My Eyes, This Land

My eyes, my eyes they see
Strength in lonely empty places.
This land, this land I see
Will not fold when love displaces.

My eyes, my eyes are steel and ocean
Twilight sky before the stars.
This land, this land is open
To cuts that wound but cannot scar.

Set my eyes to the land,
Heart of steel, heart of waves,
Eyes of sky filled with winter mist,
The sun will shine on that which craves.
Oh sun, oh sun, come be.
Oh sun, come be with me.

My eyes, my eyes, they see--
Looking out on lonely places,
this land, this land.
All they see are lonely faces.

Set my eyes to the land,
Heart of steel, heart of waves.
Eyes of sky filled with winter mist,
The sun will shine on that which craves.
Oh sun, oh sun come be.
Oh sun, come be with me.

Necessity

Oh, Necessity calls her name
out in the hills--
In the dark they seem so foreign.
Oh, Necessity calls to fame
the heart that wanders
through dark hills before the morning.

Oh Necessity, do you see it?
Hope is rising in the dawn
and wild hills are no less wild.
Necessity, she does not speak it.
But if you would see her face,
she could only be Morning's child.

1 Thessalonians 5:5
You are all children of the light and children of the day. We do not belong to the night or to darkness.

Magdalena

I wrote this poem a while ago, but I'm just now getting around to posting it. I hope you enjoy it!

Shadows take over slowly,
dripping into your heart of hearts,
leaky faucets of poison, steaming sulfur.
And the sun sets slowly if you let it.
You might call me a girl of shadows;
my life is mine,
but my eyes are not my own.

The first one came, sneaking and deceiving,
with yellow teeth stained from centuries of lies.
Stabs into my heart had already scarred,
so I let him in, to tell me I was beautiful again.

Memories flash like lightning,
but I could still see the girl running,
the wind blowing grass around her feet,
the blending shades of sky into sea,
and the intoxicating scent of being free...

and then there were lies,
whispering the memories into dreams.

Hurts piled on pain,
corpses piled on more,
as loss and heartbreak ruled again.
So I let them in, one by one,
to forget about the life I had undone.

Shadows took over slowly,
dripping into my heart of hearts,
leaky faucets of poison, stealthy sulfur,
and the sun sets slowly if you let it.
You might have called me a girl of shadows.
My life was mine,
but my words were not my own.

Spewing, spitting, vomiting the blackness.
Hatred, bitterness, revenge,
dribbling out from between my lips,
Lust, jealousy, self-pity, pride.
Success came--in pushing everyone away,
but no, I was never alone.

And then he came,
and he swept me away,
for he cast the darkness out of me.
And I felt them jerking, and kicking, and screaming,
and hating, and lying, and gasping.
But I felt a memory, of grass and wind and sea,
and I knew that this man was what it meant to be free.

Free from my demons, at least.
But I was empty, and cleaned and gutted house,
home of a broken past and a taste of hope.
So I followed, and I knew
that I would follow this man to the end of the earth and back,
if he wanted me to.
So I followed.

I followed him to the ends of my world,
and I heard him.
I heard the things he said,
and I thought, "Surely not, I cannot survive,
should this Man die."
But I followed.

And I watched this Man,
my Messiah, my rescuer,
die.
And I could not save him.
I could not do anything.
I could not pay him back, for what he did.
I could not say one last goodbye.
Or thank you.
But I watched him,
I watched him suffer and love and die.

But I tried.
I tried to do anything.
Spices and fragrances,
knowing it was all in vain.
I could not say I'm sorry,
and I could not move the massive rock, like death,
that would stand in my way,
mocking me, my failure, my inability...
but it was gone, and so was he,
so I stumbled away,
hardly daring  to believe.

But then he came,
he was there,
and he rescued me,
from me.
And he told me I need not worry,
he would always be with me,
and I would never again be lost and alone,
and one day soon, I'll be following him home.

So My Heart Yearns

The mystery of you clings to me, 
I cannot seem to see you
and my heart yearns
and my soul turns to reach you.
Fingerprints and echoes of a love
beyond my small capability to know,
I hear your voice sometimes on the wind.
Before it fades, I finally understand my longing.
Can it be I miss what I have never known?
But this is deeper than a dream,
for my heart yearns
and my soul turns to reach you.
Oh heaven, an eternity, seems just out of reach, 
But it is there I wish to be.
I need to have you
To more than this fleeting degree.
I know what you have seen, 
and I see what you have done,
so my heart yearns,
and my soul turns to reach you.

The Whisperer

This poem is about surrendering to God, which is a lesson I learn over and over, in a really good way.

The first thing to go is my sight--
my eyes are useless,
and blackness surrounds me.
The darkness engulfs me
and bores into my eyes
as strongly in as my eyes seek out.
No light to be found.
The next is my pride,
and I'm forced to my knees,
fingers grasping, anxiety rising,
until I can feel my bones.
I can feel my bones,
and I think they may be fading.
I'm in a cave and I'm fading
and my heart cries out through my mouth,
but my words, they're gone,
they've disappeared
and taken half my heart alongside them.
And my heart is broken,
literally, it seems,
right down the middle between
the words and me,
and their empty ghosts live on
in my heart
with their memories I cant remember
anymore.
And the silence engulfs me.
My hands seek flashlights
to bring them all back--
all the hopes and dreams and songs.
I grasp one in my feeble hands--
and I can feel my bones,
I think they're fading.
But I push a button and a light turns on,
so dim, so slight,
it pains my eyes,
and I think I have an answer.
And so I look for more light,
if there's any to be found.
And what I find are flashlights,
making yellow circles for my eyes,
and I can see them, for a while.
But battery life only lasts so long,
before i'm dead,
before my bones fade away.
I feel my fingers being pried slowly
from my only source of light.
But of course, what I meant was life,
because it's sustaining me. Barely.
But before I can worry
about my life draining my light,
it's gone,
and my light is smashed to pieces
by a hand I did not see coming.
One by one, my yellow spots are stripped from my grasp.
Stripped and smashed.
Stripped and smashed.
and my unseeing eyes cannot cry,
and my misplaced pride cannot lift me off the ground.
And my words,
my words cannot come back to me now.
The silent darkness haunts me again.
Oh, but I can feel.
I can feel my bones,
they've been fading for a while now,
and as strongly as I can feel them fading,
I can feel someone here.
But I'm lost and at a loss at what to do.

Tiny whispers start to work their way
up the walls and down again,
rippling across the floor
and one hits me in the foot,
but I can't hear it.
I can feel the whispers rising;
all around, I hear them gather--
creeping first like fog
to swelling like waves
with ocean white foam at the crest,
I hear.
I hear the whisper,
and it tells me of a hand to hold.
But darkness bores into these eyes of mine,
and as for hands, I can't even see my own.
Yet hopes rise,
and my bones can feel their tremble,
and I need to find my whisperer.
So limbs flail, darkness seeming bigger
than the swelling of the whispers,
until I hear, "Be still." So quietly,
I cannot be sure.
But I cannot find anything this way.
Still louder, Be Still
So I stop. I stop all.
My bones may be fading,
but I hold out my hand
and the whisperer tells
as the whispers still swell,
"I found you."
And as my hand waits,
fingers begin to entwine,
and light like new life
begins to unwind and unveil
and spin and spiral,
until not just mere spots appear,
but I've never seen before now.
and my whisperer, he speaks into me as I stand,
"I won't ever stop finding our open hand."
Words and promises roll over me,
through every pore in my skin.
I am whole, I am ready,
I can see once again.

The Storm

I have seen a storm
that ignites--the spark
in my eye
and makes my blood. pound.
in. anticipation.
A wind-whipping, tree shaking,
God-empowered storm
where you stand
      beneath
a grief stricken sky
and your tears run red
for everything you couldn't stop.
and yet,
the power of the storm
demands every emotion
uncompromisingly, without yield,
knowing that in the storm,
God reigns.

Pyromaniac

I am a pyromaniac--
I'll set us on fire,
just to watch it all burn,
and I'll smile to myself.
My path is devastatingly haunted
by the wake of a hurricane of insecurity,
and the aftermath of a forest fire,
set by my tongue.

I sit surrounded by the destruction I made,
and I run my fingers through the past,
combing through,
certain of the uncertainty of finding anything worth holding,
if I could,
if the ashes weren't caught in me,
choking me,
making me unable to breathe.

I watch my history in scenes rewinding,
I see my screenplay burning
before my eyes, dry from heat and ash.

But my Lord cannot bear to hold my sin,
he cannot hold to see,
and so he sent his beloved son to hold,
his beloved son to see,
his beloved son to become,
and even now in me
he sifts to find
a remnant to be beautiful again.

He will rake beauty out of the scenes I burned,
out of the buildings and bridges I burned to dust;
he will sift beauty from the pile of ashes I left,
and quench the fire of my tonge.
He will create life within me over and over,
and death will not set fire to my bones and skin;
it will have no hold on my heart,
and my eyes on fire will water ashen cheeks
until a remnant of beauty grows in life once again.

Redemption and restoration are held out to me,
and though I know I am rotting away,
burning slowly in my own ash,
I find that my name is being called,
and my hand is being drawn,
and my hope is rising.
So I reach out,
and when my fingers touch the edge of His cloak,
the decay of my heart falls away,
and the ash that became a part of my blood
turns over and fades;
and so from the ashes I created,
I am given the beauty He made.