Repute.

sandpaper corpses
airbrushed skin grafts
hair that flows against the grain

deflated eyes
marbled gray lips
vacant ears

ambition guarded by fear
eating favors by the mouthful
we do what we want
 and want what we feel 
  and feel what isn't ours

what's left

devoid of moisture
each heart scrapes 
squeezing through brick alleys
chasing a thief that won't be found

O, to live 
to breathe
to die,
and be consumed!
what taste shall linger
of this bittersweet life?

Love, if we can manage it.
Hope, if we preserve it. 
Bravery, if we can muster it.
Joy, if we believe it.

Love is found in breadcrumbs and milkpails,
not stocked fridges.
A keystone, compressed and constant,
rigid under each bridge we cross

Hope rings through funeral bells, 
echoes in vaulted ceilings,
singing words a sermon can't 
if you choose to hear.

Bravery is looking in the mirror
with a smile
Accepting victory in white enamel,
defeat in every wrinkle.

Joy is peanut butter ice cream,
and campfire smoke,
hands warm from touch and
cheeks weary from smiling.

I used to live
thinking life could be lived from a balcony
observing, critiquing, people-watching
until it got too hot or too dark or
my coffee got cold.

Life as a traveler bears no such convenience,
but
the breadcrumbs taste better,
I make faces in the mirror,
and when the bells play my song---

Those who I met on the road
will hang up my muddy, grey trainers.
I'll still smell like campfire,
and they'll eat peanut butter ice cream for me.

//:\\ SKY RUN //:\\

Emotion is a strange animal, 
a pockmarked, tightly coiled cord
of heartstrings and dreamwood, 
of wistful twigs and smug charcoal.

A staggering conglomerate
that walks faster than it runs.
At times, ungainly, with gnarled
nails and black teeth.

Yet, a beauty persists, clinging
passively to the cavernous depths
and endless reaches that lay unexplored
within itself. Any attempted venture
narrowly avoids death, but promises
a tattoo, small scars,
a gash above the eye. 
Each mark a blow, encrypted
in the hollow bones of each survivor.
Jagged claw marks
on thick skulls.

Few have ever managed to tame
this strange beast, and none
have mastered it. 

To hunt it is folly.
Like a dry leaf in a distant wind, 
no man has sufficient persistence. 
It feeds in the highest peaks, 
nests in the murkiest ponds. 

Only at the edge of a silver-tipped lake
with glossy, laminar tides,
will it wash up,
resting softly on my thigh.

I dare not touch it.
Upset by my single quick breath, 
it shivers quietly in my lap.
I strain to keep my chest relaxed,
my eyes transfixed.

And then, 
Ecstasy.

An icy chill, followed by a 
smoldering heat, coursing through
rivets of nerves and railroad-spike veins. 
Next, boiling blood begins to overflow, surging,
crashing on the doors of the heart,
each thud an exquisite stab. 

The arteries swell like overworked fishnets,
as fist by fist is driven into the thin
sheet-rock walls  that contain this fierce flow.
Finally, with a rough crack,
the heart erupts ever so pleasantly.

A sharp jolt of pure energy 
runs its course, converting limp tissue
to taut fibers,
a breathless convulsion that
lights up the eyes and
flings the mind skyward.

Suddenly, I'm sprinting through
the clouds; thunderclaps are my footsteps, 
each shard of my electric being flowing 
relentlessly towards some celestial goal.
I can taste the Sun, 
a medallion adorning my chest.
I ride the wind for days, 
taking laps around the stars.

And then, I see her. 

Soft clouds curling over her toes,
folding around the soft curves of her ankles.
The light breaks across her forehead, 
illuminating each fine strand of gold
woven between thick locks of heathery brown.
Her fair skin, a pale, air-brushed pink.
Her pure eyes, a simple, soft green.

They say beauty is in the eye of
the beholder, but that is the boldest
of falsehoods; no man's eyes could contain
what stood before me, smiling.

I fall to my knees.
Our eyes dance over each other,
slowly waltzing and spinning on every detail.
Our hearts join hands. 
We roam aimlessly, never looking
at the road or the glimmering stars. 

We sail softly through midnight air;
she, resting gently at my side
as I coast freely, fingers pining at her hair.
Ours is the same melody that
 the mountains sing at sunrise, that
rustles through pines and 
echoes in valleys.

No words exchanged, but there's no need.
We are both held captive.
My arms circle her sides, 
her hair draped over my shoulder.

I lean in to kiss her, and --


My eyes open.

I'm by the lake again.

Except for a black smear on my thigh,
no sign of that queer beast remains.

A flash of anger burns through my confusion,
pulling me to my feet.
I find myself running again,
more erratically than before,
possessed,
feet chopping through mud and brown water,
hands flailing, grasping towards the nothingness
at the center of the lake. 

I'm up to my shoulders before I stop.
I float there, panting, staring.
Water laps against my hollow chest,
sucking the breath out of me.

"She's gone."

It's gone.
And I can't chase it. 

Hanging Lake -- Glenwood Springs, CO

Structure? #herewego

Transliteration: Charis (Gk.); look it up

Such love eschews,
Such love ferments,

Such love’s a threat
In the present tense.

What sort of ruse

Or malcontent

Could hence beget

This grand offense?

My heart to choose,

Nay, circumvent

The joys that whet

My soul intense.

Too much to fuse

To weak cement.

Too great a debt

To thus dispense.

These filthy shoes,

You won’t relent;

My bleak vignette,
Your smile immense.

Your words bemuse

Yet give, augment,

Provided yet
With no expense.

To me, of you

No sounds misspent
A one-sided duet

With thick incense

Such love in hues

Shall not fragment.

Such love is eternal

In the present tense. 

Piety or pity?

I got to take a trip up to Columbus, OH with some fellow Manhattan-ites, and this is what came out.
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Heartland.

Jersey-cotton pillows are
a small comfort
as I curl up on my
bus ride to Nowhere.

Everyone else seems to know where
they're headed,
and worse,
why.
They talk rapidly while
my mind mumbles through
an after-lunch haze,
of their plans, of shared joys,
anything but restlessness.

No focus to be gained,
vision clouded and soaked
by the rain.

But to see is to know,
and to know is to be certain.
No doubt, no tension,
no faith.

Faith saves, not knowledge.
Faith empowers, knowledge dwindles.

Thus, there lies a choice between
what is right, and
what is easy.

We must live by faith,
not by sight.

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Of Cigarettes and Coffee

That bitter, scalding-hot harshness
     that drags us out of sleep
With acrid, thick, grey exhalations
     that escape these callous heaps.

     Short orders, long walks.
     Vacant eyes, blood,
     and chalk.

This city is dead, and I want out.

There is no light beyond the stars,
     no natural energy.
Just caffeine spikes and nicotine fixes,
     mere numbed-up fallacy. 

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there's a reason i put these two together. 

basically, they are a summation of the prevailing tension i have felt the last few weeks, and while i can say fairly confidently that i've  found a solution, these two fairly bleak writings merit an explanation, both for you and, more importantly, for me. i've written a fair amount regarding my growing understanding of grace, but what you see here is essentially my own self-pitying examinations of my life and how i've yet to fully apply these lessons personally. i will candidly admit  that i have perfectionist tendencies in my spiritual life. in short, i have not cultivated a healthy mindset that permits me to truly accept grace and still function fully in the role(s) that I have operated in within the body of Christ. essentially, I cannot seem to reconcile the two prevailing tensions between how God sees me and how my actions are truly positive while I, myself, feel inadequate  both emotionally and practically. 

yet in the midst of all this, the gospel is my solace, or, rather, it should be. it is quite literally the only force accessible that can pull me out of self-despair and cultivate a love for God and a love for people that is meaningful.  and i have ignored it, though not intentionally. 

I, for a long time, have allowed self-pity to dominate my thinking. any thoughts related to my own sinfulness, my identity, even my leadership, have been marked with this suffocating sense of wistful longing for perfection that has either driven me to rash action or, more often, pitiful grieving. and it is this obsession of sorts with my own imperfections that has at best skewed my perception of the gospel, if not blatantly pulled me away from it. 

so, pray for me. pray that the Holy Spirit would cultivate in me a genuinely beautiful love for the gospel, that I might no longer spend any time counting my imperfections without connecting them to the amazing grace that i have received in Christ. 

Blanket Prayer

The smallest joys come
through contentment
with catatonic, changeless
collections of limbs.


A large chunk of driftwood,
A graying corpse, castrated,
Passed out drunk on cheap spirits.
Floating face down
on a slow current,
Stirred only by
the cascading flow
of the waterfall
that marks The end.

What is beauty
if it cannot
be seen? What is
life if we cease
to breathe?

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Ephesians 5:14

Therefore it says,

“Awake, O sleeper,
    and arise from the dead,
and Christ will shine on you.”

Isaiah 51

"Listen to me, you who pursue righteousness,
    you who seek the Lord:
look to the rock from which you were hewn,
    and to the quarry from which you were dug.
² Look to Abraham your father
    and to Sarah who bore you;
for he was but one when I called him,
    that I might bless him and multiply him.
³ For the Lord comforts Zion;
    he comforts all her waste places
and makes her wilderness like Eden,
    her desert like the garden of the Lord;
joy and gladness will be found in her,
    thanksgiving and the voice of song.

⁴ “Give attention to me, my people,
    and give ear to me, my nation;
for a law^[a] will go out from me,
    and I will set my justice for a light to the peoples.
⁵ My righteousness draws near,
    my salvation has gone out,
    and my arms will judge the peoples;
the coastlands hope for me,
    and for my arm they wait.
⁶ Lift up your eyes to the heavens,
    and look at the earth beneath;
for the heavens vanish like smoke,
    the earth will wear out like a garment,
    and they who dwell in it will die in like manner;^[b]
but my salvation will be forever,
    and my righteousness will never be dismayed.

⁷ “Listen to me, you who know righteousness,
    the people in whose heart is my law;
fear not the reproach of man,
    nor be dismayed at their revilings.
⁸ For the moth will eat them up like a garment,
    and the worm will eat them like wool;
but my righteousness will be forever,
    and my salvation to all generations.”

⁹ Awake, awake, put on strength,
    O arm of the Lord;
awake, as in days of old,
    the generations of long ago.
Was it not you who cut Rahab in pieces,
    who pierced the dragon?
¹⁰ Was it not you who dried up the sea,
    the waters of the great deep,
who made the depths of the sea a way
    for the redeemed to pass over?
¹¹ And the ransomed of the Lord shall return
    and come to Zion with singing;
everlasting joy shall be upon their heads;
    they shall obtain gladness and joy,
    and sorrow and sighing shall flee away.

¹² “I, I am he who comforts you;
    who are you that you are afraid of man who dies,
    of the son of man who is made like grass,
¹³ and have forgotten the Lord, your Maker,
     who stretched out the heavens
    and laid the foundations of the earth,
and you fear continually all the day
    because of the wrath of the oppressor,
when he sets himself to destroy?
    And where is the wrath of the oppressor?
¹⁴ He who is bowed down shall speedily be released;
    he shall not die and go down to the pit,
    neither shall his bread be lacking.
¹⁵ I am the Lord your God,
     who stirs up the sea so that its waves roar—
    the Lord of hosts is his name.
¹⁶ And I have put my words in your mouth
     and covered you in the shadow of my hand,
establishing^[c] the heavens
    and laying the foundations of the earth,
    and saying to Zion, ‘You are my people.’”

¹⁷ Wake yourself, wake yourself,
    stand up, O Jerusalem,
you who have drunk from the hand of the Lord
    the cup of his wrath,
who have drunk to the dregs
    the bowl, the cup of staggering.
¹⁸ There is none to guide her
    among all the sons she has borne;
there is none to take her by the hand
    among all the sons she has brought up.
¹⁹ These two things have happened to you—
    who will console you?—
devastation and destruction, famine and sword;
    who will comfort you?^[d]
20 Your sons have fainted;
    they lie at the head of every street
    like an antelope in a net;
they are full of the wrath of the Lord,
    the rebuke of your God.

²¹ Therefore hear this, you who are afflicted,
    who are drunk, but not with wine:
²² Thus says your Lord, the Lord,
    your God who pleads the cause of his people:
“Behold, I have taken from your hand the cup of staggering;
the bowl of my wrath you shall drink no more;
²³ and I will put it into the hand of your tormentors,
     who have said to you,
    ‘Bow down, that we may pass over’;
and you have made your back like the ground

    and like the street for them to pass over.” 

Silent Disparity

Fettered by a rope swing,
Entertaining hopeful escape,
Each forkful of apple pie
Yields naught but sour grapes.

The sky reaches far, the grass pulls tight,
And thus I'm anchored to this site.

I wish to run,
to seek,
to find,
but wispy dreams
sequester the mind.

What clouds remain, in reality,
still pass, as vacant imagery.

================================

Without my Father, I am unable to do anything worth mention, despite any sort of benevolent ideal or half-formed plan I might develop.


“I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing." John 15:5

For this, I couldn't be more humbly thankful, for who am I to say what is most beneficial in the long run, most satisfying, most useful, most 'necessary'?

“For my thoughts are not your thoughts,
   neither are your ways my ways,”
   declares the LORD.
 “As the heavens are higher than the earth,
   so are my ways higher than your ways
   and my thoughts than your thoughts." Isaiah 55:8-9

The first third of a yet-untitled triptych that will (hopefully) be finished soon.
Again, thanks for reading. Hope you enjoy it. 

================================================

I. Trivial Pursuits.

"Nothing is more frustrating than an entire evening of Trivial Pursuit. Unless it is a whole day of trivial pursuit."  - John Ortberg

================================================

I desire everything,

yet follow nothing.

Blinded by the pursuit of Something,

I come up empty-handed.

I look to the Great Scale

as it weighs the dust and the rubble

of my attempts,

and sigh,

as the arms of the Scale,

with no opposing weight, catapult

rock and dirt pitifully into space.

No shape,

no form.

Vapors, 

mere hints of an Existence,

of Life.

Dejected, I fall face down in the grass,

As what little substance remains visible

Proceeds to destroy itself,

effortlessly and silently imploding.

What is the Purpose?

For I see none.

I sense none.

I fear,

none. 

None.

After a time, 

I slowly raise my head

and rest my chin on my folded arms.

Blades of grass scratch at my cheeks.

One in particular hovers beside my temple.

I turn to face it,

as the cool wind 

pulls it every which way.

I yank it out of the earth

and, holding it between two fingers,

observe its texture,

its structure,

before releasing it.

It falls silently to the ground.

What a meaningless existence.

What an empty life.

For what purpose did it live?

Simply to grow?

To be the tallest?

The thickest?

The oldest?

To merely steal 

as much light 

and hoard

as much food

as possible?

It can't be.

It must not be so.

As rain began to fall

From shapeless clouds

I found myself under

A lone tree.

Dark mist and fat drops

Coated the plain.

This feeding frenzy,

It seems,

Has eaten the life

right out of me.

Such virulent proclivities,

Encased in paper-thin fallacies

Have all but brought me to my knees.

I desire Truth,

But all I sense is perjury.

Sensationalized,
Institutionalized,
Perjury of the highest order.

Rivulets of diluted tears
flow gently downstream,
as I watch the Overly Sensual

consume and destroy the individual,

not by choking out,

but worse, by turning in.

My eyes become I’s

Under the prevailing guise

That self-interest trumps empathy;

And thus, I am paralyzed.

As thunder rolls and wet leaves fall,
I drift slowly into sleep.

================================================