Word, like wind, cuts through you / Withers all but true you
Freedom’s fallen to her knees
And she’s got no strength to stand
When the voices of a nation
Fall like salt upon the sand
Muted by a call of hatred
Ringing all across the land
All her screams for gentle mercy
Stifled by a tyrant hand
Look around you, there are signs
In the flower and the tree
in the river and the sky
For an eye that wants to see
Come together, join as one
Ocean of humanity
Here and now, remove the shackles
Here and now: set Freedom free
Though the day chases night
Never brightens it quite
In the way that the night
Quenches day
Every worry and stress
Every pain becomes less
When you hear what the night
Has to say
You’re angry at them all, and now
It feels like something deep within has died,
How could they do this to you
After all you do for them and all you’ve tried.
“Forgive, so God forgives you,” is
The chant repeated, and you’ve tried a lot,
But then you look at people
And reduce them to the gadgets that you’ve got:
It’s easy when a smartphone just
Goes dumb, you can exchange it for another,
But you can’t find replacements for
A parent, child, a sister or a brother.
You feel the world against you
Like a hammer coming down upon a nail
And then they say they’re sorry, but
You’re tired of the way they always fail.
Now all your love has withered in
The desert of your anger, you decide
There’s nothing left to give up but
The hardest thing to give up is your pride.
So hear the Friday caller’s call
To heed the words that drift upon his breath
And turn your eye upon yourself
And beg forgiveness now before your death.
Till there begins to swell a wave
Of Mercy from the fountain whence it springs
A wave that rolls toward the shores
Of faith with all the mercy Mercy brings.
It fills you with abilities
You thought were well beyond you all this time:
It’s easy to forgive when you
Have been forgiven any fault or crime.
Good deeds and sweet forgiveness wipe
Bad deeds and their effects away for good,
It’s what the angels do when they
Set out to carry orders as they should.
The Lord forgives, and so does his
Beloved Messenger forgive, and so
It is with his companions
And those who followed them: Forgive. Let go
That hearts adrift may join once more
And journey all together to the end
Where everything begins again,
Where mercies and forgivenesses descend.
Seek the truth for what it is
Not what you’d like it to be
Shake off time
Then time constrains
Time dies
Truth remains
The words are formed and primed to do their dance
Upon the bones of honor in disgrace
You’ve strung your bow of tongue, awaiting chance
To send that verbal arrow nocked in place.
But then, just as you are about to fire
There falls a slowing hand upon your bow
Eliding tension for a reason higher
Than all the reasons you could ever know.
The arrow is dismantled word by word,
Replaced by disposition quite reversed:
An arsenal of patience undeterred
By thoughts seducing you to be your worst.
It is an act of courage to withhold
A poisoned arrow, be it cast in gold.
I’ll let it slide because
I know you’ll learn someday
That all you said there was
Just all you didn’t say
Today:
just a day on the prairie
bounding
leaping
suddenly silently wary
slow down
amble on
by the brown
stroke of dawn
Now even as we mourn the loss
Of famous faces for the good
They heaped upon the world they touched
As only people like them could,
We can’t forget the faces that
Were too horrific for the news
Because they bear the marks of death
Witnessing inconvenient truths.
Let’s not forget the faces of
The elders who we push aside
That WE may live in peace and comfort
In the days before THEY died.
Let’s not forget the faces lost
Without a home to call their own
In games of war where bombs are tossed
By oh-not-so-mistaken drone.
And if we cannot see these faces
We must close our eyes to see
For that is how the blind are blessed
In matters of a mind that’s free.
Nothing ejects me
from my latibule
atop this mile-high oak:
do nothing
and I’ll be down
So here I am, I’ve found that slice of time
When I said what I said; I freeze it dry
And step toward its body laced with crime
To analyze the what, how, when and why.
It looks quite innocent from where I am,
A figure cloaked in camphor-scented lies,
So I get closer till the fog of glamor
Lifts, revealing all my tongue devised.
Its face glows bright, a blinding flaring red,
Its hands are raised, upturned without a care,
I look for smile but find a smirk instead,
And cringe to see the maggots in its hair.
I let time roll to crush its nasty head
And plan apologies for what I said.