To Love Completely

You know how many times I have tried to leave

What is it that still has me calling your name,

Believing that you now know the way?

I don't like the attention

I don't like what on the surface

What all seems like a circus

But I am supposed to believe

In more than the strength of me

Maybe there is something beautiful to know

In the joy of His presence

Maybe there's a choice

That you can show me

The courage to live, to love completely

Dawn

Scarcely pulling away

Pleading in every direction

Save me at once

Save me twice

Needs burden, seal the medium

If this is my shot dawning from denial

If this is my hope escaping from woe

Find in everything to bear

Resistance covering the silence

There are hours

I watch them

Choose their means

There are days

I chase them to no end

There is a circuit that winds its way

A posture changed

Waiting for the light

Waiting to be known

Settle me down

Follow the fear from its source

I am not leaving

Just cheating

Bound by some other force

Everything reminds me you are so fleeting

While you are here

Tell me something more:

All that I am returns secured

Nothing's changed

Are you here my patient hand withers?

Define this hour of purpose

Secure my portion, my way

Suddenly

There is a suddenly

That is traced to a prayer

An offer not graced in compromise

I wait for the suggestion

Rapt at attention

I observe, I absolve

Every emotion rehearsed

There are plains, persistent ways

Of keeping me centered on the medium of grey

Have you heard every word spoken?

Or have seen it from the end?

I am not shaken

Just a little of me is lost,

No matter which way

The grazing light gives alms

Infused by belief

I fell into fortune

Amassed by the query

 A brush fire

Tempting loose circles

Bending, chasing

Into focus

Where everything is

And nothing escapes me,

Suddenly

The Promised Land

Its been years

Where is that promised land

You spoke about?

In all the time

Every step into and out of translation

Quickens me so

I don't know what you are still offering?

There were witnesses

But they are lost now

There's been space

But I cannot comprehend

Your version of covenant and promise

From the wilderness you spoke

From the wilderness I am still shaken

There is hope

Maybe your words could lead me home?

The Sliding Scale

Feel the loose string rattle

Without cause or remission

Alone it concedes the difference

Of my own song sung

My own race is run

To its end and to its function

While the drive to believe

Costs more than its shadows exhaust

The mind melds

Between the tuning fork and the chaise proof

Gone are all comparisons

Maybe made up is the chase

Lost in the applause

We stay current

Till the frame of the second verse

Is the thought between the next key

And the sliding scale

An Echo

Smile with your eyes

Talk with your hands

This is what I know you by

All of me

Mirrored at a distance

I listen

How rare it is to find the right measure

When everything you ask for

Speaks and feels right

Maybe you are healed

Every time your are certain

In the bounds, a prayer

An echo--

Agreement

Maybe That's All There Is

My force field breaks down

With your smile

I am not even there yet

We're not even...

Words spread so thin across years

Where have you been?

Seems I have a way of not being so close

Words too far, to shout, to hear

I don't remember why I ran away

You wouldn't be able to remind me

There is this thing you chase away through the silence

Maybe I could stand so close

And not turn away this time

I keep my eyes toward the mountains

As if my purpose was that clear and distant

Something greater calls me back

To where a season were waiting is:

Hearing your voice

Singing the same songs

Maybe that's all there is

My Eyes Open

Between the white knuckles

I stare

Fleeting, boundless thoughts

Controlling censure

Islands breathe life

But no longer can I keep competing

Something more general divides my concentration

All of my own hesitates

Bracing for control

In tune with the obvious

Every decision seems lost

My dreams seem more fake

By the time there's an explanation

They are floating away

I want them back--

Give them life

Before I was broken

Enslaved in a better purpose

You made yourself known

Remaining with within the shelter of the obvious

May you see through my hands

My eyes open

The Thief of Time

There is this holding pattern

That chews up my mind

That burrows peace

And chews up time

I cannot see its need

It just keeps on spinning

In lock-step, I'm grounded

In gut-check, responded

Is home where I am leaving from

Or the place, will I ever arrive?

Patience-What is your appraisal?

In debt am I

To this thief of time

What have I bought into?

The better of fate awaits:

Squealing on the inside

No, those were the brakes?

In Your Light

All of the pressure eases to immerses itself

From the fight to gain

Interpret the same trade winds

In a different season

There is a point of process that never wavers

A solace bearing the hope

Focused, searing through into the vision cast

Make believe unto accept, receive

Knowing all that tempts, tries

Long enough to make up your mind

Where patience is left thawing

From cold thought progressions

You breathe through every smile

And purpose infused in your light

What's Next?

Draw me in

Let it out

Finding the right bet

Seeing the backfield disappear

And meet me at the frontline

I do not want the struggle

I don't get off knowing I am in the middle of a chess match

I step back into coverage

I blink twice because I don't know what's coming

You keep marching at me

Empty with one purpose and will

I pretend I have control

I pretend it's my call

This season I am aware,

I am off the line,

What's Next?

Swift the Journey

Every time I ask you

You envelop the skies

To bring me rain

Tell my soul--its all better

Confess the rivers to rise

And make my journey light and swift

Take me unbound and free

The thought that bears your truth inside me

Make the certain--solid, not moveable

Into the current I set my soul

To persist in the ocean, unending

The path unfettered

Let it pour upon this dream

The asking, the policing, the measure

How I need this making of the journey of my soul

Just to be

If I could speak long enough for you to listen

The warfare keeps preaching

My idleness breaking the control I seize within

In the making it asks for its beginning

Crossing a river on dry stones

Live within and not confuse the crisis for a better plot

All I can do is swim in thin air

When thoughts collude and my self is missing

Imaginations slip though sunshine/defiant/breeze/windows

You keep moving past the valley

And you stretch out surrounding me

All I asked was to feel (I am yours)

Even if I stopped walking just to be 

Schermerhorn

Transport me through time

Into the instant where everything merges

I lead with my mind

But the spirit proceeds me

All that is falling:

The dust floating, dropping notes

Marked on pages

You teach me to hear this right

Softly only now the chandeliers bend the needed light

You forge a purpose bound by your presence—Your might

Tell me this is all that there will ever be:

Aisles flood from rows

Making this sanctuary alive from a dream

All my thoughts consumed upon the sound

Poured out primed for this audience this night

And what I am is here to teach

To feel you completely around me through me

This labor is nothing less than my offering

In time, what is patience?

I found it in the hour of my greatest need

Every passion provoked

To know the determination that breaks through in waves

Is my heart any less than what you, and everything else is made of?

In this place, I rest in my seat

My wife no less impressed

We wait for the conductor

Anxious perhaps?

No blessed

This is my gift

With the opening notes sent rippling through the space

There is something that begins to strike all of us

Today, You are more real to us

Awaken the pleasure that fills every octave

Your presence is poised released

This is the sound that makes us know:

We are more than souls just passing by

We are with you tonight, always for the ride

Consume within me the rest that fills this vision

Mark within me the life that knows—

So certain you have made us for this

We welcome and cherish the life you breathe through each instrument

The precision of a storm

Quickening to believe

You are in all of us

This Poem is actually the fourth segment of my epic poem "One More Day" which was written mostly in 2009.  The poem is set to be published when my 3rd Poetry book is completed.

Sip

Of what carries me away

Into the sound, the grounds

Dripping(Another cup)

Another passed my way

When all around me are the stories

Carried on out of earshot

Until at once you splice them all together

And call it a day

Call it a night

And my thought becomes trained to memory

One sip at a time

Take another

Give, leave

When they all come back

Some things to keep them more awake

For others the hunger is abated

Waiting for another date

Some answers below the flat screen

What on earth are we watching?

Carry on

We're catching it call

One sip at a time

Paint Creek

Empty from a wince, a fresh stream

Underneath a new bridge

Eyes on a river, they melt into one

If what shrugs be the silence, its true

Everything you point towards

Alas there were clues

But in planting them

Lord we become shaken

A little renown by the thought and its inception

You're sinking in

So wait, You are with us

There are no secrets that in this light couldn't prove

We are worthy to be as You might

Yes, wait my friend and listen

Through a bend a ripple

Flowing through life

So simple

One Move

Fleeting

That's all its intended to be

Wonder, where have you gone?

A NEW day

Tell me its a new day

I know this was not meant to last

But I keep holding on thinking there is something more

There always is...

The thing I don't get that seems to pass

Yes there is one way

Only one way

It's just I am all out of options

Like more would make me wealthy

No, just one move

That's all I ask for

A break

Something that I always am waiting for

The right thing Lord

In His Hands

You've always had the winning hand

Don't fold

Don't cash it in

Where there are no re-deals

You're apt to keep silent

And wherever there is doubt

You'd figure out that someone else's got it better

And why am I even in this, this far?

There are times when you squeem

There are times when you'd rather not keep it to yourself

But every fiber of your being is His

And He doesn't make junk

He doesn't even lose

Trust

He's got you covered

Ease into the joy that is yours

And be reminded destiny is in His hands

This poem was originally published in 2009

The Remnant

We are the consecrated, the concentrated

And we will stay here

Look at what they've left

Empty houses, abandoned dreams

Scattered lives

How are we the chosen?

For I have seen the weary fall and go elsewhere

But somehow this remnant never took the sane way out

Faced with the tough choices to remain

Steadfast, secure in the one who provides

We are poised to hold on

For we declare it is a new day

And we will see this city rise

This poem was written around 2008. Published in 2009. This poem was written for the city and people of Detroit. 

Cover Me

Shake the dust off my heart,

Are you there?

All of me is just acting

Pretending, you must see through

No matter what I am giving

You know me, little to guess

The more or less impressed

This is the best I can try

I feel a pain below the surface

It sees no way out

All in all the need is forgiveness

But its burnt at both ends

I can hear it in your voice

That a lot depends on the truth

On the weight, the things

Bothered pulling the strings

We once spoke with hands lifted up

Awaiting a promise

Your will always listens

But nothing is here that justifies the hate

When I seem so small

All in all don't you see me--

See this, cover me