The world probably isn't any kind of shellfish at all.

Friend or foe
Identify yourself
And in so doing
Discover who you are

Prayer

To stand at the
Bottom of the sky
Wrestling the universe

Hot wax words dripping
In my mind tonight
I could have been a poet
I could have made those words to sing
In a garden where all the thumbs are green
Not just this stubby candle
Not just these idle seconds
Between being someone else
I could have been a poet
Maybe I still can

I understand your anger.
I do.
Muscular sinuous anger
Writhing around in the severed head of its own den
Unable to bite, refusing to die.
Carved from your own soft flint
Yearning for the feeble sparks that speak
Of fire being birthed.

I understand the way it curls you up
Into fists
Love to punch
Your mind into people's heads.
You know,
Them. Out there.
Too blind to stand in your shoes
And gaze at the neat knots
Wound in your laces.

I like the shape of that sound

I like to think that Superman

Remembers home

Like sails on a windless day

I settle on me

A skin of dust and treachery

Forgotten plans 

In the distance between 

Thought and action

Separation of head and hands

I believe in

Quickly gained and swiftly lost
At the mirror reflecting on myself
At a moment's cost

A poem for a dusty question
Not a country, an imagination
Teeming in the dry
You know for you it shines
But the weather gets lost
In my own mind.

Hope is an open hand


and


In leper's prison
You cannot feel the bars

I wrote a smile
Or went to, at least
But I couldn't spell happiness
With teeth.

Ahh beneath the heaven tree
We said we'd meet
Spreading branches, us beneath,
Soft pulpy lightning
Earth scented moss wicks
And the gentle flames of glossy wings
Fluttering under a lighted moon.

They say that Mars used to cry
That tears would streak her ruddy cheeks
The lonely mother of no one

The Maiden

It isn't fair
To be so beautiful
And still so lost

A carefully made mistake
Where the reeds find the lake
Recalling the cool of your presence
A flower for you, and
A cloud for me. I planned
To write a letter, never sent it.
Can it be enough to enjoy
The present at a moment's notice?

a shallow hollow hell
in this shattered hallowed hull
tell me have you seen the stars
dancing in the null?

a hope too fierce
to fold within this tatter
so escape the blaze of suns
I commission you to go
to where the void lies gentle
and cold is mother to your soul

Oh the flame
The candle burns
Fills the room with shadows
Flickers time till
Fire is the only still
Blisters are for tomorrow

The Truth
And other lies we tell ourselves

A broken branch to keep the snarling beasts of now at bay.

Waiting

Retrace your steps
Foot by foot
Comfortably lost
Drops alone can erase
Tracks so deep
So you can lose yourself
Somewhere new

Surely God understands
The ticking that scratches at the doors
When sleep loiters outside
Sharing a cigarette with someone else

I will draw you forth
When the morning is bitter
To hold you like a breath
Warm against frosted glass
Lost in my own deep snow
Pining for primeval forests
Of my own rumbling ancient past
And a stick to keep the beasts of now at bay

Behind Screen Doors.

We sat in the sand
And watched the sky
Gently curl into the universe
A fat, black cat
With lightning in it's fur

Genesis 18

To pray like Abraham
To blink before the Awesome One
And be, for enemies
One at the altar
Though the gifted Lamb
Is not from but for
Me.

Standing on hollow rock
Hear each footstep echo
And wonder when I shall
Prove stronger than stone
And in the falling, be broken.

Looking back
Is difficult to avoid
As you gaze into the mirror

Origami girl
You have always been square, but
Today a blossom.

April First

I don't need you
I can make myself a fool
Alone

Find rest in your soul
A reaching out, within
Alone
Nevermore
Hope like candle wax
Pools into the Maker's seal
Unbroken
A broken soul,
Forevermore refreshed

Were you in the building
When Samson stole the sky?
I watched the stars fall down to earth
Like tears from Samson's eyes
Pillars stranded, sliced like hair
Covering his bald disgrace.
When Samson brought the ceiling down
We put him in his place.

All blessings flow
Down the mountain
To the sea.
He hides them in the sky
Beyond the clouds
For a lowly one
Like me.

The World's First City

The Curse of Cain
Was the ever fear
Of death that lay
Beyond his walls of safety.

I am most unlike the self
I never yet was,
The me I cannot remember
                                         yet
My marrow can't forget.

Wings too dissimilar
To run along the skins of the air
Reduced and hobbling on rough crusts
I sleep with broken feet
I know no others
For raptured dancing I was born
                                                  before
The day of my birth.

Weak
The glass that stops sound
But shatters at a touch

I want to catch the fluttery
Bird of confusion
Nesting in my stomach

Old gods die slowly
Is it mercy to glance upon them
In the thickness of their blood?
Or will we catch divinity's grim disease
Till sleeves that plunged the dagger deep
Wear the heart of the old one
And the old god is born once more.

Musings on a Sunset's Stamp (Romans 1:20)

Why are my thoughts of you
So low?
When the sunset sails into
Titanic reds
Snarls of eager orange
And yellow, quickly-gone
Snatched into a kingly birth
Why are my thoughts of you
So low?
Could I but catch the sky,
Maybe find your hidden heel
Are your footsteps just too high
For a mind recklessly below
To feel?

I stretch my mind impossibly
Against the chaptered heavens
Fingers run red-soaked words
Thinking through the narrow gate
To someway sail my thoughts on high
And peer at the infinite corner

Dance my bitter brother shadow
I will show you a bigger world
Than your two dimensions know

Softly falling out of favour
I find the web a touch too human
Perhaps a book holds the answer
Instead

The Inward Life

The inward life
The hidden lamp
The caged soul
Forever placed beneath
A cold potter's sky
He said the crown
Is too heavy for fists
And His words grasp
A ponderous universe
So He would know
Still I find my eyes
Gravitating navelly
And I am left a-peek
Beneath fired clay
Aching for the feet
To place light
In every dank corner
Of the whole wide room.

The sign was painted hollow
Like the waves of a cave
But I was a shoal of fish
In a sea of incomprehension
Awaiting the shark

If you only ever look at your feet
You'll never know where you are walking

My Afternoon Friends

Summer Cicadas
You grew young with the year
And sung cadence
As afternoons disappeared
And strolled back outside
With winter in their sleeves
Catching at the falling flowers
And crispening the leaves

Summer Cicadas
Praying on the holy trees
In sombre regalia
For the season's solemnities
Buried by an Autumn puff
Wrapped in gossamer gown
Till measures that you metered out
Pass beyond the sound

Dust the age off your good cheer
I'll fix you up another crafted beer
We can pretend time flies
Off with our luggage
While we forget to care

Pull up a folding chair and sit down
And tell me of our hopes that didn't drown
My, my the oceans were rough
Since back before a hope was enough
I'm glad we've got a few to hang around

In the Promise

To slumber
And not be tossed about
Like an incomplete formula
In the mind of a mathematician
Is a good thing
The solution
Lies in remembrance
Of the Promiser.

Diligence and stepping stones
Make your position sure.
Be forever one step forward
From where you are.
Peter would agree.

The pretty, honest, ugly face
Without makeup
Keeps the mirror clean
And the soul's windows
Open to the fresher air.

Boys shouldn't put it on
Anyway
But it helps, when looking
Through someone else's eyes
To keep the bigger scars
Under covers

My work-day smile
Gets heavy in the long hours
I keep it buttoned on
In case anyone should stare

I've been told to roll the stone
Or at least peer into the cave
But it's hard to face my Maker
With just mine,
On the chance I won't be recognised.

I found a shadow
Deep than fear
I found a spring
Where the water runs clear
I found a path
That leads up from here

I am going to make that book.

Confessions of the Finite Man

I hear you knocking on the sky
But I won't fear the crack and fall
So long as I can watch the universe tumble in.

I used to wrap up warm, waiting for phoenix stars to shine.
Scarf curling like a thick safe snake round my naked neck
Anxious of the deepness overhead, that held up my hope.

Contentment comes down in fluffy foreign whiteness
Tumbling to the man who occupies my shadow,
Standing open in the doorway

We Can't Be Having With Any of This

Mr Moose came a-hump along one day
He wore his special antlers and his newest green beret
He huffed a cigarillo, smoking circles to the sky
And pausing debonairly, watched a grizzly bear pass by.

"Hello Mr Grizzly", Moose gravelly intoned
"Would you care to share a cigarette or did you bring your own?"
"I do not smoke" did grizzly then gruzzily reply
"It's harming to the windpipes and the upper larynges"

"Do you use them much?" said Mr Moose, furrowed in his thoughts
"I do indeed," puffed Grizzly, "As often as I aught.
"For I do the 'Opera' at all the biggest shows"
"Oh!", mused Mr Moose before he quizzled down his nose.

"What is this here 'Opera'? A trick? A song? A speech?"
"Hardly", laughed the bear with glee "For if singing were a peach
"Then Opera'd be raisins tumbling freely from the sky"
"Fair enough" grinned Mr Moose, and promptly said "Good bye"

We
Fragile creatures all
Limbs too small
To reach the ground
For any length of time
Before gravity
Carries us six feet down.

We
Warmed by an inner fire
Breathing the infinite
Like virgin mountain air
Poised on the precipice
To leap
And be carried forever.

Were we strangers
On stranger tides?
Afloat adrift at sea
Counting the waves from the shore.

Haircut (Or, That Thought I Had When I Looked Into The Mirror)

The mirror always looks younger
In the aftermath of a haircut:
Brown strands of time,
No longer hanging from my head
Rather, lying hacked in heaps.
Tufted burial mounds,
Honouring the remains of weeks
This face will never see again.

If God is so good,
Why isn't He me?

Small
The beginning
A seed's shadow at first light
On a stage of lifeless earth
The hint of a fragrance
Suggesting that all things
Will be found small in its branches
Sheltered

Hope
Is the backbone's
Backbone