Vanity Is The Drug Of Choice

Morning Ember

Just right click and “save target as”.

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Beyond this hard, cruel earth,

hurt and poverty,

beyond now

a Lover waits

near a river called “Mercy”

which flows from a wound in His side

with Him my parents stand waiting

for their child to wash in with the tide

She has just begun to feel

over hate

over love of all that tries to kill her

over bait

left dangling before the cart

Who knows where the horse has gone?

She has just undone the real me

defecates

on this love of truth and all things fragile

orchestrates

imagining she has a heart

Who knows who she’ll be come dawn?

sardine-stuffed with weary families

red-eyed and brimmed with soured coffee

numb to the bells and whistles

the shabby symphony of life, death, and the in-between

immune to the stale air and its grim bouquet of disinfectant

how often have I shared this road

with the nerve-worn nameless

the miserable few?

how much life have I spent

held fast in the trappings of death?

fear lives here, slithering like the

DEVIL

through our garden minds

whispering lies of god-like men

(saviors with saline,

mighty men of morphine)

bringing false hope

with their delaying tactics

but if the devil is in the details

it is hard to imagine him here

where everything blurs into mind-numbing sameness

and each hour

stretches out like cold morning molasses

this is the kiln where my anger is stoked

doused with the accelerant

of the incompetent and careless

compassion deficient

and when it burns white hot I know no friend

not God

(who bears my every flame)

nor myself

(the victim of my deepest scorn)

this place—this damned place—is filled with whys

and never enough answers…

never enough rest or calm

save for the final sort

I tense like a tabby cat whose prey just flitted by

on paper wings

as thin as hope’s blue thread

her grin –  a feint,

her teeth – capped with ice,

topsy-turvy tombstones

to truth’s cruel fate.

I’m a sweetless piñata made from yesterday’s news

a faithless vow

as empty as a gourd

she’s all deceit

a deep salted wound

a prick and prod production

of hell’s delight.

in the stone of my heart

a graven image of a frigid flame

you have burned you words

in my oaken mind

you have branded me with your wicked name

You have fed me lies

on a plate of mistrust

the ruined manna from a god of mud

you have poured your wine

a vinegar Syrah

you have poisoned me with your cobalt blood

sparked by embers of truth yet to come

the moon made each wise man a liar

and each poet became deaf and dumb

In our minds we had all of the answers

in our hearts we had nothing but doubt

If fear was the song, we were dancers

and its coda our only way out

So I sang to an absence of stars—

sang the song that was born in my bones

it was lost to a bass line of cars

and the worship of unfeeling stones

I woke up to a world out of tune

knowing more than a man out to know

with the promise that morning comes soon

and the shadows will reap what they sow

and now the dream is fading…

every dream is fading

more than dead

an image in

the Maker’s head 

some twisted plana Garden lost

a love upheld

by brutal cost 

a homeless mana rebel priest

who said the great

will be the least 

last will one daybe the first

and those who drink

will never thirst 

a martyr forthe cause of grace 

young Isaac’s ram

to take our place 

a bloody pricea three day wait

to mortal man

propitiate 

the cross’s woodbuilt mercy’s seat

with nails that pierced

His hands and feet 

that man might knowsweet hope once found

in heaven’s breath

and Eden’s ground 

I form a noose from fate’s thin thread,

teeter on the chair of time,

and ask myself if God is dead

or just some cosmic mime.

I pledge to walk the rope of Grace,

suffer all that He may ask,

and search the homeless for His face

through shades of darkened glass.

I storm the gates of hell on earth

killing all that passed for life

and gorge myself on afterbirth,

the flesh and blood of strife.

I pray that Mercy finds me here,

ransoms me, a slave, a fool,

and pardons me these chains of fear

that anchor me so cruel.

now pain me in the night:

the too cool sheets where you once slept

(a wrong that felt so right,)

a lover lost to time and space

(our distance never closed,)

the void where once I kept a heart

(before it decomposed.)