Deep

I don't know I'm going in too deep until I'm in too deep,

And then I panic, because there's not a lifeguard at this pool.

Blowing bubbles with my puffed cheeks, I struggle to rise to the surface,

But every thought carries weight that counteracts my buoyancy,

And I discover I cannot be careless anymore.

Now I'm in too deep, and in this purgatory

I must atone for every time I entertained the thought:

The thought that I'm still thinking – why I can never get out.

Because as I atone, I continue to sin, and as I sin, I continue to sink,

And as I sink, I know that the only way out is to drown.

The Door

She closes the door
The door is closed, the window locked
The walls are thick rough planks
She can't tear through

Now, she won't return
She has abandoned
Everything that could have delighted her
Or everything that could have brought her to desolation

She turns her face back, touching the door with her wet cheek
What has she done? She does not know
Suddenly weak, she falls down,
Crawls to the window
Peers in, willing herself to know what she relinquished

She sees through the glass gleaming rainbows and butterflies
The golden glow of a rosy, uncluttered life
A cry clogs her throat, her head tilts toward the next pane, where she is grabbed by
Another view - of dirt and squalor, a girl with gravel rubbed into her heart

And now she knows that she can never know
What lies behind the door

After Petrarch

How is the world's delight a brief dream?
That from all takers must be taken still?
A dream delights, it charms unconscious moments.
A dream is all to one who lies asleep.
Misty-eyed, its magic he partakes of,
Trusting that there is no other reality.

But as he wakes the dream falls limp around him.
It could not endure, imagination failed.
The cup he drank, greedy, now is bitter,
Its poison percolating through his bones.
He feels around, but cannot touch his safety.
The home he hammered tight has tumbled.

How is the world's delight a brief dream?
A home built on the mud of California?
A smashed promise, a kiss from a flirt?
It floats in and out with the ocean tide.
As the tide turns, it carries to sea
The sum total of the minutes that you breathed so far.

Matthew 7:24-27

Query

This poem is not quite the way I want it. Those last two lines are begging to be revamped. I have stared at it too long, though, so I thought I'd let it breathe a while and come back to it.

If this green tree should branch into your wood,
Produce pale blossoms sweetly dropping down,
Would you protect its sticky sapling blood?
Allow its roots to anchor in your ground?

Would you defend its branches year by year,
From those who'd strip the leaves and peel the bark?
Would you snip off the suckers rooting there,
And teach the limbs to thicken strong, stalwart?

If lightning burns the crown and mars its head,
Would you remain until its boughs replace?
And when it topples over, topples dead,
Mourn its shattered brow and kiss its face?

In time, this tree will give you every fruit,
And when she's gone, she'll leave of you a shoot.

Dying, We Live

Dying, we live

And opening our hands, full of dreams

And dropping them to the floor,

We martyr our lives, living

It's not our deaths he asks for

(That would almost be easy)

It's a daily death inside:

To suffocate my desire, to

Offer my actions, my will to him

Lord, with all my heart I want you

Want your wholeness to engulf my fractions

Want your righteousness to swallow my dirt

Want your peace to obliterate my yellow-bellied nature

I give you myself to be reborn, remade

A new creature, made in the likeness of Christ,

Who by living and dying conquered both life and death.

The Power is Out

I can't hold on to my empire.

Defeat upon defeat shows my weakness.

My dreams loom over my head,

Taunting me, because I am not able to reach them.

Everything has failed, all at once

I try to flick the lights on in every room,

But I fail, because the power is out.

The power is out of me.

The power is out of me.

It's a freeing thought, really.

Because the power is not in me;

It's in someone wiser, kinder, and more than a million times more righteous.

Now that my empire is lost,

I can take my place in his empire,

And trust that he will never lose me.

Winter

My bones ache in the winter
And when the wind whips my ears,
Shoulders, hands, calves, ankles, toes,
I try to hide in my coat.

I am a heat-seeker those times.
If a flame is licking near,
I will find it, its breath warms,
Then roasts me until I turn.

In winter, the dark hangs low,
Leaving small spaces of light
Where I plant myself, yearning
For more as it fades away.

There's little of winter that
Cheers me. I count it down. It's
Prison time without parole.