Category Archives: poetry

Clockwork

The hands reaching for places they should not
feeling what is well and the gaps between
while the gears stutter over echoed thoughts
drawing out the whirring sounds long and obscene
a betrayal of the bright golden sheen
and the expertly crafted mechanics;
a token of wit and genius pristine
with disjointed and broken organics.

They keep winding, but no one sets the time
Polish and shine but no one climbs inside
as if admitting damage is the crime
and thus the past is where the now resides,
the future an unspoken thing implied
while savage moments spin along unchecked
and give cause for our fictions to divide
until at last ourselves we will dissect.

Cleanse

Walk against the ravenous waves
though they charge headlong against you
they serve no purpose beyond this
they retreat only to riposte

Though you may not have swam before
walk against the ravenous waves
and become the student once more,
revelations born in duress

Feel your form defined and expressed
a second skin from waters depths
walk against the ravenous waves
and let your falsehood wash away

All that time and effort we spent
matters not for those who Jesus saves
with faith and rocks in pockets they
walk against the ravenous waves.

Silence

“My god, why hast thou forsaken me?”
A call heard throughout history,
Always desperate to solve this unspoken mystery,
As if we’ve glimpsed the last page,
And yet were met with a different end.
Did we read the wrong book?
Or were those pages torn out because we dared to look?
We reach the end, our end, the end and as always,
It ends in a shout,
“My god, why hast thou forsaken me?”

I hear it through the threads of time,
Wrapped, quilted, packaged in plastic,
However you’ll take it,
If you can take it.
But you won’t,
Unless you were the one to make it.
Those women tied to stakes,
Burned battered and stoned,
Still tried to atone, refusing truth for punishment,
Punished even for that sentiment,
Then died, screaming,
“My god, why hast thou forsaken me?”

The sound echoes ever on,
Called up through the ages like water in an oasis,
An alien thing that lives in absurd places,
A geographical red flag that you refuse to drink.
Oh, but you’ll brag about the dehydration,
Carry your cross loud on dubs and hydraulics,
With a pair of truck nuts
And your moms name spelled out in guns.
While 10,000 children each day die from your exaggeration,
Drinking deep while they thirst for water,
Through parched lips they sputter:
“My god, why hast thou forsaken me.”

Do you hear it too,
The unholy fugue?
The dirge that’s been stuck in your playlist,
But you always skip;
To listen to some other tune dropping from dead lips.
It’s always there, I promise you,
Like the sound of gas seeping in through a shower head,
In a room full of the dead,
Or soon to be dead anyway,
Removing their clothes, and whispering quietly
As not to shake the others,
“My god, why hast thou forsaken me?”

The sound is probably so loud at this point,
And you’ve ignored it so long,
That to recognize it would be like a fish cataloging the water,
Quantifying, tagging, and reselling to those who would bother,
Looking for the finer things,
When the finer things are just the things possessed by another.
But the children hear it clearly,
It’s still fresh to them for a while,
It takes years of parents and owners telling them shut their ears,
Telling them what they really hear,
But when those same kids are locked in cages, dungeons, or in the arms of the vile,
They hear it clearly, and no one is there to plug their ears,
So they whimper through tears,
“My god, why hast thou forsaken me?”

If you hear it now,
You’re in good company,
Even the man Jesus died on the cross,
Or so they say,
With the sound resounding loud in his ears,
as he looked up to the heavens and asked,
“My god, why hast thou forsaken me?”
To no response.

Opiate for the Masses

Can you fix problems such as these?
They play tricks and do as they please;
With a mixture of money and power,
They strip away our basic rights with ease.

But who funds them in this dark hour?
Can we condemn those we devour;
Those titans that stem from corrupt ideals,
To leave us poor, broken and deflowered.

To whom would they possibly kneel?
They’ve bought our meek souls at a steal;
Priced by a book that told us we were weak,
To deal with the world however you feel.

Why take advice that is so bleak?
Rustic words from an old antique;
“Suffer now,” the book says, “it’s the technique!”
“In Death you will obtain all that you seek.”