the ship that sinks.

 this is the ship that sinks,

taking on water, absorbing the ocean,

brining the boards of our boat,

swallowing the fire of our engine.

a last gasp of steam

fading like last night's last dream.

before long becoming submarine,

departing the surface,

bound for the bottom.

drowning.

or swimming?

clawing a clumsy crawl to oxygen.

gulping sea-sprayed air.

cursing the waves that take breath

with violence clobbering...

...the life from lungs,

but confident the sun will chase the storm.

perseverance.

Anxious

 My anxiety wraps itself around me making decisions that might seem seemly but leave me just constantly questioning everything.

Blood rushes to my extremities and out of my cranium so dumb, I sit silent wanting so badly to run, feeling under the gun, unable to hear and under the weight of a ton.

And before long, before I even know it, anxiety's won.

The psychological impact of all that surrounds me is really overwhelming and I don't know if I can keep up the pace of enduring but changing is a strange thing and disruption is something too much for my brain.

Can I maintain?

While I'm circling the drain?

I can't get out of this greasy stain, but numbness is driving out all the pain.

So that's something.

WHAT IT'S LIKE NOT TO SLEEP

Chaos brain long chains of safety pins holding in
From denim to denim chewed off finger nails and Half-Cabs
Sheep counted to four, or is it five digits
An M for each middle finger and every other finger thumb and toe besides
Threadbare couch and neurons each spark and come apart
Axons and dendrites and zippers and red cushions.

Just. Focus.

Chaos brains and long chains of nonsense written in
Ballots counted, recounted, recycled into schoolbooks
Losses the foundation from which kids learn to...
Lose again? Lose and lose and loose and looser
I'm a loser baby, so why don't you thrill me.

I want to write songs that start off feeling like you woke slowly,
in the middle of the night,
to find the covers have come off you in your dreams.
Then, you become increasingly aware of the cold permeating your bones,
starting with your feet.
You shuffle awkwardly in the dark to get the covers back on without waking your lover.
Finally, you are covered,
albeit with twisted sheets,
and warmth returns and you dream of flying,
of beautiful skies,
of lovemaking,
stiff drinks,
and deep, deep, satisfying breaths.

The dug deep hole is dark.
Black, eating candles with
wisps of cool air coming from
not-God knows where,
every match is cooled
before its flame illuminates
this lived-in cave.


*****

I'm hating.
Waking.
Knowing that I'm chaining
myself to a train that isn't moving.
It just sits rusting on an overpass.
Oh decay.
How. Long. Can. I. Stay. This. Way?

Sun in the Mirror

I can see the reflection of the sun through the door in the South wall of our room that you left open when you went to work.  The mirror in the hallway captures its ambition and shrinks it to the 36 inch by 24 inch cherry-stained frame.  In the translation, all warmth is lost, along with green leaves, chirping birds and dark sunglasses.  All that remains is a yellow ball.  I hold my hand up with pallid tattooed fingers to hide the glare, and even the yellow ambition darkens except where it explodes red out from between my closed fingers, and I hope for dreams.  I know it is a futile dream because around the corner of that Southern door, the day waits also for me.  It sits silently anticipating my ambition will clatter against the cherry-stained frame of my own self-perception reflection: that I am incapable and undeserving of happiness.  So, like the sun in the mirror, I only, but just sort of, exist.

Tendrils
is the kind of word to use
when describing the arms that engulf
me and you:
snaking underneath arms
and over backs
and down sides
and across necks.

Hate-Ku

I'm made of murder,
black greasy evil sleaze,
but found salvation.

You end your sentences with commas,

You end your sentences with commas,
thoughts hanging fruit unpicked - waiting.
Whisper, or mumble, I can't hear,
head inclined, sweat-soaked hands
clinched fists against my hips.
What is this?
Do you require a response?
Some decision to pick your
low-hanging thoughts?
You gaze past faces and walls
to somewhere far, far beyond,
and I wonder what potential future you see.
And does it include an actual me?
Or just a decal you keep around
at least until you tear the living room wall down.

forgiver

i see everything,
looks lingering on hips,
soft seperation of sticky coffee lips,
i see the extra beat per minute
i see the worn molars.

and in a look, a thought, a whisper
you're hung; taught rope brought out
but i can forgive you
if you want me to

i see everything,
green looks on jewelery
planted seeds of disease sprouting
i see the poison ivy vines.
i see the bitten nails.

and in a look, a thought, a whisper
you're hung; taught rope brought out
but i can fortive you
if you want me to

do you?

My Faces.

My Faces.

All I remember is the flash
like a camera that stole my smile away,
that and the rest of my face,
the last thing I saw or will see.

They fixed all the holes,
plugged them up with scars, now
I'm told I'm a skull wearing skin,
and when I'm taken in public
my family tells me I'm a terror;
some nightmare who's roaming the streets.
My daughter can't comprehend
why my lips have no replacement
or why my eye sockets show skin
stretched like canvas to prevent germs getting in.

My heart beats, but shamefully,
and aches with the pain I've caused
those so close to me.

Now they say they'll transplant
my face for another, says the doctor
averting his eyes, so I'm told,
From some stranger whose passing away.
Tomorrow if I wake up, will my face be a neighbor's?
Will my family see through my facade?
Will this smile be wry?
Will these lips finally find the expectant lips of my wife
or will this stranger mask turn her away?

Insomnia

Every night somewhere it's three in the morning,
and someone's not sleeping 'cause sleeping's boring,
and with twiddling thumbs they count as imaginary sheep leap
and wonder if it's worth it to try to fall back sleep or just get up.
How many sheep before enough is enough?
Plus they can't stop thinking about the bills.
Plus they can't stop thinking about the chills.
They can't stop thinking about how much
they're worried about tomorrow
and if they had to, where they could beg and borrow.

For a few seconds...

For the next few seconds
forget.
Remember when remembering
soaked through like sun through
venetian blinds and striped our carpet
with warm and cold, light and night,
and all of that
kept us rapt
and we forgot
to look ahead instead of back,
and we crashed,
so for the next few seconds,
forget.

On the Way Home from Drew and Bethany's Wedding

A long ride in a car.
Music pumping like blood, gasoline like adrenaline.
Raindrops not cleansing but spreading yellow
mud of pollen about the windshield.
The velocity on 64 seperates each drop into a distinct "tick"
but as the volume of rain increases,
the sound turns from "tick" to "Ssthack"
to a thick, mid-pitch "shhhshh."
Pollen puddles collide and disperse up the windshield,
to its corners and out into the wind
that seems to send the rain sideways past the speeding car.
Let's just keep this up.

Cornerstone

There is but one brick we build upon
There is but one house we're safe within
And the wind, and the wind
Cannot find its way in,
No, the wind cannot find its way in.
There is but one we will call I Am.
There is but one rock upon which we stand
There is but one reason for our love,
And there's but one armor we can trust.
And Satan, and Satan
Cannot find his way in
No, Satan cannot find his way in

Jesus Christ, cornerstone,
In your love, we find our home
Cornerstone, Jesus Christ
Your empty grave, it promises life.

Smile-Face Pictures

The pictures from those days hang crooked
on the wall before the stairs, all smiles,
all oblivious to the paychecks that didn't pay,
the night after night with heartburn and lying awake.
Their dusty frames and glass contain momentary joy
that sometimes stretched like a rubberband across days
or weeks, but sometimes snapped and slapped back,
cracking like a cup and spilling it like a sink.

And now it seems we don't take any more pictures
and I wonder if we still have momentary joys or
are we jaded like jewelery from China?
I don't know, but on the stairs, I remember.

Winter Decisions

Do I write patterns or do they write me?
Pens leaking ink on my chest in circles,
arcs and angles, like a labyrinth, I move
according to the will of dead-end streets,
one-way signs, road construction and whispers.
God knows my patterns shift to the music.

And we find ourselves in my car, music
playing top forty when you look at me
Eyes, planets that plead we speak in whispers.
We've spent since March circumscribing circles,
sketching our rules made on walks through old streets,
and finally, silently, I will move.

The patterns we've sewn say "Make the damn move!
Stop looking for stop signs in the music!
Kiss for God's sake in the lights of these streets."
"Fredericksburg in winter," you say to me,
As I admire how your hair encircles
your face and moves with the slightest whisper

against your jacket, loud as our whispers,
voices barely swirling past. The car moves,
grumbling tires spinning their tight black circles.
Thumping pot holes, our disjointed music.
Your hand, finally, stretches to find me,
fingers lending warmth to frozen streets.

Until when thankfully we leave the streets
and lend flesh to the heat of our whispers.
I watch FOREVER pass in front of me
as the pattern of your red lips removes
any doubt you doubt, and with the music,
I close my eyes. The light leaves pink circles

throbbing on my eyelids. And fear circles.
You see, the pattern returns to these streets,
where even in embrace, doubtful whispers,
tickling my brain like the theme music
of Prokofiev's wolf, seem to warn me.
Yet I hold fast when the melody moves.

We move past circles, yet still use whispers.
We pass dead-end streets, we decide our move.
Past patterns? Music that does not move me.

Life Like Winter

Clouds slip so slippery through skies with winds whispering
Hellos and a good bye, a hi and some see you laters.
And though the sun advances toward sunset, the east remains blue,
while to the west, gray rules the day due to an advancing winter,
Cascading down the Appalachian Mountains, gaining momentum
and moisture, and planning to huff and puff and blow
The dead dogwood tree in the back down on the neighbor's fence.
Nothing a chainsaw can't handle, except fingertips resent it.

chase

Sometimes my phone is ringing
But God leave a message
I'm busy sleeping

But You won't!

There's a message on the mirror in eyeliner
But I don't have my glasses on yet,
I just open the cabinet.
I search for something that might cure this diseased
Clay jar of a body that covers me,
But the more medicine I seek,
The more I miss what You would have me see.
And when I do see the black letters on the mirror,
I realize that before I see myself,
I have to look through You.

Sometimes my ears are ringing,
So God leave me alone
I'm busy screaming

But you won't!

This may be a chase
It may go on for days
But I'll never escape

I'll return with dirt and grime on my face,
And I'll return to the mirror and the scribbled word "grace,"
I can't believe how dirty I've become,
I can't believe how dirty I've come undone,
And now clean, I don't ever want to be apart again.

This sure was a chase
Yeah, it went on for days
But I didn't escape

And now I'll never run away.

Before That

The morning arrives on the heels of the night.
The leaves emerge green and the tides ebb and flow,
and yet before that You were there
and You whispered the world into existence
Oh God, You're awesome, You're amazing, You're everything
Jesus, You're savior, You're Father, You're everything
The verdict arrived on the heels of my crimes,
I was sentenced to die, I had no hope for my life,
and yet there is grace, You took my place
Upon the cross, my sins were washed away
Oh God, You're awesome, You're amazing, You're everything
Jesus, You're savior, You're Father, You're everything.