Remedy

Our sickness is growing with every kiss shared.
Our love is contagion and tonic well-paired.

Redirection

The quiet room of forgiven hearts--
red, still throbbing, sensitive--smarts.

The embers of guilt long yet put out,
still glowing in darkness what pales in the light.

Only stillness can choke it -- hearts pound in the wind.
Or to pray for each drop which forgets every sin.

Reimaging

That weary souls can warm another's feet,
the pounding run of brothers, home to heat,
The pledge of joy in hand inert in hand,
that love which grows when two souls, weary, meet.

That objects I may make of objects mine,
thus giving life by giving life in time,
that life which, spoken, ever takes my name,
which, given, now is bridge to two soul's pain.

Self-Contained

Come fly with me

away from this white-washed city

to a new home made from martyr's bones.

Come fly with me.

Away from this white-washed city

and dance until there's nothing left to end.

Let me be the rock you're built on,

Let me be the hand you hold.

Let me be the stone you cling to.

Let me be your only one.

I curse the day that we became

so desperately self-contained,

I curse the night which therefore came.

Wedding

The window-skirts are long and closed of late.
Of fabrics varied: denim, paisley, plait.
The light is shut and closed away.
Even windows now blind and unashamed.

For eyes of man, humanity obscured,
halves on either side of pane,
the hills and sun are shut and still,
and man awaits the light of shame.

O, how to choose a single view
the many landscapes of human truth.
The many fields of golden wheat.
The reaping ready, kids to feed.

A single sill with single glass,
a single faith, a single mass,
a single, slow, first married-dance.

The sight first seen after purest day,
The myst'ry changed when cleared laid.

The singular glory of a single sun.

The Finding in the Temple

The fire-alarm lays quiet in the evening-time
waiting for a drunken boy to pull away,
to wake up all the sleeping residents out from their beds
to meet one-another's friends in the street in the moonlight.

It only takes a moment to wake up from a dream
A moment to lose the half-thought hopes and fears
We will break them from their reverie.
Just like every time we touch.

The Tower

The tower is growing taller now,
the wind is blowing strong;
The Tree is growing thicker while
the smokestack blows its steam.

The flames are growing taller here,
the forest growing thin,
while birds fly fast and far away
knowing never they'll return.

The air is growing thicker while
the mountains growing higher,
The grass is slowly dying as
our houses are growing smaller.

The Knob

I take a calm and silent tone;
I make few points, but drive them home.
I guard my heart, my smile, my eyes;
I measure words and yawns, and sighs.

"Stop," I say - "(Think first, then speak.
Your truth is greater than you see) -
your falsities, in fun or anger."
Coping slows as Trust grows grander.

Quiet Evening

I sit alone and still remain,
I read and write and see now why

To love and to be a forgotten friend-
To let go slowly, await an end.
To smile at a young girl's growth,
to see a heart be made a home.

I wish to see a soul grow strong,
I wish that heaven would play its song.
I pray for hope to fill the sky,
and possibly, ignite your eyes.

Your Eyes

call like spilling cream,
like a slowly weeping lamb,
like a flower trampled underneath,
"help me - do you understand?"

scream like a bat from Hell
with wrath uncontrolled
your moment most alive - mine most terrified,
"touch me and we both will die."

invite and smile
like the swelling second violins,
slow and laughing, open, dancing,
"I and love and we are here."

The ewe is quiet in the open field;
the blades are waving in the second-hand sun.
Under the single tree she stands,
green eyes burn like a forest fire,
like a calmly loaded gun.
She falls as her rear, left leg gives out,
But catches herself with determined stare.
Piercing stare, unfocused, still,
and empty, weighted, sublimated,
the edge walks closer on its own.
Her green, sad eyes


call like spilling cream,
a slowly weeping lamb,
like a flower trampled underneath,
"help me - do you understand?"

Uncalled for

Upon the winged seat of life,
there lies a wrathful bird.
It caws its way into its lies,
unknown by all who've heard.

A quiet start with thoughts of justice,
annoyance, pain, unmeted words.
It flies in circles and never stops.
Never full; forever stirred.

It calls it's lust as filthy need,
Uncaring words its filthy steeds.

One left to - desperate - justify.
One left with quiet, wat'ring eyes.

Overcome

Dance in the night

Fire in the skies and in your blood

Your heart and your soul

Your feet in the mud

You’ve seen the devil

I know where he comes from

You’ve felt his claws,

Sniffed the breath from his lungs

Life is new for all who find it here

I know it’s a lot to ask

Green of the trees, let the sky set your eyes on fire,

I can tell you it will last

Dance in the night

Fire in the skies and in your blood

Your heart and your soul

Your feet in the mud

You’ve seen the devil

Though You don’t know his name

I’ve felt the lash

With which shares his pain

I’ve seen the devil

I know what he does

I’ve felt the fear

I’ve smelled the lust.

Life is new for all who find it here

I know it’s a lot to ask

Green of the trees, let the sky set your eyes on fire,

I can tell you it will last

Dance with me here

The skies are lit above us

I see your eyes

And the fear they have because of

Doors always closed

Hard hands and splintered feelings

Let the skies set your eyes on fire

Dance in the night

Fire in the skies and in your blood

Your heart and your soul

Your feet in the mud

The stars are pierced and blazing

Sacred hearts on fire with love

Dance here tonight

With our feet in the mud.

Till the Garden

Black Ravens lie all-round today
with feathers pulled and wings astray,
their eyes are blank and empty laid
and where they are they will remain
For today is a glorious Thursday.

As homes do change, so does my heart,
Discipline grows as freedom starts,
and I beg for the grace of a happy face
As I meet new people in a brand new place.

I move into Steubenville today.

I'm Back

My snarling sins are

back again

and venial guilt growls

and stills,

breaking down my hopes and smiles.

So hard to forgive my dirty self. But

I can do all things in His name.

Michael is my guard.

Do you love yourself enough
to forgive self-love?

Mountaintops

Rocks all breaking metered sky,
cold and strong and still.
Stories told of quest and love,
thirst and pain and will.

Blundering and bruised and tired,
the leaders of the flock.
Suffer, suffer, laws be given
when suffering will talk.

Clouds and storms and lonely men.
Climbing in the dark.
Laws be given by bloody hands.
Moses, then the cross.

Black Swans

Empty hearts which lust for love
Silly things like misplaced doves.

These unfold in light and warmth,
falling, husks of far-gone pain,
calluses which melt in rain,
The sun now follows as I run north.

Sins and sorrows bent on pleasure,
on fullness grasped and grace by measure,
oh, frantic glances, peace desired.

Self-Help

Uncured tobacco, steaming in homes,

Little girls, children, beaten by bones.

Tears cannot make a breath draw smooth.

Tears can still bring something new.

An empty cry, a bitter slap.

Bloody water drips on the well-used map,

running from her home down South.

She swears to do the same.

Adore

They are drugs that break the mind-
Space is limited, money buys time.
Body is solid and Blood is wild.
All left is promises, Father to child.

Also, two things to share:

A great man is putting out a series of Screwtape-type Catholic-directed posts:
CrookedHeart Emails

And a great woman (who should really get together with that man from above and talk about greatness sometime) is distributing some art:

Dwawing the Line

Well...

In lieu of any formal poetry, I will share with you today this fact about myself which, if not funny, may be at least an observation of the human condition;

I often suffer a great deal of anxiety when listening to pop music through this procedure of ideas, taken in a background of very full, harmonic, basic tones:
Recognition of incomplete and lustful desire ("love"), inasmuch as the pop song is insincere>
>Reflection upon complete, dependent, self-giving, and holy, desperate Love>
>Consideration of the true, deeply marital nature of Man and Woman>
>Deep understanding of human (including myself) stupidity, hate, disconnection, and unnecessary distance>
>Anxiety>

I've found that it is rarely relieved by anything except prayer or severe distraction, but that goes for all anxiety, really.

Good Day!
-Daniel

PS. It's my birthday, and I just remembered a bit of poetry I composed this very morning on the way to work.

Um, Yes?

I'm Eighteen, I'm eighteen,
Drinking coffee with Irish Creme,
And the smell of a new pack of cigarettes!


I hope you liked it.  It was frought with imagery and deliciousness.

Happy Birthday to meeeeeeeeee!

Duties

Chardonnay is here today
a shallow bit in shallow ways,
A lighter love in lightning lays.
And storming skies are underpaid.

Life Begins.

Storming skies can wait upon us,
sipping slowly our merlot.
I will question every breaking.
I will break with thunder's cry.

I bleed slowly, red and raining.
Every call is slower still.
Quiet, quiet -- I am sorry:
I have yet to see the thrill.

I am alone in my fabric skin,
broken to let the toxins in.
Broken to bring the weeping out.
Burnt and peeling in the drought.

And hither comes the rain.

The Confraternity of Angelic Warfare

Upon the bridge over mountain pass
he stood so still yet was moving so fast;
His hair blew quick and his heart paced quicker
and he never moved the least bit forward.
Until Angels steadied his way.

Retreat

Give me a happy nun.
Any day give me a mother.
Any day give me a smiling face.
And I'll show you a lover.

Say all you want of painted cheeks,
low-cut eyes, and fishnet laces.
Often I taste day's defeat;
I need stone-warmed still embraces.

Time-Killing

Burning hope and spoiled cream,
Silly pleasures win, it seems,
Scripture, prayer, joyful smiles
fall to little, empty whiles.

De Nutriendo Consultationis: The Academaniacs

Of the raising of questions,
a hermit can tell
that upended tables
don't end quite so well.
Monastics would mention,
and scholars the same
that tenured professors
often learn their own shame.

The inquiry of inquiries
has got to subside
and make way for progress
from the in to outside.
When all the best teachers
aren't let to teach.
And all the best creatures
are put out of reach.
The studies are old
and the practice forgotten
of trades true and honest
and dinners well-gotten.

Pain in Parting with Myself

Far away, my love, so far away,
undercooked, untried, and underpaid.
Do not my heart untie by force
or worse, unbind by reckless play.

My heart, my love, so far away.

Amor Aprilis Babulos Suos Contingit

Why does the world go round and round
once right up now upside down?
Why do I have my glass of wine
and fall in love for moment's time?
Why does her smile and dress so sweet
and pain so honestly effortless brief?
Her love her April's Fools meets.

Odi et Amo, Me Odi ut Melius Me Amem.

Make me humble and yet meek,
simply honest, simply weak,
getting slowly to my feet.

Make me fearful, unafraid.
Give me faith still unbetrayed.
Let me
Doubt my eyes, believe the world,
hold my heart and love my girl.

Torment still torment must be
to live by death, by blindness see,
be filled by fasting, by deadbolts freed.

Ocelli Neonati Genitus Sunt

I have a sister with a baby;
she has brand new eyes
with no cover and no fear
but to hurt and to die.

I have a niece gazing wildly
at the sky and at the sea,
at the breaking of the waves,
she's still gazing up at me.

I have a Friend with a foundry
making bullets out of blood.
He breaks over boundaries,
making dirt, pouring mud.

My sister's husband's child
seems to love every sight,
casting wildly for the world,
casting wildly for light.

My brother's sister's daughter
has never seen this before;
this moment she won't remember
teaches her to grip the shore.

It is not that I am afraid (though I am)
but that I have learned long to hold this sham
before my eyes, pretending love is alive.
Pretending reality is real, without a try.

I have learned to believe in many lies:
That God is greater.
That God is loving.
That God is patient.
That God suffered.
That God is passionate.
That God embraces.
That God trusts.
That God is present.
That God is real.
That God is alive.
That God is good.

I have learned to believe in many lies.
I have learned to know that I know nothing.

These cannot be God.  I create them here
in my small mind, made by Him unseen.
I create this 'love', this 'suffering', this 'life',
this 'good', and all this seems obscene.

To assign to God names which cannot approach Him,
Titles we think Him to approach.
To limit Him as limitless, and make our God without reproach.

To assign Him names of His own creation.
To pretend we understand His intimations
while denying the names He most directly taught.
His one great name, whom Israel sought,
the great I AM, then the Son of Man.
Who has right to assign him tasks?
Who can know when all can ask?

If God is Good, we need not make him so.
For His Goodness will prove to be greater.
His Goodness will be himself. No good
which we place upon him.  No words
which we place in his mouth.  He is not alive,
but is greater.  He created life, made death,
and is bigger than either.  He will prove to Love.
He will prove to speak to us.  We will prove to be
invincible, with his sword before us, if only we allow
His heart to be His own, and take charge of ours.

Our idolatry of goodness is so lacking in the end,
When we place upon the Lord a role as mentor or as friend.
When we play his part speak his lines.
It is no far step from total pride,
to think I know God better than God himself.
So let us allow his arm to move.
And let us pray to behold the Love
Which he has promised those who remain in him
Which he has given those who've given in.

Let us have faith that is to say
that God is- - even if I were not.
Let us have faith that is to say
that I have nothing if God is not.
Let us have faith that is to say
that if God is dead, then I am so.
Let us have faith that is to say
that Jesus is more than we can know.

Fearless

I am the master of this hope
this sure and strong baptismal rope
Which just under this desert sand
long has lain - Understand?

I can do thinks without your knowing
my words are - even before the showing.

Unwarranted Adoration

Violent peace in fiery mane
by lion good, not lion tame
by words set down before world began
and I am given my glorious name
unbecoming to a traitor's shame
when I no longer know I deserve it.

Cathartic tears in scouring eyes
as scars are met by lover's light
and all-exceeding, mounting sigh.
Kill me now, but leave my pride.
No, my punishment is mercy.

Desolation

Noon comes by day or not at all
stars keeping faith in ice and thaw
But clouds pull wool over earthly eyes
and all we can see is cappèd skies.

Militant

We are a people not born in peace.
From the first grand explosion to our mother's pain,
We live by suff'ring, and in suffering cease.
And still, death is flour to grace's yeast.

Hair and Eyes

Listening to songs with a lonely heart.
Might one of the girls I know be my wife one day?
Searching for a home; when do I start?
Beautiful smiles and feeling like a green beret.

Blondes and Browns and Blues and Browns
and all the things I leave on the ground.
They all seem to make my life what it is.
I seem to need every one of them.

And as love flows deep through my hands and my heart
and all of my affection takes notice and starts.
Let me go, let me go.  I have people to love.
A heart to give and a gift from above.

Love Like the Sky is Blue

If your love wasn't so unimaginable
it might just have been imagined.
But it is so sure unfathomable,
For all measuring sticks are deep, under fathoms.

To behold this love;
so bare, so bold,
so counter-weight, so rough
is to understand
when my heart, my hand,
feels things I'd never think to touch.

Can I bathe in an ocean full-up of dreams?
Could I climb out the windows of movie scenes?
But this idea of love, more than e'er could be seen
is so great, so much greater; it must be outside of me.

Terminal

I bring you news, both good and bad,
and one day happy, right now sad;
I cannot tell you when or why,
but you've got life; of life you'll die.

And in the pain which will ensue,
you'll probably wish you'd been more true
so I'll but offer one treatment plan,
that you be the best that you know you can't.

Smile

Smile; your frown shows you're alive
enough to hurt, enough to die.

Smile; your pain proves you're still free
enough; you've got yourself to be.

Smile; your love means you're not alone
enough to be without a home.

Smile; our love means you cannot break,
for silent vows our blessings make.

Smile; his love means you will not fail,
and at the end, won't die, won't pale.

To Recreate

To see the faces as faces were,

how I learned to love them as they grew,

to see how I, so slow, came to,

and saw the hearts which promised truth.

To see those faces, still and sure,

or weeping for love's entrancing ruse,

no shame to your pretty face, but you

are prettier than your face's mood.

Engagement

Bless me, Father, for I have sinned,
This reckless driving is getting out of hand;
I was caught going thirty in a forty-five,
It takes me so much effort just to stay alive.

No Longer Can We Fear Embrace

Pain of modern, ragged wounds.
We lie alone in cold, clay tombs.

A broken body, feared or fair
buys sympathy, and comfort shared.
But hearts all shattered, cold or burnt
speak to us of strength unlearnt.

Why should spirit's greater pain
be met with empty, still disdain
when little cuts and bruises earn
the unmaking of all things stern?

Still, and find compassion here
For I know you face unknown fears.
Break, and let your spirit lie
And to all things but say goodbye.
Time has come to lean, to cry.

And Again.

To stand on edge of dark abyss
and all 'round flickers the mellow cliff
And, though dimly, light is here,
we fight to grasp and seek our fears.

To trust in those who've jumped before
who read of those still older doors,
and understand that burning light
is not in dusk, but under night.

To now complete our promised death
and bear our burden and fully fall
only then will breath be breath
and we will rise to claim it all.

For in the Dimholt, under mountain
In the pass where death is promised,
where no glimmer is ever seen
there we claim what we were meant to be.

Wait no longer for 'more to come'
hoping for ease when ease is done
but ride in faith at break of sun
for life is always worth dying for.

That Love is now, of all things self-centered
Grandest and most perfect made.
For Love we bring all to ourself
and then in Father's arms are laid.

That Christ, for sins still uncommitted
Died and bled and suffered pain.
More than all his life, he wanted
to have your heart with his again.

Suffer not more than now you must
but simply ask for what is true.
No longer look where peace was gone,
and know the whole world fasts for you.

Weathertop

Witches are Witches; The King is the King

All hail to the bearer; The Bearer, the Ring.

Upon my broad shoulder is perched a dark wound,

reminding me always of watchers and tombs.

Forward

Jesus, teach me how to Love.
Teach me how to Hate the same.
Lead me into Hopes from Fears,
and let us both now break the same.

And You, my Dear, my Happy Dear.

A man finds home stepping out of doors.

He lives in roaming on outdoor floors,

Who would sleep on grass or thistle down

but that his parents set unfound bounds.

A homely house makes not a home.

Not like a woman's eyes.

A bed and breakfast make not love,

not like a quiet, peaceful sigh.

All men cling fast to woman,

to hope and happy lives.

What word is now more grand

or more happy than that one: Wife.

Kicking and Screaming

There is an all-consuming reality

in which we make tunnels and create banality,

minds which invent and realize their maladies.

All pain is our choice not to be humbled to beauty.

The hardest of things is to see the ease of our duty.

Tax-Day

A dream of lovers, shooting stars.

They wear their sleeves upon their hearts.

And memories congeal in words

Which shatter like their simple swords:

"I may just tell you, if sparks untie

our insecure delights by night;

If either of us deign to try

to bring our twinkling love to light."

Glancing Blows

Glancing blows defend our homes
and dancing birds and singing gnomes
are all we now have left.

It's good to have it off my chest.

A Picture

I am a self-portrait of my lover,
More perfectly painted than I yet know.
I am an image of a beautiful other,
to be made into my subject not by sight but by flow.

Pleas

A cry for help is a
cry in pain.
A cry for attention a
dirty shame.

But why should be the call unanswered,
why do we, unanswered, call?
Why should need be met with stone?
Should I pretend not to need at all?

How does one one's weakness plain
when weakness is met with foul disdain?

Whoa.

Hey, it's been a while, there's some crazy things going down in my life.  Mostly consisting of the fact that I'm having to realize that our Lord loves each one of us enough to call us to do things which we can't even justify.  Expect a post about it. Eventually.

Maybe this is poetry, or maybe it's just the song which it is when I sing it.
But here.

I see - we all walk in darkness
and
I've found - we all seek the light.

I know we've all got our reasons
So when you come to me and say

You don't understand,
I say I don't either.
But sometimes our hands
aren't meant to try.

So hold me close
you can't be my guide, now.
But be my friend
And stand by my side.

Family

Love your parents as yourself
And love them to heaven - nothing else.

But live by faith and faith alone
Fire must be brought into homes.

Hey, a couple things.

I recorded this poem I wrote.  You can think of it as a reading, but better.
Take it as it is:

http://www.supload.com/listen?s=d23AAm

Also, this guy I know runs a great blog.  Here.  It's honest and helpful, personal and relate-able. Check out the Catholicness.

Also, everyone out there check out the March for Life.  It's on Monday.

What it's Like to Miss One's Friends

It seems to be lust for just one human voice.
Or even some sentient ambient noise.

Too tired to ration sleep as rational
Too longing for something, anything affable.

A Love so Ungraspable

A love so ungraspable,
so lonely, so true,
I am unfathomably
alone without you.

And fear so completed
by guilt  inconsolable
Fear so full yet not afraid
of life so uncontrollable.

Absolution

Confession hits like a kick in the face.
Oh the glory, the joy of being put in my place.

We're all drunkards in our own way

We're all drunkards in our own way,
I can look into your eyes and say
"your breath smells just like wine, my dear,
let's keep on breathing tonight, my dear,"

We can say "we're not afraid
to stare at each other's mouths and wait
for it all to just fall out
to figure what it's all about"

I don't know what you see when you look in the mirror
But I know what you say when you talk to yourself.
And I could be ashamed of you
and what you've forced me to
But I-

I love you.

You, Damned Speech

And yet the insecurity
of my inconstant brevity
of thought and speech
and affectation.

Just so when I am company
to friends, I am no faculty.
I fear that they grow tired of me
and lose my hope in empathy.

But when we, metaphysically,
move in the same direction,
often it is nice to make
these physical connections.

Parted Ways

An introspective extrovert

who needs his friends: their touch, their words

must learn, when without company

not to lie match loneliness with vacancy.

I prefer the human kind,

(at least so runs my lonely mind)

to God and his less tactile touch.

These things which I do love so much.

Promises

Your greatest offense
was the flat-out denial
of the pain I would suffer
just to know that you smile.

The Eve of Everything

I stayed up late on the eve of everything
I've never seen anything happen before.
I drank too much, so when the clock struck twelve
I didn't see it create itself.

Unshadowed Land: III.The Torch

A man, black against the horizon, crosses the crest of the mountain. He is known as Aethon in the town of his birth, one of the best of his kind, and is sorely missed. He is strongly built, but slender after his long journey. The light all round him illuminates his entire person; every detail shines like a moon, his every flaw and failing shines. He cannot bear to see himself, cannot bear to see his arms against the landscape, like darkness shining, glaring against the beauty of the world. Moving as does a weary man, he steps forward, purposed and set. As he begins to see the contents of the valley between the peaks, he slows, feet falling harder and heavier, then sits, gazing into the open land.

"Elaine," he breathes.

He exhales slowly, letting his exhaustion and pains fall away, and, first in a while, resting.

"Oh, Elaine."

His eyes are set upon the single Lily in the center of the valley. Lily, green and white, though no brighter than all else, seemed more perfect somehow, more precious. She seems, in his eyes, like a fire is to its pit. The light seems not only to reflect from her, but to be contained within her and distributed all the more perfectly for it. Not only does she convey the light, but she receives it and chooses to share it, changing it. She is clothed in the sun.

Her light, it seems to him, is focused in the center of her bell, cupped, and held, then radiating. It has a strange color, somehow different from the light all round, but in an indistinguishable way. It is the same light, but new. He has a strange feeling that it is shining in this way just for him, that it appears so because, in some way, of his presence. And stranger still, he finds now that he can look directly into this light, that it does not burn his eyes, but is gloriously colored in some way which he could see. It seems to him, if not the same light that he had seen at his home, at least of the same palette--That it is purely light, but shining from the Lily, is mixed somehow with the Lily's nature. It is visible to him in a way unlike that of the other light, as if his eyes can somehow grasp this light more fully, that it appears more clearly to him now that he might be led to see the greater palette of light up in these mountains, which, so far as he had come, had simply shone some paler grey, subtly transcendental as if under some veil.

The light, before, had simply shone him dark and all the rest light. The light before had separated him from everything else as something of a different sort entirely, of a baser material. Now, sitting just inside this sanctuary, he can see a newness about himself. Aethon seems not to be separated from the land in his entirety, but now to be separated from himself, which is separated from the land. All the things about himself which before had seemed so smudged, in this new light, now appeared loathsome and horrid, terribly perverted. Aethon felt, however, as though, in this light, he belonged in this land. That, if only this light would remain upon him, he could find himself at home here, at peace here, in the heights. This light was the fruit, somehow, he thought, of the Lily and the land, shining together, as if the mountains dwell in the Lily just as she dwells in them. Together, they had begotten this thing so gloriously perfect, real and present as the Lily, just as visible, but also just as bright as the land.

The sun above appears larger than he had ever seen it before. It burns so much brighter than any rising he had yet beheld. The same fire, though as a newer flame, burnt in the Lily. He has forgotten all which he came here to see, all which he planned to understand. He forgets, now, the simple Christianity of his town, the happy news of a man who saves and cleans and heals us, a god who loves and blesses and knows. A god who could be understood, could be tried. A tame god. This light, this land is greater, is mysterious and mystical. He stares, fixated upon the beauty of the light of this singular, white flower, this torch in the land of light.

And so, as he slowly rises to step again forward down toward the plant, he sighs again, not out of pain or exhaustion, but of hope and of awe.

"Elaine."

Juncture

Behold the bolded fealty declared
in our neat grasps so decently shared.
This pledge of mine--all facility
is turned, in pledge, to felicity.

Do mark the pow'r which signs expand;
Now--in the holding of the hands.

Meals

If you noticed chivalry
you would, without question, see
the depth of my fair love for thee
and for a lady's gift of her own company.

Unshadowed Land: II.The Visitor

They told me I would find myself out here. That it didn't make sense, but I would find out who I am. I didn't want to know who I am. But I went out anyway, out here in the wilderness.

I lost myself out here. I left everything I am down at the bottom of the mountains. My thoughts - to be like Christ, I can't be myself anymore. We should be ourselves only inasmuch as we approach the same God from our own beginnings. So I left behind all that made me me.

And I found what I want to be. I found God in the predictable places, I'm glad to say. He said he would be with me anywhere if I remained in him, and everywhere is where I looked. And it's where he was.

But I can only stay here so long. It's bright here. I can't keep my eyes open. There's too much to see. Too much light. The sun is closer here. Somehow it's never dark. It all seems the same. There aren't darker things--there aren't brighter things. Everything is simply pure. Everything in brought together in the shining-everything reflecting off of everything else-all reflecting the same light of the sun as if it were in everything.  And all there is is shining stone.  

But I can't live here. Not normally. I'd give anything to be able to. But I can't for much longer. My clothes look dark. My skin looks dark. My hands are black like night compared to this ever-flowing day.  My hands smudge everything.  There's something I'm covered in.

I'm not ready for this land yet. I don't know what it would look like for something like me to stay here, but surely I'm not meant to. Not now. I'm not ready. I'm too dark. I can't reflect like everything else. It's too much.

Tomorrow is December 8th.  I shall cross over the highest of the mountains tomorrow morning. I shall enter the great ring of peaks. Even if the lore is true, few have ever been here, and none still know what is inside. But I shall know. If I die to see. I can't imagine it being more beautiful than this land itself.

The Calm, The Calm there in your Palms.

And I had another dream today

That I was a stranger come to say

I love you.

And when you said "why?"

I said "I like your eyes.

They're just black and deep deep blue,

but they see light."

I commented upon your dress

and how the pretty flower press

would bounce just like your auburn hair

and when you spin float in the air

and how you look when I made you smile.

And then we sat there for a while.

You took my hand, do you understand

what it means that I'm a man

who gives and takes and celebrates

what he never ever could have created.

And we sat in contemplation of the fact that we related.

And we danced and spun

and had our fun

and then went back to our respective homes.

Alone.

Then I awoke.

And the next day when I looked there,

you were gone and it was quite unfair

that I had learnt to love a dream,

had shared a sad solemnity

with someone who I'd never chance to meet.

Someone with such graceful, happy feet.

Such happy feet.

But then I found you yet again

and learnt through you to love a friend

who doesn't quite look just the same

but has your smile and feels your shame

Not auburn hair but tarnished gold

just like her soul.

But she won't see it 'til she's old.

She shies from love but looks for hugs

and finds hope in the strangest drugs

like smiles and nods and dancing free

just dancing free.

Just dance with me and you will see

That all of our reality

is nothing but the modesty

of something so much greater than the trees.

Oh, if you please.

Thank you, please.

Songs of birds and buzzings of the bees

I wish that I could take you to the seas

and melt away your insecurities.

Sorry to tease.

I'll say with ease.

That your hand is better than any memories.

I love you just even more than I did in my sleep.

And you're truer than any of my dreams.

8 Crazy Nights

Freedom and all untimed song-
just melody and unrhymed words.
Following each intoned chorus
and dancing with our unboned swords.

When found the gifts all freely giv'n
taking them is the first step to heav'n.

There is no ascetic debauchery
or drunken nights, raw entropy,
but true ascetic virtue is
to love gifts as gifts and God as He.
And to revel in thankful mysteries.

It is the Octave of Christmas and the Solemnity of Mary, Mother of God!
Merry general greatness of Salvation!