apart
Turn from your sin and cling to the Lord
Be wholly changed by this Love outpoured
The world is screaming for our attention
While He patiently waits for our affection
In this dry and barren land
Our hearts learn to understand
How to walk with the Lord and hear His voice
And, back in His arms, we will rejoice
For in the desert there is suffering and pain
And we cry out for a single drop of rain
But there is a focus and a silence
With a beauty all its own
And in the midst of hatred and violence
We know we are never alone
You have moved my heart in ways I can't contain
The words are filled with healing and pain
You have pierced me Oh Lord with your unfailing love
And I am powerless to resist this precious holy flood
Your music stirs my soul to sing to you
King of my life and all that is good and true
In these forty days help me focus now
Help me hear you in the silence somehow
In this time of trial and testing
Be at peace my soul for, in God's merciful heart, you are resting
We walk in the light with darkness around us
We are free because God's grace has found us
Today, right now, my soul has been stirred
For we live not by bread, but by God's word

I plumped myself down in a corner
Sat there for what it seemed like forever
My expressions an inscrutable mixture

Tormented in a blazing invisible fire
My whimpers and groans leaped
higher and higher

My misery and distress outpoured
and my pain screamed and roared

Scared to utter a word or speak
I only managed a shriek and a squeak

On this October bluey night
I  simply wished to disappear from sight

The angels sing in Heaven above
Full of adoration and of love
Trumpets blare and harps will play
To bring in a brand new day
Christ the King is on His throne
Praise to Him who stands alone
Far beyond the mortal man
Are the workings of His hand
None can fathom the depths of the Lord
The price he payed in love outpoured
Dance with the drums; the pulsing beat
Sing your praises and, for joy, repeat
Lift your voices with the Heavenly Host
Glory to Father, Son, and Holy Ghost
Praises fill the air as music fills the sky
Praise to the Lion and the Lamb, God Most High
King of Kings, Lord of Lords, Prince of Peace
May the songs that we sing never cease
Songs from Heaven ring over the earth
Sung with joy, laughter and great mirth
Let me sing to you with every part of me
I speak from my heart and soul you see
Remind me Lord that I am because you are
And even when I can’t feel you, you are never far
You hold me in your hand and sing a love so great
You taught me with stories that I could relate
You keep watch over me as I sleep and dream
You are in my corner, you are on my team
Our prayers rise up with our song
And in our frailties you make us strong
The songs from Heaven sing the Hymn of Your glory
Telling, to all the nations and people, Salvation’s Story
The songs from Heaven give glory to your name
Let your people on Earth echo the same

Amen

When God set forth His purposes... He merely spoke each word,
Yet from such powered holiness... we then see what occurred…
The light proceeded from His Throne... established from the start,
Fixed steadfastly right there, alone... all futures to impart…
From light came forth both time and space... as energies outpoured,
Amazing power, amazing grace... yet only from the Lord…
No other gods took part at all... this Universe to make…
The Lord made this great miracle... yet for His Own Name’s sake…

And when the swirling Cosmos turned... what wonders were revealed,
The sun itself then shone and burned... for Earthly light to yield…
This speck in space then came to be... this awesome planet Earth,
This planet showed God’s majesty... His mastery and worth…
Such that He then created life... yet with new life within,
Then He gave Adam Eve his wife... and that’s where we begin…
From Genesis and Eden’s home... from innocence and more,
Till Man’s allegiance chose to roam... and sin became his flaw…

And oh, what tragedies came then… time’s ballad tells us all,
God's records kept accounts of men... God’s books gave Him recall…
The laws Man broke, the failures, too... the battles and the wars,
Till centuries created you… as Nature took its course…
And here you are, this very day... these words to see and hear,
Time’s ballad has so much to say... to cherish and revere…
That’s why it’s up to you to choose... while still alive on Earth…
Will you trust God? Will you refuse? You’ll get what you deserve…

Time marches on... time bids goodbye... time ticks and takes its share…
Yet there’s still time, before we die... to seek the Lord in prayer…


Denis Martindale May 2018.

Sometimes bitter, still fresh and bright
These are the traits of newly minted life
This is life in Christ Jesus our Lord
This is precious myrrh outpoured
The fragrance of our earthly lives
The incense of our prayers as they rise
Chew the fresh mint's leaves of green
And experience just what I truly mean
We were not promised an easy road
Full of sun and nary a cloud to be found
There may be persecution or disbelief
And days and nights of such great grief
There will be hard times and bitterness
But life is so, so much more than this
It is full of promise and full of hope
Full of awe and wonder and beauty
It is joy in sorrow and peace to help cope
I feel its protection is our sacred duty
Each one a note of clearest purest tone
Some cut short before they were grown
Unable to add their song to the symphony
Voices echoing out into God's own infinity
Truly, life can be bitter, but it can be sweet
If we can humble ourselves
If we can wash each other's feet

Holy Mary crowned with glory
Bright shining as the sun
Queen of Mercy and of love
You crush the evil one
We are in your tenderness
In your kindness and endless grace
We are your children who you love to bless
And wrap with sweetest embrace
Gentle woman, blessed mother
Obedient to Our Father's will
Your faith in God was like no other
And that courage inspires still
Taken wholly up to Heaven
When this life on earth was through
Now we ask your intercession,
Pray for us in all we say and do
Dear mother by virtue of the union
Lead us to your son our Lord
That we too may live in communion
In that Life and Love outpoured