Fencing with Night

In combat, the only barrier between the blade

and your throbbing jugular 

is the way you wield your weaponry.

Shield too quickly, your cover is blown:

Now, how will you atone for your lapse of judgement?

Strike delayed, with breath belated,

Your opponent's fate has been betrayed.

But shadows?

Shadows?

Who cower like cowards 

At the hands of what's right.

And how does one fight a mere trick of light?

Master such art as fencing with night?

Lasso the setting sun and beg him to stay.

Sway dusk with truth and reason.

My dark is tired; this body is treason.

My dark is tired, but won't let me mourn it.

To grasp this bull by both its horns,

I tell the Devil "No"

The Devil knows his death is sworn.

ABOUT: Luke 10:17, 18- "'Lord, even the demons are made subject to us by the use of your name." At that he said to them: "I see Satan already fallen like lightning from heaven."

White Sheep, White Wound

 

We stood some ways back from the bleating hordes of white cloud. 

Just distant enough to catch soft drift of their thick musk,

Too close for them to believe in our abandonment.

Most of them lay lazy fluff and warm,

Unashamed at the ease with which
their fat bodies hugged the supple earth.

So at ease, our own cheeks flush fevered with guilt;

We could not understand that freedom.

One girl, though, lingered
a few feet from the pack that stretched for miles.

You knelt nose-to-nose with her
urging with your fingertips
through the course of coarse fur
to tell you what went wrong.

She exhausted herself at your knees,

Pangs of black and white pain
jolting from her underside. 

Why aren't the others helping her?

"Well don't just stand there,"
that overease beckoned me to berate them.

Not one of us could see where a thorny branch
had torn clean through the fleece and
left her there to brave the blow alone.

ABOUT: I think maybe we've all been hurt in ways no one is aware of but God.

This is the Story of a Little Rock

Were he the chiseled child of say, the amethyst or jade,

perhaps the little rock would quit smoldering;

Shouldering so impossible a weight

As light as light.

It took near all of the swing the Pacific could bolster

to budge the brooding rock from his reticent state.

Slate swore sore against his silhouette,

Didn't know how to look at that stubborn glint across 

Jade's moony face without swooning.

Didn't know how to even maybe like
The barbed edge of his mother,

That God-awful ashtray gray of his father.

And what of sapphire's serenity?

Men mesmerized by the soul of her cut crystal.

He fantasized mountains and boulders,

Bolder in brawn and height than he.

Behemoths can do big things quickly, I bet.

Probably could stop oceans or
cop light or trick time if they so pleased,

Teased into torture by all that he was not.

Hot shot pearl out the belly of an oyster

Rolled beside our little friend, said

"But it wasn't a mountain David hurled 

To slay Goliath."

ABOUT: If Jehovah can use a small boy with a little stone to kill a giant, just imagine how He can use you.

1 Samuel 17:50- So David prevailed over the Philistine with a sling and a stone; he struck down the Philistine and put him to death, though there was no sword in David's hand.

Birth

Six minutes and forty-two seconds into the first

alternate ending, the soft silk slips from its security.

The bang of her body is heard in 6B,

Though mistaken for child's play.

Hypoxia has turned her nail beds blue

But not cold, 

not yet.

Much like the first, the second alternative 

Reveals a burden too great for the pink scarf to carry.

This time there is a loud CRRRT!

The tear mirrors a too familiar failing

Jagged edges of silk glare down at her, as if to ask

"Even now?"

On her way to double-joint the vile cloth, 

The third take glimpses the girl 

With one hand already gripping the closet doorknob.

Seven seconds into the clip,

The microphone picks ups her thudding heart.

(Doosh-doosh...)

A rare ray of light radiates against Genesis 22:10

Etched into the redwood bedpost.

(Doosh-doosh) 

Her beating heart, a bleating lamb.

In the bottom of the fourth, the thought of the noose

Is but a passing storm cloud:

A dark and distant dustpuff dissolving overhead.

The blush boa is still just a means
to keep the bangs out of her eyes.

There is no raging void 

No split silk 

nor knot with which to hang from.

Or not 

Hang from.

The fifth finale divulges 

A wolf cub born smack-dab

Between a rock and a hard place.

ABOUT: It's Mental Illness Awareness Month. This poem is a reminder that there is always another option than suicide.

Postscript: while I think wolves are beautiful creatures that humans can learn from, I do not believe in "spirit animals" in the Shamanistic sense; just thought I needed to clarify my use of symbols.

A Battle Hymn

At the sound of a pulsing harp,
let your hearts pulsate the floor.
Crushing inner cloud, collapse
breath retracted, back protracted
knee joints snapped.
Trapped beneath the weight of
everything you lack.
Let your mindslack interact
with the fact that now,
All you have to do is ask.

When the breathing drum breaks
from the beat it was formerly bound:
let your bodies raise.
Shake the quake from your trembling bones
Heat retreating from the feat of fear rising
and fallen.
You slipped, fell upward, now rise.
Partake in the waking of your former unmaking,
Let this bass vibrate you to extricate arms from arms.
Getting louder: disengage, His war is waged.
Loudest now: praise His name!

Quietly the chimes unwind
Unbind hips but fists confined
Refined mind and loose-foot ready to...

CHARGE!

ABOUT: 2 Corinthians 10:4- For the weapons of our warfare are not fleshly, but powerful by God for overturning strongly entrenched things.

Landowners pt. II

They come waving their country flags in my face.

Each with his own textbook anthem

And self-proclaimed victories.

Medals glisten off their puffed-up chests:

"Ashley, I defeated right after her parents split for the second time."

"Oh yeah? Well I won Demarielle at a house party.
Two drinks in, her body was basically begging to be subjugated."

These are no noble explorers trying to make nice with the natives.

These are pirates and thieves that sleep on the dismembered isles of heartache.

Were they to dig below the surface,

It is not breasts and bottoms and legs they would unearth,

But connected-by-artery-and-vein chambers.

Still pumping for God's sake.

Still pumping.

ABOUT: according to a study conducted by the CDC almost 1 in 5 women have been raped in their lifetime.

Chemical Galley

Bright green means it's morning,

dark green induces dreams

There is no polite way to insert 

Neuroses inbetween casual conversation:

"Hi, how are you? 

A deluge of uninhibited emotion 

Is about to deconstruct;

Erupt bucked but breaking tear ducts 

At the faint smell of light,

At the feigned felt polite

At the slain and the slight."

Or

"I hear it's supposed to rain today,

What are the chances that you think

We will survive?"

Or

"The family is doing fine,

But the drugs could use a tweak or two."

You,

With the look and the awkward and the hole.

Whole mouths full of what we cannot say,

Weigh the unwellness against her weight.

Until one bright green anchor persuaded the bay

To let me stay floating what feels like upstream

Until I slid serene into one dark green valley

Fluid slumber- chemical galley,

Sailing seamlessly into a new dawn 

Beyond the crippling despondency 

I wave this freak flag triumphant-

Bright green means it's morning,

dark green induces dreams

about: Hydroxyzine Pamoate & Fluoxetine; they aren't cures for the anxiety and depression, but they help keep me afloat until the new system when no one will have to say "I am sick." (Isaiah 33:24)

THIS ARTICLE on depression and THIS ARTICLE on anxiety can also help.