Mountain Road

Frosted mountain-trail, be-misted heights.
As child steps from the safety of his vehicle
into the cold and fresh forest air
A sight creeps into sleep-shod view

The asphalt scar cannot detain her beauty --
The wonder of the outside world, whose mist
enraptures soul while sheathing mountain trees
in white -- those eucalypts that stretch into the sky.

Seen as horizontal shapes that peak
so barely through the filmy veil of grey.
And yet below precipitation's cloak,
Floral towers oft are struck with axe.

Yet children's eyes are shielded from the plight
of lumberjacks and sawmills down below,
Hidden far from Eildon's road and youthful eyes
that see, but do not see, and will not see

Until the lines of age are wrought, and cheeks
are set with manly light, and eyes are
drowned and seasoned with salt, and heart
has known of ache and pain --

Until that time, will see, but will not see.
Life's tempering flame will forge him strong,
And then, and only then will clarity ensue
When child is grown to man, finally he'll understand

The Eagle's Nest

The rocky crest sat far from here
A nest for seabirds; birds of prey
Who'd rest in its squat loneliness
The cove bedecked with freckling stone

Or so we thought -- a myth of name
'Tis "Eagle's Nest" near Inverloch
and child-like footsteps climbed the crest
to search for hooked beak and claw

The lofty rock-nest stretched to sky
Yet though some made it up on high,
The moon, it pulled the weary tide
And fear of deep-blue depths came down

And so did I -- intrepid as I was,
and to this day have made no attempt
to climb the nest, whose hoary sides
did speak delight and unknown charm

Six Limericks

1.

I once met an old schizophrenic
Whose mood was quite awfully manic
He said "look at me!"
As he thought he's a bee
But really was far too frenetic

2.
A supercilious rambunctious idiot
One day had a cup, and he filled it
Up to the brim
With a serious grin
And he said "oh my God, I have spill-ed it!"

3.
There once was a beautiful lady,
Whose sister gave birth to a baby

She said "what the hell
Is that godawful smell?"

When she knew that the smell was the baby!


4.
I once knew am old bum from Perth
Whose only bed was the earth
That beneath him was set,
And the worms were his pets
That unfortunate old bum from Perth.


5.
My mum had a baby named Gareth
Who never could quiet pronounce "carrot"
As hard as he tried,
His tongue always tied
Itself and he'd have to say "carroth"

6.
There was an old geezer named Caesar
Who's wife, he would never believe her
Each day that she tried,
At dinner, she cried
But still he would always bereave her.

Of Cynical Love

It was an empty word,
A softly-breathed request
A plee for help oft-envoked
And the sparkle in her eye to light the steady gloom

Woman's words a snare
To capture my heart
To lift me high, and when all is well
To break me against life's flow

What folly take the heart of man,
That he should all sense forgo?

The steady-beating, still bleeding heart
answers its own with one more potent
In all that it forgets

Is all life's joy worth each stagnant drop
of death's quiet, lonesome doom?

Each Step, She Steps

Each step, she steps to rosey, perfumed heights.
My beating heart she takes, and I, I wait.
For waiting, inadvertently some nights
Doth render sleep into surrendered hate.
And yet in all that hate doth bring to me,
I find I can'st forget, withall, that love
Which doth ensnare the beating of my heart -
Sequestered into silence at thy sight

For in thine eyes, thy sky-blue pools of light
I find in breathing, breath cessates, and I
In abject misery may feel the fight
Between propriety and love. But thou
hast ensnared me, caught up within
The loosely curling locks that by thy
Heaven-blessed aspect hath been set
To conquer, like a rose, my sullen heart.

That I - as broken as my life must seem -
May be in company with thee, is but a dream.

Aspect of a Rose

Whilst on the aspect of a rose, I muse
Oft my thoughts on thorns will come to rest
And bloody crimson petal-drops
That shake and shiver and fall like wine -
They fill my mind. My heart is sorrowing.

On the aspect of a rose, my eyes
Did come to rest, and all else died

Alycia

As sunlight branches dance and shake,
Encased in golden dewy warmth --
In this same manner, your return
Ignites affection, inward-held
but nonetheless so passionate

You are a light of love and grace
Whose warmth can sever the strength of hate
Inspiring peace to cease the fight,
and set the world aflame with love
If only there were more like you

Where Can I Go?

Winter's cold creeps in through my skin
As aching I go, shaking still lines
Handwritten in a mordant and virulent pen
From my mind, still feeble, old and afraid

Hoards of musty nightmares infuse the darkest
Of my day-lit, lonesome dreams
As I in self-exemplified exile sit
Still stinging from that aching blow

Once cherished one, where lie you now?
Where can I go to find you?
Where can I stand or walk or run,
When you have left without me?

Afraid of Life

A bleak and barren sky watches me, dying
A crow flies over the frozen lake, crying
And I float alone through my day, flitting
Ghost-like and quiet, no single sylable shared
With any who dare approach my broken cross

Not even father sun in his golden sheen
Or laughter's creek-like merriment
Would dare to shake the crusty haze
Of night's darkness burning bright and blinding,
Blinding the vision of one so afraid of life.

Sorrow's Sweet, Sweet Scent

Eyes lit up like beacons dark
Yet burning soft in twilight glow
No sound oft heard, nor visible mark,
Not love, nor hate did e'er I know

And yet in idle dreams I'd hide
Whilst love's red cisterns bleeding dry
Did give me cause for life denied,
and long sweet exiled hope did fly -

Away from me, from here to there
And sorrow's sweet, sweet scent I'd bare.

One for a SIlent Flower

A silent flower beckons me to you
A flower so perfect, in divinity
Created, only by the one who brought us
Heaven's glory here on earth; who yet has
Showered us with beauty and with light.
For you alone of all the flowers known
And yet unknown to man have captured all
My heart. Entirely yours I am, and yet
For all your haunting beauty and your smile,
Which oh-so-gently dares to kiss the world
As does the old, besotted sun, the thought
So tender still remains to steal my sleep:

As lovely you are, in loveliness displayed
Such love will be not mine 'til in my grave I'm laid

Change

Why? Is it to make me stronger? What am I even doing here? Hurting, yes, that's for sure, but is there even something over the other end this time? Is there even a reason? I'm blind, blind, deaf, and sick of crawling. Sick of having to crawl if I want to get anywhere, no matter how near or how far my objective.

But perhaps I'm mostly sick of the way crawling forward has the same effect as running backwards.

When you've turned into everything you despise in other people, and nothing in the world makes sense any more, perhaps it's time to seriously consider what you're even doing here.

And then hope and pray that change is possible.

A Cure for Alexithymia

Somewhere in the dark there is always a sickening voice calling us. We never hear it. It just knocks on our hearts, constantly trying to pull us away from contentment. Each knock chips away a little more resolve than the last one, weakening each tightly-bound fiber. It is not until the final strand of fiber breaks loose that everything finally falls apart in its entirety. For a split second everything simply pauses; a single note ringing out like a physical heart flatlining.

And then the explosions come.

I've never been fully alexithymic, and yet personal confessions always come easiest when played in a lyrical form in front of sixty-odd people or blurted out on the internet in front of potential hundreds of friends and family members or billions of English-speaking strangers. There's something comforting about the fact that people may not even see what's written. Or if they do, and/or if it's in a song, that the personal application may not be immediately obvious.

Don't kid yourselves.

It's true for everyone that each song, poem or emo journal entry, no matter how stylized and stereotypical is usually not simply a song, poem or journal entry. No one writes sad songs if they aren't sad. If someone writes suicidally, it has to have come from somewhere.

The problem is, we live in a culture where these things are taken for granted. As though they are simply things that affect humanity in general, but they could never touch our loved ones. As if there's no way my friends could have felt suicidal even once in their lives. As if it's in no way plausable to suggest that our own siblings might (from time to time) have taken a knife to their wrists for any of the many reasons why people do such things. And I'm speaking here strictly as someone who's mood has been known, on occasion, to shift entirely out of the realm of reasonable explanation as "teenage angst".

I don't even know where this is going.

I just know that this superficial kind of culture is not helpful. It's passively, and even at times actively, harmful. People learn to shut themselves off and fill themselves with emotions so tightly that they are constantly boiling below the surface, but unable to express it. That's where serious conditions such as clinical depression and the various anxiety disorders are born.

I'm just sorry that, for all my bitching, I don't have a viable solution.

Human nature is fundamentally flawed.

Don't get me wrong, I do wish I were not such a cynic. But unfortunately for myself and all who are subjected to my company, I discover more support for this philosophy every time I interact with others.

Some Mornings: On Issues And Recognition

Some days I wake up and don't recognize my reflection in the bathroom mirror. It usually lasts only a second or two as I stare quizzically at the face before I snap out of my half-tired reverie and realize with a start 'oh! that's me!' Life is like this sometimes. Sometimes we don't recognize where we are at for a little while, but suddenly it all comes clear.

A few months ago, I had a dream. I did something wrong, and I can't remember what. But that doesn't matter. Jon Foreman from Switchfoot was chasing me, and I ran into a hut. I shut the door, but he came right on up and knocked on it. I opened the door, and looked at him. He lectured me about what I'd done wrong. I replied with "I know, I'm a Christian, but it's hard to be good all the time!" And then he went on for a little more, but one line that stood out was 'you can sing the dark song, or you can sing the light song.' I woke up from that dream, and I felt like crying. So I did. Just like that. All in a split second I woke up, felt I needed to cry and did so. So I woke up crying.

Sometimes we don't recognize where we are at. Sometimes we won't see that we may not be 'singing the light song' on a certain issue. Often that's our own desire to keep singing the dark one. The dark song sounds so good. That's the point. Most of the time we realize we're singing the dark song, but we tell ourselves that it doesn't really matter all that much. We tell ourselves lies and let ourselves believe them. Because the dark song sounds so much better than the light one.

And then we get woken up with a start. Suddenly it all comes clear, and we wake up, realize we're so painfully wrong, feel like crying, and then cry. Straight away. In a split second. We literally wake up from life crying. Crying out to be healed.

God doesn't want you to feel broken. Brokenness is part of confession and forgiveness, but it's not the whole point. The moment you confess and ask for forgiveness, there's a God that's ready to take that sin away and burn it. Burn it like so many sheets of note paper with so many sins scrawled each. And we get to watch it burn its way into heaven for God to deal with.

Here's the kicker: He already dealt with it when he sent Jesus to die for you.

Leaders vs. Those Who Lead

There are leaders, and then there are leaders.

Anyone can lead. But it takes courage and integrity to be a leader. Those who lead simply do that. They lead. Real leaders, on the other hand, are built on a firm base of strong character. The way a true leader acts around his or her own peers is the same as the way they act around those they lead. That's the way it has to be. If the standard a leader holds amongst his peers is lower than the example he sets to those under him, it only serves to undercut that example. You can't live with double-standards.

When the example you set isn't consistent, you should probably reconsider what you're doing in the place you're at. Especially as a Christian.

Can both fresh and salt water come out of the same well?

If the way we speak and act reflects nothing of Christ, if we say things in during the week we would not say at church, if we with a single breath abolish one thing but then affirm it with our actions... Why do we think we deserve to carry Christ's name?

And in a way I suppose I disgust myself. Sure, I'm only human. But worse humans than myself can manage a life that's free of hypocrisy. Even ones that don't have the same moral base that I do.

Example is everything. People are meant to see Christ in us. Not reflections of the utterness of human depravity.