Are you the victim?
Of smiling hatred
Emanating from a calcified heart
For that’s where it starts

Are you tempted by smiling lust?
Lust or bust
Sex
Sports
Food
Popularity
Music

Are you a slave?
Do you crave?
Smoking
Alcohol
Drugs

Does your appetite for leisure
Mean cheap substitutes
For pleasure?

Does society?
Strap a “dead” body to your back
Are you chained to corruption
With subliminal seduction

If so ,don’t tarry
For in life
You are what you carry
***********************
“We forge the chains
We wear in life”

Charles Dickens

Call me sullen
Call me morose
Call me resentful
Call me embittered
Call me “Mara”

An empty glass
Of bitter water
A heart in tribulation
An empty state
In need of regeneration

My heart
My thoughts
I need to scour
A rose will either
Wither or flower
For
Suffering can make you either
Sweet or sour
***********************
“Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander
be put away from you, along with all malice.”
Ephs. 4-31

Can’t sing
What can’t be song
Can’t move
What can’t be moved
Can’t change
What can’t  be changed
You question life
But life doesn’t have
All the answers

Have you already reaped
What you have sowed?
Have you reached?
The end of the fence line
The sign at the end of the road
Or
Are you still waiting?
For the doorbell to ring
For the package to arrive
Is this how you survive?
Is this the only thing that
Keeps you alive?
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
“Here we go round the prickly pear
prickly pear prickly pear.
Here we go round the prickly pear
at 5 o’clock in the morning.”
T.S. Eliot

Stealing time
That’s all we’re givin’
Discriminant amounts
Portioned out to the livin’

Where have they gone?
Far from sight
Surrounded by darkness
Out of sight

Is there a pit
Where man descends?
Into the dark place
With no end

Silence in solitude
Once known
Among the living
Now I’m alone

Is life just a flip of a quarter?
A random choice
With no voice
A fleeting glance
Left to chance
For death it would seem
Has no pecking order

Hide yourself
Where the water rushes over the rocks
Near the evergreen foliage
A quiet Place
For meditation

Drink the clear water
From the fresh bubbling brook
Wet on the lips
Quenching the tongue

Drink till full
Store away
Prepare yourself for
Lesser days

For when
The water stops flowing
And the brook dries up
Where do you turn?
What have you learned?
Never knowing
When your thirst will return
****************************
“He will drink from a brook beside the way;
Therefore he will lift up his head.”
Psalm (110:7)

Hearts of stone
Stand alone
For reasons known
History has shown

A heart left unattended
Can never be mended
Left to defy
It blinds the eye

Unjust judgments
Twisted motives
Selfish denials
Uncontrollable rage
Have placed the heart in a cage

So Awaken!
The harps,lyres,cymbals and pipes
Play a new song
Sound the trumpet
Time for a new beginning
Cut where it starts
A circumcision of the heart
****************************
“Above all else guard your heart,
For it affects everything you do”
Proverbs 4:23

There was a time
Time was when
A time never
Seen again

Once upon a time
Not so long ago
The sun warmed the heart
The moon romanced the sky above
How grand
Love

Time flows
Caries lives along
Separates the truth
Buried in youth

Time heals
But never reveals
The struggle and pain
It secretly conceals

Looking back at the heart
To ponder the old
Time remains silent
Its story yet to unfold

But
Life was easy then
Time will reveal
Everything was okay
Back in the day

I speak as I write
My thoughts to myself
I’ll convey to you
If that’s alright

I speak in words
No one hears
Except maybe you
Who recognize my tears

I speak in rhyme
That’s what I do
I compose each line
Just for you

I speak a language
Only you know
For you the reader
To translate so

I speak in themes
That only you understand
You follow my thoughts
You know where I stand

I speak what I see
I write this way
Black and white
Few shades of gray

I speak no pattern
You follow my reasoning
Wherever it leads
Wherever it goes

You are my audience
I need no one else
I speak only to you
So you can follow
For you know that my words
Are sometimes hard to swallow
******************************
“Better to write for yourself and have no public
Then to write for the public and have no self”

Cyril Connolly (1933)

Does it matter…?
How much money you make
How many friends you have
How many possessions you own
How successful you are
If you obtained fame
If you win the game
How many matters really matter

You labor each day
For things you think truly matter
In your struggles and strife
Have you ever considered
What’s the real point of your life?

They’ve asked me to forgive you
Do what you think is right
Rise above the norm they say
They want me to show compassion
To their satisfaction

Yet, you do not confess
You show no emotion
You express no words
You remain silent
You want my forgiveness
Yet, you prefer to stand and choose to
Argue in silence

But I know that
Forgiveness is the gateway to freedom
It frees you from the bitterness and indignation
That you’ve stored in your heart
***********************************
“To err is human;
To forgive divine.”
Alexander Pope
(1688-1744)