Cupboard

I have nothing in the cupboard
because there is nothing to leave; No crumpled wrapper, no vain compliment, to idle retort, no half-grown thought, no irritating hangnail.
Only a trying-too-hard policy and a shame-induced dollar.

I have nothing to leave in the cupboard
because I left everything; At my work desk, on the train, in the glove compartment, inside the locket, leaning beside the seat.
Only a memory of forgetting, glancing back, unseeing.

I have nothing, not even a cupboard
because it's just rented space; Nothing to own, nothing to maintain, nothing to repair, nothing to explain.
Only a burnt-out and bitter shell, empty and waiting still.

Muddy Waters

Muddy waters

Deep channels

Drowning the troubles 

in acquaintances boozing

“You were always absurd,”

The painting of a  

Macabre egret gaiting southbound

The fear’s response:

mockery of death

Fatalism, annihilation, vibing on

Bass, snare, undone 

Lost and unclaimed. 

Story arch

Lamentation 

in the time between times

Crumpled flesh hung

Then folded in a stone closet

Fragrant with myrrh and blood 

And was entombed 

After a kiss and desertion

After a mob lusted 

Darkness shrouded the land

Hearts melted like wax 

As fear held sway 

Before the flesh’s awakening

Before the warrior’s return

Fulfillment

Mother Sarai,
tired tears sown on the bedskins beside him
together in long waiting;
moon cycles and seasons
bodies aging
hopes deferred in mourning
inheritances let go in grief

perhaps I, too, would have laughed
having made vows
to seal my heart from further sickness
borne of desires unfulfilled
bitterness taken on as protection
from the piercing knife of fear and doubt
sharper than the shield of faith

still, these assurances:
sand grains, countless
stars, innumerable
a covenant built on these promises
real, the fulfillment
she came in with shouts of joy
bringing her sheaves with her.

Proverbs 13:12; Genesis 22:17, 18:15, 21:3, Psalm 126:6 

Reality (Part 2)

All the rigor and weight
held between mandible and maxilla.

Listing the undone,
not omissions
but cratering demands,
admiring the width and breadth,
the echelons echoing 
efforting to refine
attainment of paragon;
realign. 

Naming myself
as one fake and fallen,
fearful and grasping,
and receiving
a stamp
'beloved'
a seal
'called'
a slate
'clean'.

Reality (Part 1)

Demands,
raking the discipline of perfection.
World weighting calling,
continuously rigid
strained and unblinking.

Displaying the clatter
of failure,
the misalignment of my ideals
and myself;
acceptance with tear and feint.

Shuttering
at the case-making and justification.
intuition
as self-accepting as
a flame.

The pores
brazen and pure
defined me
less and less.

Deepest Request

Prayer is essentially expression of our heart longing for love. 

It is not so much the listing of our requests but the breathing of our own deepest request, 

to be united with God as fully as possible.
 -Jeffery D. Imbach, the Recovery of Love

Goodness and Seasons

“What are we going to do?” I asked.
“We will do what’s required of us.”
“How will we know what that is?”
“All is given in its season. All that is needful is granted. We have but to ask, and if our hearts are in the asking it will be granted.”
“Always?”
“You are full of questions, boy,” the wise Emory’s chuckled. “No, not always. We serve at the Gifting God’s Pleasure. In Him we move and have our being; in Him we love both here and in the world to come. If anything is withheld from is, it is for the reason of a greater good to come.”
“Always?”
This time the Emrys became adamant. “Oh, aye!” “Always. Goodness is ever good, and the All-wise God is a good God. From Him goodness itself derives it’s meaning... to see evil and call it good mocks God. Worse, it makes goodness meaningless. A word without meaning is an abomination, for when the word passes beyond understanding, the very thing the word stands for passes out of the world and cannot be recalled...

God is good; His gifts are granted each in its own season, and according to His purpose.

From Arthur by Stephen Lawhead, chapter 5, page 7.

Building a wall

“You ask me what I am doing. I will tell you; I am gathering up the prayers and making a wall with them. I am raising a stronghold to surround the enemy... we must erect a fortress whose walls cannot me battered down or broken- a Caer that cannot be conquered.”

“There!” Cai declared loudly. “If stones be prayers, I have sung a psalm!”...

The wall rose stone by stone, each stone a heart felt prayer.

“It was more than a wall- it was faith made manifest. I looked upon the work of our hands, and I felt invincible.”

From 'Arthur' by Stephen Lawhead, chapter 15, page 14

Capturing poetry

Anything that has poetry in it is the subject of photography.
-Yildiz Moran, One of Turkey’s foremost female photographers