This looks like nature.
Standing on the edge on the edge of a bridge
above a man made pond
surrounded by asphalt trails
trees cracking under pressure.
I walk amongst the preplanned trails.
A pseudo-wilderness.
Parked my car in a designated spot.
The deep blue sly outlined
by artificial sounds and light.
Listening to the sounds of the Earth
thru headphones.

Runners cross by…
To my left is an old Hackberry
Celtis occidentalis.
I’ve learned about nature
in textbooks.
This particular Hackberry is covered in a vine.
It’s struggling to survive against an exotic species.
Further on down my path is humankind
“beautifying” nature
with preplanned gardens
gazebos
marble benches donated by nature loving proprietors
next to sawed off stumps
these benches give me a decent place to rest.

As I continue my walk I come across
an unsightly dead Black Cherry
Prunus serotina.
Soon it will be disposed of
by a chainsaw.
Nature’s blemishes.
Please help us keep the Gardens clean.
Trash around a metal can.
Why do human ***** monuments in monuments?
Dominance over nature.

The flowers will begin to bloom soon.
This family has come to soon to take pictures.
Spring has only begun to spring.

Please teach your children to appreciate nature.

I turn back towards my car.
Signs guide me on the path to return.
The road most taken.
Of to my right is an emergency station
push for help
nature is being taken.
I pass by a stream pristine
if you do not count the five plastic bottle, crumbles of paper and shoe.
The trees above me blow in a soft breeze
which reminds me of air conditioning.
There are areas marked off for protection.
Protection from whom?
We’ve already safeguarded it in gaudy surveying tape.

Resting upon a donated bench I watch a maintenance man
raking gumballs.
Continuing down my path I think
“How long have I walked?”
Suddenly,
A golf cart coming around the corner overtakes me.
Pushing me onto the grass.
My feet sink into the muddy ground.
I’ll have to wash my shoes tonight.

Coming across native grass still smoldering
a controlled burn.
I realize
humankind has learned to perform the duties of our mother
better than she can.

I pause

lose myself for a moment
before I remember
I have things to do
and
there’s a two-hour parking limit.
On my way out I discard my trash in a dumpster
rolling my window down
to feel the breeze once more.

Hey there (if you're there at all),
I sincerely hope all is well.
Guess you're really swamped with work,
honestly no need to explain, I could just tell.
See the thing is... the thing is, there is actually a thing.
Something has come up.
It's quite hard to explain cause I don't yet know what we are,
so if we are kind of a 'thing', then I want to breakup.
You don't write to me any more
and I really miss those emails
witty comments, sarcasm and ******* banter
strung together with immaculate grammar and ample clichés.
You seem to have forgotten that I didn't fall for you back then
and very little had changed since.
So three years later when you contacted me out of the blue
I was hardly convinced.
As a preplanned holiday got in our way
placing you 5 hours behind and 5000 miles apart
it was that daily email exchange over a month
which gave whatever it is we have now, its start
not calls, not facebook nor skype,
just words, simple phrases and our ability to type.
Essence of your raw personality seeped through
enticing me to a very pure, untampered version of you.
Since I returned, since we met, things haven't been the same.
Are you trying to gain the upper hand of this game?
Because, I wasn't even aware we were playing,
so technically neither can win, such a shame.
I appreciate your intellect, ambition, success
and middle class upbringing,
those random gestures of affection
and passionate *******.
I understand your commitments
and the hierarchy of your priority que
But just because I get it
doesn't mean I'll agree to put up with them too.
It's true, my future is rather blurry
but that's a different thing.
I might be chronically needy
but I'm not asking you for a ring.
I do however fancy flowers
and would really like to go dancing
a daily doze of 'you're thinking of me'
topped with very large amounts of cuddling.
If all I wanted was to get laid,
there was plenty of opportunity to be swayed.
Time to end this hand has come a little too late
with a Royal Flush in Spades.
I will miss those endearing emails,
and the 12th floor of your office with its magnificent view.
I will miss the idea of having a man in my life,
but I won't so much miss you.

i am abel’s fiery tongue upon this earth,
cannibalistic in the raw sense of things,
i spoil my kittens like i might a human being,
which does not mean philosophy meets status quo
whereupon no thought is doubted or thought doubted
equates a sensual realism, for the stalemate, this no man’s land
of lettering suggested we go one step further -
i can peer into hell and only see personal misery,
and in all that i see heaven as a collectivisation of misery
of the parched lips riddling the desert sands -
without asking whether thought is truly doubt
or a moral compass we decided upon, that the senses be doubted
and thought proclaimed freer than our allowances consider utilised
or without utility essentially kept (it’s what’s
called congregating on the word reality without a congregation
on the word thought that speaks to western society the most),
for i can allow one thing but not the other -
i too claim the cartesian mechanisation of the senses
by the double inversion of thought: a. doubt thinking to provide existence
without thinking - automation,
b1. doubt the doubting thought and enclose zoologically
further in, to stress the coordinates of preplanned execution doubtless,
b2. doubt reality to undue the method of doubting thought that encompasses
the prime realism of things without thought,
b3. doubt the existence of things to think - keith lemon saying the word... tragic.
but the revisionary trick came when the cartesian model imploded
and said: thought proves being! thought proves existence!
hence no doubt was allowed, a bit fahrenheit 451 to be honest:
i.e. read any book you like... but don’t doubt its content,
think it through, think it out, elevates you into the agglomerate inclusion
with favoured numbering - keeps the “idiots” out, steady on
the beef in the banquet **** of bulimic excesses... steady...
rein in the oesophagus octopi - or like cancer and lobster in italy said:
death by numbers - bulging weight of the nuns chuckling a cha cha cha.
so why did post-cartesian thought engage with heidegger, why
did thinking suddenly uncouple itself from doubting to provide
the “perfect” existential parameter of undoubted sight
given that doubting passed from the realm of thought and into the realm of being?
‘i doubt i was there, i doubt it, i thought about it, but thinking about it
was truly discouraging to be here, so i thought i was there,
and that mediated the equation perfectly: i doubted i was here
but thought i was there, in the end i was here and therefore couldn’t doubt it,
but thinking about being here bored me, so i was “there” doubting
hopefully - rather than doubtfully hopeful of not being there and thinking
that being "there" was me being there would justify thought and doubting ease erasing, i came to the conclusion that being the lambs for the slaughter was enough, so i was here and thought... dasein! in the rally of relays i was "here" disclosing what thought was supposed to be when usurped from doubt and made surprisingly moral. posterior interior pumped suffocating by the toilet rim signalling blitzkrieg ***** and goosebumps on the guillotine ready to pluck a goose for broth instead of flight!’
sage of the black forest has spoken, shush: all the rat skeletons will now
be used for a xylophone symphony.
well it was once called mathematical akin to grammatical,
but so much was lost in the forgotten art of teaching grammar -
adjectives were used to allow timing, adverbs for spacing -
and a lot of emoticons replaced ****** features used once - like an itchy nose
or a half brow of sympathy stretched into an expression of surprise -
but so much was lost, the arts became post-cubism exact in
lacking all inspirational overtones enraging a schooled expression to canvas
a pope might admire, least the randomised passerby.

only in england, where so few philosophical
works are actually read,
it's apparently enough to cite Locke,
the famous island isolation -
after watching a program on bipolar disorders /
manic depression and what not
started watching a rekindling of
the premier league from the years 2002 / 3...
with the years' music in the background -
great memories Wayne Rooney was still
at Everton, and David ****** had a moustache
and a ponytail standing in goal at Arsenal,
Ole "babyface" Solskjær was playing at
Manchester United - the white stripes came out
teasing a breakthrough just before
their elephant album - well, that's that,
but this programme about the manics -
you'd think that england was really accommodating
to eccentrics as once Vladimir expressed -
he's half-informed, 'hey Vlad... you have half
the picture, honest to god...'
but i want to deviate from any sort of scrutiny
on the subject - the "sane" people think
doctors are holy - what's with this notion that
some surgeons don't leave surgical equipment
in bodies, and that misdiagnosis doesn't happen?
well... so much for deviation:
does it begin with questioning your thinking
rather than questioning existence?
half-baked activists - no "change the world"
prompt? i guess you could say that -
no qualification credentials and you're just
a street-cleaner, apparently - a street-cleaner
in the sense of shuffling tripping up on
banana skins (chris rea - god's great banana skin -
https://goo.gl/3JYJYV - great song) or waltzing
on autumn leaves - suddenly there's a new
zoology department at the London zoo -
changed sphynxes on two legs rattling piggies
of savings they never made other than what they
picked up from the street - besides that -
well, you can resort to the Koran -
or at least i find a way to mediate it - back to
descartes: an example of good through doubt,
meaning i'm a quasi-believer, but not, as sartre
would claim: an unbeliever - since doubt equates
itself with good faith, sartre's doctrine teaches
bad faith... and if the opposite of bad is good,
then the opposite of doubt is denial (the un- prefix
summary when coupled to belief);
so this one manic depressive was describing
a moment of solipsism in terms of annie lennox
singing to him - well, she was, the man just
experienced a moment of solipsism, a thought
experiment in subconsciously, and he simply didn't
realise it - like i told you - so few works of
philosophy are read in england, most of these books
try to follow the route nietzsche attempted:
to write very little when others wrote a great deal...
and then what? sit on a poet's laurels and ****
and smile that all too deceptive smile of some sort
of accomplishment? that'll hardly work -
imagine thirst, and hunger, and put that into writing -
and here we have the telegraphic technique -
as suggested by the author of slaughterhouse 5 -
m. kurt vonnegut - well obviously you will not find
any comparisons - but then at Yale the professor of
"creative" writing or whatever they call it
just cited the first line of the first canto - so i ask you:
why would you want to write something as if
it's an instruction manual for a television set?
oddly enough too, the Florence school of art technique
wasn't passed on - while Albrecht Dürer kept his
a secret, unto himself - lucky man, a sad man,
but a lucky man - i actually like his selfishness.
no, they don't read philosophy in england,
and i can testify with the usual saying they have:
'he's lost touch with reality', what the hell is that?
no, i don't have the stamina for any secret society
crap - i get the comedy of life,
a comfortable positioning on the ****** laze -
limit all of life's temptations and live out
a slightly impoverished life - premonition i'd say
now, had enough money back when i was making
investments in a music & book library -
now i'm full - now my turn to give -
oh look: a bunch of gnat memory readers
easily distracted by traffic lights - we've all been
there - two years and a few books in between
it took me to read Heidegger's being and time -
TWO YEARS! and how much came in between?
sunset upon glee of the sea - Ezra's
broken token to the conjunctions
        and
                and
                        and and and and
i don't mind - man lived to be poetry's prefect of
the 20th century - see, a whole group of them, not a solitary
macaroon fetishist that Proust was -
and moby **** will have his days counted,
but not by me - there's no point being a Samson
keeping all the pillars - actually, that's the point,
to be Samson, take a few literary pillars
and then the whole **** temple collapses -
so with two or three of them taken by you
the rest you leave a rubble - turning over to the leisure
of poetry - Vladimir, haven't you heard?
people in england think all poetry is depressing,
depressing? 'what's normal?' is another maxim
in england - singing on the train is forbidden, also -
hey, social criticism is better than running around
with a kalashnikov - turn words into bullets
and mown the strata - and mown the strata -
                 and mown the strata -
give up on preplanned expeditions - only gymnasts
and tightrope walkers do pre-planning -
patience and constant innovative practice - ****'s jazz,
there was no classical composer in their midst with
a silencer of the music, music scores -
how they crammed an entire orchestra in those
little heads of theirs, i'll never know -
so this manic depressive man cited solipsism without
knowing it, and it made him very, very uncomfortable...
i wouldn't have sent him to a psychiatrist,
i wouldn't even want to go to one voluntarily -
i'd have sent him to the library -
but oh, oh, more and more libraries are closing -
while the zenith in my local library was
Thomas Mann's Doctor Faustus - everything else
was toilet paper.

There is no great guide and conductor
taking you through some great plan.
you wont get through any golden gates
because you were scared into doing good.
chances are chances and wishes are wishes,
not a preplanned destiny.
Do things because theyre right
not because some character in the clouds
told you to.

guide yourself through good and bad
have faith in that maybe we're responsible
for our own greatness.
have faith in us as a species and not a
sim-ulated play mate.

i sleep with a light on
because I'm scared of the dark.
my mind tells me there are dangers of the dark.
sleeping in the dark wont hurt me.
in many ways the dark is my light.
you might think so too.

On reaching the brim
You fall or swim
Similar the case is
In my race
After getting what i thought
Still the situation
Which needs to be fought
Why no calmness
Such anonymous awkwardness
Feeling jolly
Coz i filled my liability
But still unhappy
Coz preplanned
Which calls for the meaning
And that is not happening
Can't i get
Is this what i meant
If this is all
Then y anxiousness
With emotions on
Such anonymous awkwardness

If only I knew then what I know now
How now brown cow
Bully bully
Can't go back in time
Those who stole committed the crime

It's all about chuts and ladders
Gets me madder what does it matter?
Maybe life was all preplanned

Are we all just defective units and meat puppet style robots that once existed off in a far away land
I once knew a billionaire man who killed himself
I knew a happy drunken *** who never had ten dollars
Which one is richer?

D. Clare

She is not a preplanned list
Or a recipe of perfection.

She is not a dictionary of
Adjectives or an inventory of
The most beautiful things that designs
A flawless human being.

She is not a checklist
Of qualities that makes her
An exception.

She is raw and flawed.

She has emotions that makes
Her unique.

She is like the broken tiles
That is used to create an artwork.

She is a rain day
That forms a glorious, and
Vibrant rainbow.

She is the mud
That sustains the growth
Of gorgeous flowers.

She is a mushroom
That grows in the wilderness.

She is an old blanket
That warms my heart on a
Cold day.

She is imperfect
But that is what makes her whole and
That is what makes her, her.

And I love her
Twice as much for it.

When all my world had turned to grey,
Colour had gone and nothing stayed.
      Reality was harsh to withstand,
      Dream was the only solace.
          When all seasons grew worse,
           An Eastern wind was the only support.
Someone from east;
   Predestined or preplanned from heaven,
   Blew soothingly in my life then.
        A bond much stronger nurtured within,
        Something was clear ,would last forever.
            Someone was the change,
            Shooting stars had crossed the sky again.
Life had never been so beautiful before,
Colours were brighter and vibrant more.
   Knew not I then, rock heart replaced
by softer when.
    Tuning of life had slowed down,
    Rythm of heartbeat had paced up.
        I knew that Someone was the
                      Change.
  Looking in the eyes of love ,
    I knew I had found my precious man.
   Colours had never gone, seasons
  were not the same.
    He was the change, he is the change.
    He is the one, he is my gain.

Tis a question of time
that bringeth my words
simultaneous or vanished
I wonder the worlds
Tis it here or there
now or then
hath it gone away
or doth it play again
I hath sought reality
to ask which one
would it be tomorrow
or that which is done
Must it be one to suppose
a looketh upon lines
choosing thy path
amongst many of a time
Millions of possibles
thou has in thy hands
or tis but a chance
or of thine own plans
and what reality
twould you play
a destiny
or thy own
I ask thee
is it preplanned
the winding road
home?

I took a sip of a rolled paper
with a burning end.
As I expel the smoke there is Grey ashes
which are my passions left out.
My heart is nothing but the ashes.
It chokes with the smokes which make it unlit.
It may be impure.
But no use in blaming me!
Blame the person who made it dark!
My destiny wasn’t preplanned
it’s being created by me!
I love to sacrifice myself for Omega
just like matchstick sacrifices for light.
Nothing is better than being alone
with a rolled paper.
I just wanted to be a bright star
on a dark blue sky.

I felt it on the back of my neck,
a puff at first, licking at the sweat
soaked threads of tangled hair
that lay complacent on a broad reach

Telltales of the human kind that
whisper to the meta states before
transforming into siren calls of
change, something different,
something new, something
longed for in the quiet doldrums
trapped by endless drifting
on the boundless sea

My body turned instinctively
to face the tease, while my mind
remained behind, still stuck in
the quicksand grip of fading
memories, and slow surrender

And then the spray, from a swell
across the bow, a jolt of innocence
against a wall of indecision,
splashing hard my cheeks and
forehead, stinging splintered
lips and wincing unfocused eyes

A sudden rise came next, followed
by its fall, to weave their way into
a gentle roll that slowly
rocked the beam

Announcing arrival of the gusts,
scattered bursts at first, a panoply
of warm and cool that pressed
against my back and swam around
to fill, then leave the yearning sails

I hauled the sheets in closer, hoping
to capture the moment of the wind,
and though my preplanned destination
called the course I had been on, I
turned the wheel against the grain
and bid farewell, to the lee shore

I gazed out into the distance, where
whitecaps smiled at me, I smiled back
cranking sheets to the full
measure of the keel, and rode the
surging waves oncoming, taking
the howling wind on filling,
with its breath

my lungs, once again

Carry a humble confidence
With you
Everywhere you go

2. Be spontaneous
Because the best memories (typically)
Are never preplanned

3. Realize that you are
Beautiful
Intelligent
Warm-hearted
But never
Allow any one of those traits
Define you

4. Learn to love yourself
Before deciding to fall in love
With another

5. Never compare yourself
To something or someone
That you were never meant to be
Compare yourself to who you were
And will be

6. Never crave validation
Of your worth
Through the meaningless words
Of people who don't truly understand
Or know you

7. Most importantly
Live.
In.
The.
Moment.
Because life's too precious
To have your focus be in anyplace
But where you currently are

Everything you and me, a preplanned destiny's game,
It started slowly, what seemed like everglowing flame,
A shattered dream with pieces ablazed
The dark night sky, the stars scattered
Like us, light distances apart.

On  a  lightening  day
both were  in  close  mode.



  On a  lightening  hour
a  river 's    water  became
charged  and  killed
all  living    creatures­.

That   lightening  burnt  your
  red  lips
made  it  black  lips.


That­  lightening  also  
  did  burn your long
hair  jot   to  compete
in  fashion  week  and  
to  have  a  second  boyfrie­nd.

This  was  pure
preplanned  attack
artificial    lightening ­ of  your
boyfriend-scientist
to  you.

/not exactly an easy poem to write...

let's just say that i was going to title
this poem: 3am extravaganza...
  and write a revealing diatribe
about how I went to sleep at circa
1am, after having finished watching
gone girl, to be woken by my
grandfather, turning night into day,
eating half a cream cafe
   with ketchup and acting the most
primitive of creatures,
an animal caged,
  perhaps by walls, then again
by the big pharma...
                me? little pharma boy,
he stumbling, wearing two pairs
of glasses,
                   and all kinds of images of
the horror of misery,
notably able limbed, with a
receding mind, or better still:
a mind like a magic trick with
no preplanned execution to awe
a crowd, just me, acting out
a quasi psychiatric nurse...
    nursing not so macho?
probably elsewhere than in
the abolished asylums of England...
    Mike?! Mikey?! Mister! Myers!
I'd hate to write the details before
my eyes and not imagine angelic Amy
tripping and sour in a slurring
tangent...
         not exactly extravagence with
a man nearing 80...
           bashed around his room,
turned on the lights in the corridor and
his room, the television, and the radio,
ate, circa 0.5kg worth of cream cake with
ketchup....
    all I can truly remember was my
incubator voice...
   minor quest and I'm sure his son
(my uncle) has seen very little of
his father's (my grandfather's circus)...
one qualm though:
    we didn't sightsee the Warsaw old town...
but much of Cracow,
and thankfully he went to see
Auschwitz twice:
    perhaps he still has sentiments
for Georgian Joe...
               came my role to ask him
a few details about the remnants of
the night, and his quest / attempt
at falling asleep sitting up...

    already too many details...
   funny... the youth and madness...
     never really looking into how
the romance and the poetry dies
a sullen and sombre death,
when mingling with old age...
    as such: these people would
probably rather become blind than
have to explain to the en masse
    the Chernobyl winds "invisible"...

no, Sienkiewicz is, honestly,
a tedius writer, not some national treasure,
in English: objectively...
    twice bolesław pruß...
         not exactly complicated,
not exactly tedius,
     not exactly: but exactly repetitive...

came a thought, an escape plan...
***** gut, Friday night,
a girl crying walking behind a boy,
a starry night, a candle and a quantum
cat sending me vibrations from
the outer-suburban spiderweb of my
distant hole, and closure library editions
of books, not found in the public
local...
    
still, to borrow from Sienkiewicz...
        
    bi den rôsen er wol mac
tantaradei!
    merken wa mir'z lac...

(po rózach może on poznać
     gdzie moja głowa leżała)

     Walter von der Vogeldweide

  (by the roses he might recognise
where my head lay)...    

     and then back into the clutches
of the octopus and 24h newsreels...
and since did fame = insomnia?
          as ever, language overladden
with more metaphors than nouns...
  
to cite marlene dietrich:
      the Germans and I no longer speak
the same language...

    even though I speak English and western
Slavic... for some strange, godforsaken reason,
I might as well be speaking Mongolian...
    chameleon and at the same time hyenna
that best recites: a city with necrologues...
with claustrophobia made by
old testament neighbours...
       peacocking death,
and the gold filled rooms of
the easily seen blind, deaf and half
limbed...

             essentially:
ailments worth the concerns when
admiring the lifespan of butterflies...

1st of May and the holiday:
    the day of work...
I knew that the 3rd of May existed
as the day of the constitution,
but the 2nd of May was most minded,
even though not, an official
caldendar red-card day...

sure, in England the flag day celebration
happens, every 4 years,
after the group stages of
the world cup...
                  red and white over here,
and over there too...

once upon a time I was under the impression
that I spoke both English,
and that I too spoke Polish...
   as it turns out,
        the upper tier of idea is
no man's land for me....
      apparently there are necessary
people to talk about...
            back into a language of verbs,
back into the comforts of
buying apples rather than growing
apples on a farm...

point being:
I'm not Italian enough to speak
urban english,
     metropolitan, "left"...
  and to speak minor town Polish...
I don't have to say anything...
a waving white & red flag...
        translated into English:
too bad Jacob...
                 a name a jew and the whole
RIPPER tourism feeding
with glad eyes on brick lane
at the bakery selling salted
beef...

On my way
to observe
the world today,
this reality
that will decay
as it fades
from green glades
to a cement sidewalk
city of strangers
onto crumbling towers,
then back again
to nature,
and a dark void.
Where is the art
and meaning in this
existence?

Another bit
of walking in
a water like flow
towards a direction
where no one
else ever goes.

The squeaking
car frame
inches
towards the
intersection,
changes lane
to head out
on an empty street
leaving only me
to remain
in silent contemplation.

Random red flowers
already budded
built up from
a brick bed
in contrast
to the car lots
that I past
it is confusing.

Into the small
white building
for scheduled observation,
for preplanned poetry
and for self-education,
I see random racoons
moving in the room
crashing in to
monochromatic clutter,
conceptual art
but I don’t get it.

Could it be
the chaos created
by consumption
in this modern
society?

I return to
my small room
to catch the sleep
that has been
chasing me
since I got off
at 7 am.
Still pondering
my weary wanderings
as I doze off.

Is life this the answer
to the art
that I have
yet to understand?

By: Cedric McClester

Well, I’ll be ******!
Trump and Putin are a sham
Perpetrating a flim-flam
They just shot Uncle Sam!
In Helsinki with a battering ram
Is it necessary to draw a diagram?
In order for you to understand
That all of it must have been preplanned

They met in private
With no notetakers
Under the guise of  peacemakers
Just like your average lawbreakers
Doing their best to throw haymakers
See neither one of them are Quakers
But they’re con men outright fakers
Playing ball like the new Lakers

I blame the one,
But not the both
Cuz Putin didn’t swear an oath
He wants to stymie our growth
And Trump’s playing with half a loaf
For his base which he betroth
But which of them hates us the most
It’s hard to say, yet he’ll still boast

He doesn’t care about us
So he’s betrayed his sacred trust
In order to do what he must
To protect himself and to adjust
Even if we all go bust
Making America how he discussed
Despite the economy being robust
He’s unworthy of our trust







Cedric McClester, Copyright © 2018.  All rights reserved.

●●●
do you remember
our first meeting
we both were
anonymous
neither me
nor you
were famous

we haven't seen
to each other even
not having any  point
common to discuss
seems it was
just a coincidence

we meet as we might
be having some relationship
since  inception of universe
you might be a little bit
uncomfortable
restless reluctant
and quit nervous

however
I was confident
that's why on the outset
in front of you
I confess
or otherwise
something else

It was
almost
certain that
nature itself
having preplanned
our first meeting for us

I never been in position
to reveal the truth now or then
although I only know one thing
that without  having you in my life
I could never been experience
true love, joy and success
●●●
©deovrat "अयन"  12.07.2021

I live between church and society
never entering either entirely
I go to church and sing with God in me
but each memorable melodic monody
sounds increasingly odd to me
when there are only flaws I see.

Last night I had a horrid dream
I was with my worship team
when their worship scheme
resembled war ship steam.

It seemed like a normal service
but tonight we had special guests
the kind that can afford to purchase
every bell and whistle, nothing less.

I was to be their guide on tonight's spiritual ride
I trailed them like their extravagant robes
wishing to be someone people flock to in droves
but all I have are my words
and the Holy Spirit
so I sing like a bird
with radio interference.

Despite my best intentions of making a good impression
the service was a disaster in need of a master
unchecked videos wouldn't work
preplanned cues were missed
responsibilities were shirked
and I was ******.

My worship team started complaining
in a manner I found to be draining
because my must-see team of trusty steeds
had morphed into prima donna demon llamas
passing the buck and saying "that *****".

Under our Jesus painting
a sight has shanked me
a fire breaking
through our mistaking.
When the fire is small
it's no big deal
but once it grows tall
it becomes real.

We all had to evacuate
for firefighting to actuate
our realization of facts too late
that we'd failed a task too great.
I take my family to the church attic
away from all the stampede traffic
I think up there we can hack it
and look at the area impacted.

The sanctuary is a giant ember
yet dripping wet
I want to return to sender
fire grips me best
and grows at my behest
an emerging inferno infects
the sanctuary's rest.

Understanding danger
I escape with my family
outside with strangers
who all stand with me
we cry over spilt ilk
and brick that wilts.

But people toned down their tears
and stifled their sobs
like silencing fear
was their only job
so as the church was mourned
a makeshift line was formed
to consign Satan's scorn
and be alive and born.

They lined down the street
a church without seats
they still needed to speak
and seek out the meek.
They started praying together
praying for healing
not for the church to be better
but each other's feelings
their friends that were reeling
still needed the word so appealing.

I look back at the church
but I don't see it there
I don't lament its worth
or complain it's unfair
I save my despair
for those that need care.
A humble abode has replaced the opulent cathedral
where the ****** of the masses once found its needle
now there's a house that's meek like the women inside
could this be the house by which God wants me to abide?
I open the doors
and walk right in
I can feel in my core
the removal of sin.

Fate I believe is true
Most disagree on this topic
But I must believe it
For my life too sour
To swallow a spoonful without belief
If everything happens for a reason
My suffering somehow preplanned
I can open my mouth and pretend
This bittersweet sadness will end.

Love connects hearts
It does not need a language
And neither a gender
nor an interest
The best love does not
have need of respond
It comes as if preplanned
You can see it when
a child is playing with a pet
where nothing is set
and nothing is wet