Eternal Tomorrow

(Written for Mother’s Day 2023)

How do I say what I yearn to say that hasn’t already been said before  
Reframing the essence of a memory  in anticipation of what heaven has in store  

Thoughts of you harbor to the melody of your undying song  
Reminiscing on the one for whom my heart does long  

Renovated innovations of expressions in a photograph  
Who would’ve known that day, it would be our last  

Tears shed for the same moment looking back when we laughed  
Keep moving forward as they say when future hopes are made of the joys of the past  

Tragedy is delusion when death boasts of a liars victory  
Weaponized diseases formed of false threats prove empty  

Happy Mother’s Day in heaven even as you dwell within my heart  
You are alive in me in this faith based legacy’s counterpart  

Fitting all the right words into the puzzle to construct this piece  
Poetic aesthetic of therapy, every letter and prayer written to find release  

As if in some way I can find in it solace from this pain I can’t ease  
When I dream of you and awaken to your absence, losing you again to imaginations tease  

Caught somewhere between this pendulum that swings back and forth on a scale of hope to hurting  

Some days I feel the warmth of your embrace and other days my heart  
feels like it’s burning  

A lifetime, it feels, still so far away in the time that is distance between reuniting  
Resistant to the way it doesn’t seem fair for all the ways that I keep fighting  

Maintaining perspective despite all that has been subjected to this heist  
All the experiences of what you’ll never know, in this semblance of paradise  

Overrated I’m sure by comparison to what awaits us on the other side of this breath  
When to truly live is to die, to be reborn, as love goes on resurrecting bonds that conquer death  

Everyone gets it but nobody gets it when all we know is a relative sense of loss  
Nothing quite hits like it does when it comes too close to home  
As everyone grieves in their own way  
But sometimes we feel as if we grieve alone  

Glorified heartbreak of this perpetual healing and sorrow  
Present sadness awaits the beauty of our eternal tomorrow  

2020 hindsight visions greet me with these melancholy moments of 2023  
Thinking of you again for all that you are to me…

Silent Serenade (Sentimental Artifacts 2)

Excavating fossils of the heart from the dust that settles over a non forgotten past  
Heirlooms house the memory of the shape of your love like pieces to a puzzle in my mind  

A snapshot of these sentiments in objects that are but common to a passerby  
But priceless for the bond that they commemorate  

Fashioning beauty in the structure of these thoughts that frame your essence  
You are a lingering perfume deep in the recesses of a silent serenade  
Set like a cadence in the undertone of my life that chases after your God fearing legacy  

Praying I live in such a way I do justice the bloodline of true worship  
A call and mantle finds me at odds with myself as I reflect on you  
As I put my life on trial to weigh myself on the scales of how I measure up  

Unconditional as your love ever was and so is to this day  
To know your heart is to know exactly what you’d say  
Three years gone by and somehow it seems you’re not so far away  
When you are the sunlight that dawns in mind amid every sky of gray  

Pulled back into a place I remember who I am when I think of you  
Because of the way you raised me in truth and instilled in me true virtue  

Gratitude and loss intermingled of joy and sorrows coinciding harmony  
Some days it still feels like just a bad dream I’m waiting to wake from and other days I’m reminded this is reality  

Yet temporal the ache that yearns for the embrace of your touch  
When I think of you awaiting us on the other side of the tides of eternity  
I set sail to voyage onward to destination home again  
Praying heaven surely waits for me…

God’s Kin

 

 
Onlookers gathered around
Audience in the moment of grief
Commemorated endearments attempt to comfort
Yet I still stare in disbelief

Knowing this is all a part of life in this temporal place
Even so it doesn’t take the sting from my heart yearning for embrace

Company to the absence
My madness is what I know
Better advice given than lived by
When I’m lost for holding on and learning to let go

Everyone says don’t live thinking of the weight of yesterday
But this memory lingers on and I feel the sorrow still, always, in some way

There are days I wake up and my heart still refuses to accept that you are gone
But I press forward and learn to live attempting to move on

Another reminder to mentally ascend
Knowing you’re still watching over me
Even so it fails to suffice my desire
When standing here in person is where I want you to be

Another voice echoes to keep the personal out of the routine
But even when I play my roles there still remains a scar unseen

Don’t reduce my loved one’s past to merely angels
When their true worth is weighed against the blood of the greater divine
For God so loved this fallen world
That He made His family mine…

Home Again

 

 
Scattered in my attempt to find some semblance of rhythm
Gradually working towards cultivating consistency
Moving forward with eyes in rear view
Memories seep in as my mind fixates on you

Back to these humble beginnings
Square one again
Calibrate my purpose
Torn between reflecting on former things
Waiting for the vision of where I am now to materialize

Achievements on layaway
Making payments with my efforts
Learning how to reinvent the art of breathing
As I prolong the inevitable means to an end

Life races at the speed of vapors
Working towards a renewed sense of passion
Time lines cut by events like landmarks of the scraps of a past I reminisce upon

I can’t help but find my thoughts ebbing and flowing on the shorelines of you
Making something of these moments
Memory lanes of highways map the wandering rendezvous

Going in circles again
Midnight oils to graveyard toils
Rebuilding from the ground zero of the wars I wage in my will to survive
Hurry up and wait as I go on making a living as I learn to come alive

Back to the grind
I make up purpose as I go
Doing all that I can do
To make the most of everything that I know

Routine hours to grease the hinges to become something more
Sleep between the monotony to sustain the hopes of what the future has in store

Letting go to hold on
As all things come to an eventual head
Another moment, another life
All that ends is all that finds a new way to begin
Set course to destination home again…

Sentimental Dejavu

 

 
Sitting here in this franchised establishment
The atmosphere duplicated in the shell
Marketing sentiments of memory
That harbors the thought of you well

Remembering Sunday afternoon luncheon’s rendezvous
Somehow it harbors some semblance of the thought of you

Pleasantly haunted by the bittersweet reminiscent of the hearts’ dejavu
Scattered wreckage’s of childhood memory held together by the glue

My mind finds reason in the adhesive of your love in the madness of former things
When your words resound in harmony with the faith that finds me in the Savior’s wings

Some days I feel just as lost as I am found when I think of the way your love affirmed my worth
When you are sugar in my mind but life is bland without your sweetness in this earth

Nevertheless I short-sight not the value of my every breath
For the beauty that remains as I take up the torch and carry on your legacy after death

Every lesson learned to better understand how to love my wife
When mothers raise sons to become men, and as I learn to be more like Jesus, in some way brings you back to life

For the compassion, mercy, understanding, and conviction that I cleave to
My gratitude to God harbors within the honor I live to reflect on you

Yet even so I find my mind tossing and turning in its own unrest
Learning to adjust to life without you
I strive to move on or at least I’m doing my best

But part of me will always feel the weight of missing you in what remains as your essence lingers
For even the way that I associate you with Zaxby’s, as I sit here eating chicken fingers…

The Other-side of December

 

 
Where do I begin
When the gratitude goes to war with heartache
For perspectives of beauty and loss

When grief is a boasting illusion
As I ponder life and death from manger to the cross

Parallel realities out of sync
Calibrate hope to overshadow the pain

Will the sunshine break these clouds
That intrude inside my mind
And drown my meditations as I reflect upon the rain

From sleet to snow these ice tears shed like white ash from the sky
Remembering God knows what it’s like to watch a loved one die

Hanging in the balance
A call beckons for redemption
From birth unto a final breath
Embodied in this child
The poetry of love and death

God breathed
The Spirit dwelt within this word made flesh
Is there beauty left in this world wherein we live and make a mess

Pulled out from the throes of the curse
Sins culprit to bloodshed
We fight and still you bless
Undone by the thought of grace
As my life learns to confess

Heaven laid down
Wherein light is acquainted with the shadow of such grief
Love to repeal all sorrow and offer sweet relief

Branches come full circle to the Vine
Entwined
We weave our heartstrings
As the decor of a Christmas reef

What is the end but the beginning
Reap once again the harvest of the hope of true belief

In the coo of the Saviors life
This baby born to reconcile all to a single legacy
Where I lose myself in the presence
Is where I find my destiny

Broken for holiday heartache
I choose joy in bittersweet
When heavy handed on the bitter we are tempted to become
As our scars make utterance of defeat

Liberate my mind from the weight of last farewells
As Christmas morn finds us reborn into the life we greet

Let truth reshape perspective and silence all deceit
As we make our way another year towards home for Christmas down another city street

Hearts blistered by the bite of winter as we tread with callous feet
Even in the cold I am warmed by the fire of Your Spirit’s convection and heat

Back to the true meaning
My eyes drawn up to remember
Spring is but a season away on the other side of December…

Blowing Out Stars

 

Lost for what is out of my hands
These dreams that can't come true
Every tear I cry is a wordless prayer
When sadness accompanies every joyful memory of you

Every day I lose you again
Ethereal letters written
Sent care of heaven from my heart
Piece by piece I utter longing
What I would give to go back to the start

Love feels as freedom and yet entrapment
When death finds us an existence away
What is trauma but the translated torment of imagination
I can't bring you back no matter what I say

Is my faith hostage to my emotion
I choose to believe despite what I feel
My eyes speak a line of sight
Yet every word begs to question what is real

Caught between heaven and my best attempt to come alive
When living is like a losing battle in vain we fight to survive

Learning to relinquish the fear of loss
The pain of death is the suffering of all of us that go on to bear the cross

How is it that I can make a wish come true
When a candle blown is an empty promise to fulfill
I would that I could quench the stars for you

As if the grander sparks of the sky could inflame a stolen dream
Yet only in my mind I'm haunted by the memories enchantment
The way you sang of things unseen

Now and forever one
After the nightmare
Arise to the light of a truer sun

You embodied the faith you spoke
Where the cancer's will to take your life
Became the catalyst to heal

My only means to savor our bond
Is in every word I bleed upon the canvas of every page I spill...

The Enchantment of Heartache

 

Caught in the crossfire of an unspoken war I can't win
Dealing with the turmoil of loss and my sin
Chaos ensues in my aim to make a stand
Trying to speak on the authority of more than a man

Am I so familiar with the counterfeit
For the heart of fool’s gold in me?
As my self-resentment takes root in my hypocrisy
I survey the times and all that we've gone through
Drowning in the media static, the politics of opposing points of view

Caught in routine, as I run in circles, survival of the living dead
Sustaining this breath I'll inevitably lose one day
My mortality comes into focus and all I might have said
Had I known, that week would be our last, what would I say?

Somewhere between I love you and another way to apologize
For all the ways I took you for granted
Begotten of blood, of sweat, and the tears in your eyes

I won't be the lost cause of a wasted prayer from a bottle heart in the void
An ethereal ocean stands between us
I'm here somewhere between the sorrow and the overjoyed

What day of reckoning, the manifest healing, free from the shell
I rejoice at the thought of you in heaven
But being here without you some days, feels like a living hell

It feels a little less like Christmas this year
And I'm torn between holding on and letting go of this 20/20 nightmare
I cannot see you and yet in some ways I feel as though I've never seen you clearer
When every memory is a haunting, you are my ghost of past, present, and future all in one
When I think of who you were, where you are
And the moment we will be reunited in the presence of the Son

My mind rehearses our last moments and I can't help but feel
As if I left you there in that hospital bed to face that reality so real it felt unreal
And all I had were seconds of our final bliss
As I said my last I love you's and goodbye for now
With every poem, I longed for one more embrace, and a final kiss
As I bid farewell to a part of me that passed away with you
Like a portion of my happiness
Another letter I write to you in heartache, Merry Christmas

As I both anticipate and dread the new year
When it feels just like the day I left you in that bed
So it feels I leave you here
But evermore you live on inside my mind in every word you said...

Holding On and Letting Go

 

 
Trying to decipher my heart
When it's time to hold on and let go
I ebb and flow on the shorelines
Caught in between this tug of war of gravity

For what joy was and what's to come
When destiny and fate collide
A lifetimes purpose honored and left undone
As I reminisce, circling this black hole inside
Learning what it means to go on living
In the aftermath of the reality that you have died

Feels like years in months that I've come to this place
And yet just yesterday that I saw you face to face
On the verge of the holidays as I remember
All the warmth we shared amidst the snow
I've never known quite the cold I'll know this December
When it hurts just as much to keep holding on as letting go

Mortgaging Christmas with a death grip on yesterday
All my regrets come to collect the debt that I can't pay
Bankrupt for heartache, no gift to compensate for sorrow
When the inconsolable grief is all that's left of affection
Caught between longing for yesterday and waiting for tomorrow
When my hopes come up lacking, every unanswered prayer feels like rejection

Finite eyes in bondage to temporal seasons for all that I can't see
I misunderstand the heart and the plan of God for me
I trust no less as I hold-fast, call me a fool to believe
Surely there is still joy to be had on the other-side of Christmas Eve

Legacies on layaway the new born day of what will be yet
There's just no use living trying to compensate for regret
When every wrong that has been done is what timelessness forgets
Answer in faith for every reason that speaks doubt
I'll place my prayers on God, while the unbelieving place their bets
All of us are but learning what this life is all about...

Homemade

 

 
7 days
What is it that I celebrate
What have I achieved in my existence
When my birth is your labor

I am the seed of your life
But I make such a mess of my own
I've been learning to walk since I was born
Your shoes are too great for me to fill

Searching for home again
My residence is in your heart
Miles away and locked outside of you
Ventriloquist wisdom whispers
Your voice is one with God's, to me

When the word and the heart are one
Even your smile preaches joy
Amidst the weight of uncertainty's despair
Do I do justice your legacy?
They say you’re lucky to have your sons
But at the end of the day I know we're the lucky ones

But love is not a gamble when this is destiny
Raised by your virtues, you are the best of me
Divine orchestra rations, knit within the womb
Day by day reborn by daily mercy, I was yours before I was the groom

And amidst all of those that will be there
Without you it's just an empty room
Patterned after your song
I sing my harmony but your voice is the loom

Melody sings sweet, set the cadence and the tone
I write my words, you are my accompaniment
Reminding me, I am not alone

Beautiful pianist
Every note a key
Unlocking the heart of God

You are the song of heaven
Love sings over me
To bring out the man behind this vain facade

When I don’t know who I am
Your eyes are my reflection
Full of promise
You are acceptance when I am self-rejection

Snapshot eyes
Photographic memory albums fade
Remembering us, when I'm a recipe for disaster
You are the secret ingredient and I am homemade

Salvage what is left
When all I feel like is a wasted breath
You bring me to life even in the face of death...

Southern Charm

I watch and pray
In a standoff with the weight of it all
Every day the world tries my patience
Your body held hostage to its own decay

Waking up, are you even aware
Of all that seems so severe
Speaking faith with all my heart
Without the entitlement to cower in fear

Trying to find the balance
I parade my strength but I am weak
Desperation finds me here
Trying to choose my words more wisely
Learning when to be silent and when to speak

Honest cries of vulnerable display
Imperfect faith, critics comb through my every word
Tell me what is safe to say
When I'm not allowed to be broken
Taking it all in stride, everything I've heard
Humbling my pride, God have Your way
Heart sick and well-spoken

I won't live here in this place
Where death parades false victory
No venom, no sting
No glory in the grave
Life saving grace
Darkness has no hold on me

Sorrow in the offering
Crucify my heart to save
Channel living water through
Rivers of life in desert lands
As I turn my eyes back to You
I surrender and I lift my hands

Back to a place of dependency
Brokenness the catalyst to set me free
After all my ways have been exhausted
I'm at the altar on a bended knee

Standing yet a cripple for Your glory
This is not the end of the story
Finding the courage to believe
Despite what presents itself in the only evidence of what I see
I cry out and I'll keep knocking
With all that I am in reverence and fervency

Fickle feelings are a poor gauge for truth
When I have hope, I won’t play victim to this heartache
When the providence of love is its own proof
Then I'll believe even when its hardest to, for Christ's sake

Thoughts returning back to bedside monologues
Pleading to recover
The only southern charm is you
And I'm proud to call you my mother...

The Funeral of Doubt

 

Everything in me aches for you
My heart is like an anvil
Thoughts of you consume me

It hurts to be so far away
Feeling like every moment is critical
Part of me is here
Yet I continue to groan inside
 
Anger is a fire in me
The anguish is an overwhelming undertow
I try to maintain a level head
Steady waters in a deep and distant ocean
No one can see what swells beneath

Its 2 am and I can’t sleep
I have a battle cry within
Waging war on an unseen enemy
Everything reminds me of you
Taking a calculated risk to believe

 I dare to hope
Just enough to slight the odds
Do we bet or do we count on God?
When faith is more than a gamble
Casting not away my confidence in Christ
 
I speak courage to strengthen fortitude
Indignant I cry and every tear is healing
Frustrated I take aim
Learning to cultivate stability
Amidst the lies that utter uncertainty
 
My tongue is both beautiful and lethal
If I should speak death
Then let it be the funeral of doubt
As my demons are but corpses
The decay of decay becomes compost
 
Death or flowerbed?
Every word is a seed
Every seed dies to be reborn
Tending to the inner garden
I break to blossom over the grave
In desperation
 
I am an underground cocoon
Born out of the water
The harvest will blossom in time
As I am unearthed by the pull of light
Fire bakes color into every petal

Heart blooms like a fluttering butterfly
Coloring life with the pigments of my dreams
Learning to translate vision for the blind
Speaking till words materialize
Knocking and seeking as I find
Prayers beckon proclamations of our battle cries
 
Speak life unwavering
The breath of my faith is the death of fear
Killing the contention
Speak passion in the face of panic
Cease all depression
Sedate the anxiety of the manic
 
No more friendly fire warfare
No casualties among us
All that is intended for our undoing
Is but the reinforcement of our bond

High hopes for heaven's cause
Rend the sky and take us beyond
Summit views from valley shadows
Don’t throw out the day with the night
When darkness boasts like a foreboding fog
Let our hearts become a conduit to light...

These Are Not Your Final Days

 

 
Heavy hearted and this weight that I can’t shake
Invisible fractures beyond mending
Trying to find a way to cope with this heartbreak
When death is a way of life
Breathing as you slumber, it hardly feels like you're alive
What does it mean to improve quality?
Make you comfortable as you pass or fight to just survive

A little while longer now, when I'm lost in a haze
Surely it is not the end and these are not your final days
Recovery, wake up and speak to me
If I'm a fool to have faith when everything seems so certain a loss
I will crucify emotion and stand on the promise as I take up my cross

Believing in the face of sorrows serenade
I will not utter for the sirens of despair
When fear tries to grip my heart and interrogate me
I know that you are there

Haunting illusions of what has yet to take place
Voice activated vision, I'm all in for the hope of grace
As I open my eyes to see the Father's face
Let truth be my guide living in the thought of your embrace

Contending realities in collision for my attention
Horizontal lines of sight are blind to my ascension
Mercy wakes me anew with daily bread to sustain
I feast on the hope of love and joy in spite of pain

A moment of weakness and I lapse to the utterance of a thought
Retract my sentience as I call on heaven to do what I cannot
Worlds apart it seems as I return to doing all I can
Working and learning to love better to become a better man

Praying my life will attest to worship's legacy
Not by my own effort but God alive in me
Offering apologetics for unstable tendencies
Vices and coping mechanisms for relative atrocities

Lashing out for all that tries to take from me
Friends caught in the cross fire of frustration with my enemy
Revise my conduct to become my word as I become multilingual in action
Speaking the foreign language of love and faith as I respond beyond reaction

Learning to believe again, when everything feels dire
Let God be true and this sickness is a liar
Face to face with myself and my shortcomings

Satanic footholds of habitual behavior
Believe in me
As I place my confidence in the Savior
Overcoming obstacles of doubt and my carnal frailties way

When I am weak then is He strong
Though death is part of life it is not today...

Tell Me What To Say

 

 
Tell me what to say to make it all go away
When I feel wrong for living as your dying
Just breathe I tell myself
Continue to live and smile, I'm trying

We've got to agree, and I feel ridiculed for honesty
Trying to handle it all the right way
To become what I preach and not just say I believe
You're still alive in some way
But still I feel my heart grieve

It’s more than I can take and beyond my ability to convey
Will I see you before the end, just tell me what to say?

Settling in, this sorrow is playing tricks on my mind
To have the answer to the letter and still be seeking to find
Waiting on You and God to pull through
Battling doubt and discouragement to maintain a hopeful point of view

Get better I pray, when it's all I can do to stand
I don’t know what to think, as I seek the Healer asking for His hand
Begin with my heart and touch my eyes to see
The way that I'm supposed to, to bring life into my reality

Promise Keeper, healing is the children's bread
Eyes locked on You in the midst this storm in which I tread
I'll only move wherever I am led
Weighing out my words carelessly, are there things better left unsaid?
Give me the how to on living when the weight of it is more than I can bear
You'd be my go to when it's hardest but who do I talk to now when you're not there?

Such wisdom you’re graced with began in the giver of every breath of air
Just tell me what to say till I find confidence in every broken prayer

Way Maker, show me a path in the wilderness
Where the soul can flourish and I know that it's all going to be okay
Caught in the in between, life is too short for waiting rooms
Renew my strength, give me the words when I don’t know what to say

Miracle Worker, I still believe despite a blind outlooks point of view
As the darkness closes in on me that men are liars and only God is true
What I would give just for a little more time to know that I can talk to you
Let the Son rise on the horizon, dispel night and give light to my view

Exalting hope and peace to surpass my reason
I don't want to spotlight darkness
When light afflictions only seem so bleak but for a season
Reset the structure of my faith to regain the stance to fight
Just tell me what to say, and help me to believe everything is alright...

Death Taken God Send

 

 
Vacillating reflections
In the mirror of voices
Every word is shattering
Fragments come through
Like stain glass
I try to interpret the sound
Somewhere between
Circumstances and hope's defiance
Everything is white noise and static
Turbulence, intimidation factors
Parallel to the gravity
Decaying on the inside
Cancer eroding consciousness
Breaking my heart gently they speak
Asking questions
Immediate answers for critical un-expectancies

Wordless
I stand beside this bed
Calling her out of the stupor
She opens her eyes and I wonder if she sees me
I hold her hand but her grip slips through my fingers like quick sand

She is an hour glass, but aren't we all
Diseased of our own undoing
This organism of death grows inside
A life of its own that is lethal

Cancer versus cancer
When the flesh is its own infection
Diagnosed of our human condition
Born terminal as we pass away

Are we making our way to the grave?
Or just shedding this mortal shell
When all we are is a body prison for a spirit
As to inherit heaven or live in hell?

This world is the outermost circle
Yet paradise by comparison to its depths
Amidst the blessings we count
Even as we live we invest our every breath

Tell me what is the worth of it
Every goal that we achieve
Calibrating motives to eternal purpose
The only thing that is forever is what we believe

Feeling like I am too young for her to die
When a last breath is our inevitable betrothal to the end
Trusting God as I live, lost for knowing why
This is happening, as death takes a God send...

Strange Waters

 

Uncommon tides of peace
A shore not so distant from us
Mending from within
Every moment is our voyage to healing
Love is our heart's brace
Fearless for the bonds that knit us together
Let faith be our legacy
We are made of miracles
Divine appointments
The Author's revision
In every trial is our testimony
As our lives speak the evidence
She is courage in the face of the battle
The soil of her soul is tilled
A garden blooms within
You are the Gardener of the nurturer
You are the Sun, she is the green house
We are the broken seed
When all that sought to bury us
Became the bed in which we thrive
Reflecting Your glory back to You
Overcoming sorrow, we are alive
All that is intended for evil, undone
The same storm that drowns
Is the fury to quench our thirst
Looking across these strange waters
I find my step amidst what sinks beneath
Searching the horizon
You call me out as I venture forth
Every Word will reinforce my stand
As You call my name
I cry out to You
I am safest in the ocean with You
Than I ever was from the shore...

When Warrior's Fall

 

 
Tragedy ebbs and flows
Like waves against a fractured heart
Divided by faith and the weight
Broken on the inside
And desperate again
Drowning in what if's praying I won’t give in
When the lie seems to tell so true
And sight is my obstruction to seeing You
Seeking something to soothe
The sorrow that won't let go
As the trial steals my serenade
I'm still cleaving to what I know
Moments like waiting rooms between
Relative realities and something unseen
Learning to believe despite what I feel
Tell me what is fake and what is real
My every thought is fragile
Yet valuable to You in vulnerability
It's all I can do to trust
As I kill the pride of doubt, when believing is humility
Intimately acquainted with this sickness that You bore
When You died to secure the victory
What is it that we're fighting for?
Yet I labor to enter into rest
Amidst this test
Broken legs, still standing and doing my best
Holding onto hope as grace sustains me
Afflicted by this thorn that is my reality
You are the blue sky above the storm
When clouds circle like vultures overhead
You are the light, the promise of tomorrow
An invisible dawn, when distress befalls me
You give me peace instead
At the end of understanding
All I have is trust in knowing You
Taking all things intended to overshadow brighter days
You hold it altogether and revise my faith in Your ways
With eyes for mountaintops despite a valleys point of view
The moment is not the outcome when I place my faith in You
When even death is healing for resurrection’s call
We win despite the weapon, prosper-less, when warriors fall
You are my armory
Establishing identity
Giving way to the inheritance of grace
As children bearing the bloodline
With features of the Father's face
Healer of the heart
I speak out of the abundance of truth
Nothing that I've done can earn it
But faith works by love, and Your love is the proof
Evidence of the unseen
Calling what is not as it is
Eternity starts now
We're worth so much more than this...

When Hope Feels Like Deception

 

I'm at a loss for words and you
When all I could say isn't enough
To express my heart
And match the legacy of your love

A touch unparalleled
And all the things I've put you through
You never deserved the sorrow
For all the years gone
I can’t help but dream of you

Waiting for tomorrow
Praying for the strength to carry on
Grid locked for circumstances
Concern speaks for scenario drills

Depression like lethal romances
Not knowing is half the battle when anticipation kills

Perceptions of selfishness
Caught up in the demands of life
Trying to determine how to proceed
Where do we go from here?
Torn between what is want and what is need?

Vain is the pride of our achievements
Accomplishment depreciates the value of our self-worth
Establishing a temporal kingdom
What's it all for when all things fade on this dying earth?

Short sights of relative views
Lifetime endeavors versus the purpose of eternal ends
Horror stories to merchandise the news
Material havens are worthless without family and friends

Pivotal seconds against a loaded gun
Held hostage by detrimental days
Without love there is no light in the sun
Lost in a realm where everything decays

Short notice urgency and tough calls
Dial tone confessions and white walls
Absent bedsides and longing for home
I'll see you a thousand times to tell you
You are not in this thing alone

For all the company in the world
It's the one face you miss that just as soon makes it feel dead
I don't want to regret missing out on one more moment
Or leave any sentiments of love left unsaid

Statements made of what we do
Silent withdrawals and missing you
Heartache contrived of uncertain times
No schedule for the unexpected
No comfort in these vacant lines

Contending to believe despite what it is I'm feeling
Tell me how to pray to manifest healing
When faith strives to breathe against grim realities and sight is blind perception
What is the truth and what is the lie, when hope feels like deception

Wishful thinking professions speak the risk of taking Love at His word
Focusing on the providence of salvation deriving confidence from everything that I've heard
Emotional process, the handicap of our tears
Dismiss the doubt, we've still yet to live our best years

Contending, somewhere between honesty and faith till hope tells true
Placing my trust in the unseen You
Tell me that there's better days ahead
Despite the lie of what the circumstance said

When things are going well yet fear is an underlying voice
I still believe despite what I cannot control
It is my choice

Eyes set on the summit from the valley of death
What glory in the shadow when even the last is but the first breath?
The reflection we see is but the sight of a broken mirror
Faith comes by hearing but I am a broken hearer

Mend the filter through which we perceive all we think we can see
As to look at the world through the reality of you or the limits of me?
After we've reached the end of all we can do
It's all I can do to let go and believe in You...

Before The Tears Break

 

 
I try to speak when it matters most
But silence is my retreat
Asking God for the words
To hone the faith for healing
In the face of it all

When reality feels like a nightmare
And what if's speak
As fear seeks to intimidate me
Interrogation of a guilty conscience
When the sickness is not my fault
Yet no less I feel as if I've put you through

You're the strongest of us
With trust unwavering in your display
Leading by example to guide us to the way
Righteous indignation wells in me
Powerless I feel but to watch it all unfold
Seeking hope in the face of darkness
Un-comprising in your unbroken soul

I'll stand with you
We're in this together and fighting
Contending in the trial
Heart attack temptations of the fragile
Frail flesh consults sight when emotions get the best of me
Doubt is an empty threat

Firing blanks in empty shells
True faith never disappoints
Heaven is our inheritance despite our present hells
Reflecting as cracks form in my eyes
Belief wages against what is seen
When the facts are made of lies

Letting go
Caught between honesty and truth
Contending in the shadows
Just one word to bank my heart upon
Questions in my mind
Come up against answers rehearsed
Learning to believe when I am tested
More than just well versed

Life on trial, moment to moment
Redefine reality when it hurts
Light afflictions, callous to this world
The Word is true in the face of the worst

Who am I behind closed doors
As I pause and think of you
Speaking faith in the face
Of my broken point of view

Prayers like messages in a bottle heart
I cast across a sea of stars to grace
More than just wishful thinking, trust instilled in me
From my mother's heart to see the Father's face

Last laugh first, before the tears break
Providence is foresight and a battle won
Healing is the children's bread, we partake
We feast upon from the back of the Father's Son

Scarce miracles
The unclaimed inheritance
Blood bought
Perceiving light like a thread
Knit to hope
The world is an illusion
And death is dead...

Care of Heaven

 

Closed eyes conceal
A dream or something real

Postage care of heaven
Vicarious letters sent
I'm torn between rejoicing
Or my will to lament

Moved to emotion
For a sign from beyond
Forward of subconscious conversation
Sleep talking, not so far gone

Signs personalized
When death is conduit to heal
For all that's past
In this moment I seal

To know that you dwell in a place
Free from this world of decay
When the last moment I had with you
Was just before you passed away

Yet this world is the age
Every trend outdated
Lifetimes to vapors
Appointed for our hopes awaited

Gloom repealed
Relinquishing despair
I remember you, no longer afflicted

As my heart is stilled
A fresh breath of air
Paradigms of sorrow shifted

To think of you in this moment
In a place of the final cure
When I think of you now
Your smile is what I remember...

The Beginning of My Eternity

 

 
Miles away from you
On the other side of these years
Thinking of what you are to me
Happiness in these tears
Everything you inspire me to be
Remembering such love expels all my fears

Inadequate are these words I speak
Divulging pearls from a heart of dirt
Like a grain of sand in the mouth of time
You are a beacon amidst the shadow
Yet I cannot do justice to encapsulate your essence

Where words fail your ways
A romance only known between a mother and a son
You are the wisdom that holds me together
And at the same time, the virtue that finds me undone

You are a reflection in Spirit
The tangible touch of Christ
You are a personal love song
A herald in the heart of God, my maternal paradise

Musings of the seeming minutiae
Overture’s composed by the simplest thought of you
Torrential in the face of terror
Home honing hands holding heavy hearts
Essential to existential legacy of breaths evanescent heir
Resting in the memory, I am never alone, as long as you are there…

Drowning At The Sight of An Ocean

 
When did beauty seemingly become an empty promise?
We paint the horizon like ripping off God
And we’re all too familiar with the scenery
What is a breath of fresh air
Where the salt fills my lungs

Coarse sand digs into my feet
And shells like glass are fragile
Clouds wage war in the sky
As they bleed and dissipate into oceans
Nature’s orchestra contrast to a thought

The thought of her, it takes me back
Combing through the dirt for sand dollar ornaments
To adorn Colorado pine trees with Myrtle Beach memorabilia
As summer meets Christmas to conjoin family branches
With sentiments to associate with a souvenir

What once meant happiness
Became the commemoration of another year
Caught in a place where two worlds collide
Making snow angles in dust, versus ice cap sand castles...

Ice and Roses

 
Quantifying heartache on the scale of time
All the firsts reopen the wounds
And occasions can only be so special without you

Despite theoretical hopes
My faith's will to reminisce
Imagination is all I've got
But my mind can't fake true happiness

Relapse in sadness
I medicate as I live in madness
When the heart is lost for withdraws
And the pages are my vice
I'll write a thousand letters to you
But you're the missing part of a moment's paradise

Good advice given to lull the absence
All the beautiful sentiments of death bedside clichés
I can't find the color in the sky behind these clouds of gray

You're alive in a place of eternal light
I'm dead beneath the rays of the shadow sun
Un-dead I walk to destination home again
Till the souvenirs of our sorrows are undone

These memorial words I write
As I echo these emotions that refuse to fade
Two days after my first birthday without you
I designate this moment to think about every memory made

Another few days till we grace the aisle
You are the unspoken undertone in every tear shed and smile
Amidst our joys I cannot help but think as we quote our vows to endear
Part of me will weep as I think "I wish my mom was here"

And so she is so they say in the spirit of comfort
With references to the unseen witness of my life
But the thoughts don't replace the physical presence of you
When I'm who I am today because of you and my beautiful wife

What's to be said of all it took to come to this place
When I think of death as we wear our masks of red
Resealing our vows amidst ice and roses
Let love mend our soul's and lay to rest the dead...

A Full and Empty Room

 

Every other day I rearrange this room
I live in a place I call home
And yet without you here it feels like a tomb

I search for a picture in the routine
To illustrate my yearning for something unseen

Caught in this waiting game of survival
Am I living or dying for the dream?

Photographs taken to canvas these walls
At the sight of you my countenance falls

Keeping myself occupied in the off time
My delay of the inevitable, as weeks begin
I come and go and rearrange this room all over again...

The Death of A Stranger

 

 
Searching for the melody
Harmonizing with the way I put my heart into words
What is the substance of this song without the music
Like missing the accompaniment of you
Just a song short of a way to phrase your essence
 
I've got the words without the cadence
Like life without a sense of home
And it's funny how you can know so many people
Yet still feel like you're all alone
 
We end just as we begin
With questions in our minds
Spending life so certain and yet still searching
We all face our fates
Whether faith or best guesses
 
Through the finite eyes of reason
I contemplate the meaning of my life for the loss of yours
My heartache articulates the darkness of this season
As I pray for resurrection, my body weeps blood from pores
 
I stop questions short of answers content with the mystery
Significant as sentiments, my personal disregarded history...

Jigsaw Ashes

 
Puzzled, I begin without a reference point to resolve the picture
And what is this conundrum but a portion of a grander scope
When you are the missing part of everything
As I face a world I've never known before
A life without you
 
Jigsaw circumstances and the pieces I can't put back into place
No way to make sense of lost days
When everyday without you feels like a breath I can't catch
Like oxygen, you have been robbed from my lungs
And I'm learning how to breathe this air polluted by your absence
 
My heart beats but I am seeping from the cracks within
Interrogated daily by every question that demands an answer
And yet the void is speechless
Ashes of the past contained within a sentimental urn
Every touch amounts to skin and as the heartbeat ceases
Memories are what's left that the incinerator can't burn
 
Yet still I burn alive, longing for what won't be in this life again
Reduced to ashes, like jigsaw remains in a jigsaw scenario
Looking for miracles
How gone is too far gone to raise the dead?
When in truth this world is a gradual suffocation
And you exist in a place more alive than I've ever been...

You Are A Song That Never Ends

Caught up in these feelings that I can't shake
Just when I think I've adjusted
I'm still lost in the feelings of residual heartbreak

For all that I know and the by the book answers
I contend to bask in a meditation of joy
Yet I find myself defaulted to involuntary wallow
When reality is too tough to chew, I choke as I swallow

Good and bad days
Caught between movement and standing still
It still feels like I could call you just as easily
And you'd answer all the same

Yet knowing what you'd say is a poor substitute for conversation
Looking back over social media reminders
Your words and messages like fingerprints on photographs
The dried residue of the oils of your skin
All the evidence of touch without a hand to hold

What is our legacy but every impression we leave
And every word ever written
Like a fossil taken from the structure of our former thoughts

I listen to your silent words
Reading them back to myself
Dancing with every memory of you to the tune of a broken record
Sung like our favorite songs overplayed
And yet you are a song I cannot hear enough...

Broken Serenade

Starting from the ending

A long and drawn out farewell

Not to say goodbye just another way to tell



What words to console

Finding closure for my heart

When grieving is like an open wound

Time does its best to mend us

As blood ferments on the skin



It's not so potent as the first incision

But pain accompanies the joys intoxication

Beneath every smile is an unspoken tear

And all I can say is that I wish you were here



Did it take tragedy to unite us?

Derailing all that gets in the way

Loss makes night of even the most beautiful day

As I meander down these feelings

Speaking what I'm not supposed to say

I know that you're still alive somewhere

But I still miss you anyway



Waiting for honesty to calibrate to truth

When feelings are based in perceptions of a blind reality

As faith goes to war with my eyes for my mentality



Confidence greets profession

Reinforce my hope in something more

Are we living or dying in the moment?

Longing for what promise the future has in store



A thought in my mind and a question

Reminiscent of my pondering point of view

Did you know that we would be gathering on this day

To both celebrate and weep for the bittersweet memory of you



When our lives have been perfumed

And you were the source of the scent

Every photograph reminds me

Of your presence that is absent



What is life but a game of waiting?

With every breath we are suffocating

Learning to dream beyond what we can imagine

Our colors captive to the limited hue

There is not enough pigment in these words

To illustrate the kaleidoscope of you



Oh but to think what are we but your legacy

And do we reflect it well enough to be your own

When every moment makes us who we are

And you are the serenade of a place I can call home...

Undying Legacy

At a loss for words cause I’m at a loss for you
And contending in my heart for what I know is true
In the dual reality of life and what is death
Existing in the sentiments of this vapor
Learning to understand the purpose of a breath
Memories on life support of friends, photographs, and paper
 
Drafting the blueprints in a sales pitch for my heart
As if I’ve still got something to prove
When you were my greatest affirmation from the start
Unconditional love is something I can’t lose
 
But your voice was a concentrated dose
And living here without you is like waking up in comatose
Awaken me to the knowing that you are but an echo of the truth
God in the evidence expressed through your love as the proof
 
You were there when no one else was
A reminder that I am not alone
Caught up at odds with this reality
Lord knows that you’re not gone, you’ve just gone home
 
I rejoice at the thought of heaven’s gain
To know the Son is shining where you are
Is comfort in the hard times despite this present pain
So close to my heart and yet so far
 
No regrets only investments made
No records kept of all the ways that I’ve been wrong
What am I but a conduit of a legacy that will never fade?
With a voice as one with yours, I sing the song
 
As we all like channels of a glory that transcends
Finds us the beneficiaries of a place where love never ends
Free from the death that finds us here longing for the day
When we will be reunited once again
As heaven dawns breaking through every sky of gray
 
I love you now and always, and I won’t say goodbye
Because there’s no such thing as farewell
For though we pass away in this moment, we never truly die…

31

 

Stuck inside a question
And an answer you can't give
Which words do we use
To come to terms with this
I see you lying there
You smile
But are you lost inside
Imprisoned in yourself
Language barriers
Your heart speaks beyond words
Open your eyes
I'll listen to what you're trying to say
The light interprets
Both their joy and their sorrow
Waiting for you to return
Will I see you tomorrow?
Or is hope a tomorrow that never comes
As we're left longing for a miracle
Yet failing to see
Death is as beautiful as birth
When all is said and done
In a place that you'll be whole
Flesh like a cocoon, reborn as it breaks
To set at liberty your soul
Symmetry like a mirror
An image within
Caught in a parallel existence
Somewhere between glory and sin
Translate reality
From this place, a foreign shore
Filtering a message
SOS for something more
This is war, contending
Against loss and all I've done
30 years gone by, I still need you
Past the days of 31
Waiting rooms, I'm outside
A day away from the moment that we met
The anniversary of our first hello
It's not time for goodbye yet
Would I ever truly be ready
You love me through it all, even my regret
Hospital commemoration
From maternity, to psych wards, and critical condition
Close ones with close calls
Bedside confessions and heart to heart admission
Open letters, my unsung sentiments
If it would bring you out
I'll write a song for you
If you are the melody, I'm just a harmony
Trying to find my place in the tune
You are my light in the gray
You are the day and I am the moon
Tell me, how do I reflect on you?

Too Far For Comfort

How do I say it any better
To offer some insight in an after death love letter
To commemorate and honor the memory of you
As wisdom pleads with my footsteps
To transcend these words and let them become what I do

Enough about me and my reflection
You're an unseen sight to behold
Caught on a thought as I attempt to utter your brilliance

Anything beautiful and the only thing worth mentioning in me
Is the fact that I'm just the offspring of your undying legacy

Surely you are still alive in me
As I think to reminisce on what you'll miss
When I long for you in this eclipse
This sorrow is the obstruction of my happiness
When I'm caught up in the absence of your presence
The residual hold of your embrace's resonance

Too far for comfort, and nothing I say can offer console
Misconceptions of imperfect perspectives
It was never part of the plan
As we factor in these years that death stole
Slowly you slip from my grasp as I let go of your hand

We dreamt our lives to realize our hopes
And take the pictures of an almost perfect day

Yet I feel the weight of phone calls unmade
And sentimental gallery walls full of photographs you'll never see
For weddings, grandchildren, and the reconstruction of a blended family
When all is forgiven and we defeat the separation with the joy
What I would give for just one more memory

If only you had the opportunity to know my wife a little better
If only she knew you beyond just a single encounter and after death love letter

I'm supposed to smile and dwell on the fact
That you're in a place where there is no pain
Yet even as you live in a realm where the sun always shines
I'm still trying to find shelter from this place of inner rain

And I can't help but think of what it took
All you lost and all you got back in return
After you invested your life in our smiles

When love is a lesson that goes beyond the book
And a language I'm still trying to learn
On this side of heaven beyond the matter of mere miles

None of this was a part of the plan
When death is a last resort to heal
I wanted to see you recover and I tried to believe
I only see you in a dream, how can this be real?

Losing sight of the stars, eyes fallen
When gravity robs my vision of light
I try to maintain perspective
But in all honesty, I'm not alright...

Grave Robber

 

where do I end yet as we began, in faith
when desire goes unfulfilled
and my heart is sick for hopes deferred
all too familiar it seems
when disappointment finds its way in

upon meeting my lowered expectations
yet it still comes as a surprise to me
have I the right to be honest enough
to say what you don't want to hear

nevertheless I will not remain
but I will stand hopeful of so much more
when life bears the weight in this burden of pain
this light affliction casts no shadow on the glory of what's in store

what do I say when it hurts to breathe
yet remind myself of the final promise
when God eats death and every tear is bottled that was shed
swallowed up and buried with the world
He's alive and death is dead

heal my point of view
till I can see it as You do
the radiance protrudes into my line of sight
and I finally see the eternal day
after the sun is proved a shadow and a prosper-less night

I've spoken through the lens of this horizontal plane
and found these words make up these flat-lines
when everything I've said apart from You is all in vain
as the heart stops I find vertical resolution in these hard times

more beautiful moments
I won't be shaken or too afraid to hope again
when love is a vision that I am still invested in
despite the recourse of sickness, disease, and every sin

you'll find me at the altar when grace is an invitation
there is still a wedding to attend and the reception of salvation
and healing is our bread in the covenant of our souls betrothed
shameless we stand in glorified bodies, blood clothed

when peace has rule and reign even before the manifestation
I'll know a faith and we'll find our loved one's whole beyond all lamentation
oh death where is your victory when the sting is taken from the tongue
and we wield the members of our voices to truth in every song we've sung

this is the end but what is the end but an illusion
as we continue on beyond the grave and temporal grief
when every virus, lust, cancer, and whispering animosity
all the pain of this tortured world, will finally find relief

interpreting these blood lines
quoting crimson fashion statements to reconcile the soul
what is the cross but the death of the reaper
and love like a thief in the night is robbing what the devil stole...

Baby Steps

When did distance become part of core values to practice space
And all the craze is the way we salvage our safety and save face
At the end of the day the irony proves to be
Closeness is a phobia and yet
What I'd give for one more day to find you next to me
 
Phone calls finds voices in wireless transcendence of the space between
And yet I was so entangled in life I partook of your silence voluntarily
Now that I can't see or hear you
I want you the most for the restraints of life versus casket barriers
 
Once a breath and now a death away
I'm learning to carry on without you, but I'm having trouble facing life today
Is this by choice or just the way I feel entrapped in my own skin
You raised me from infancy and watched my first steps
But every footprint without you finds me learning how to walk all over again
 
Absence is the last lesson it seems that a mother will teach
Yet nonetheless your wisdom preserves your memory and still speaks
You are a silent echo and your lifetime is a legacy that'll preach
Still furthermore you are a buried treasure, unseen, but my heart seeks
 
In vain I dig to unearth the past that is no more
Only to remind myself you are another part of the beauty of what heaven has in store
As I repeat the phrase to keep eyes fixed on an opposite shore
Beachfront views of divine voyages across the ethereal ocean from now until forevermore...

Living Is Dying

 

Making a whisper of damages
Confessions are useless to admit
Making false advances to improve
To tell the truth I think I'm counterfeit

Aimless prayers spoken to the void
Letters written with intent to reach an ear
In all honesty no hell is worth the sin enjoyed
What I hate about myself is the end I fear

Hard questions and uneasy answers
With good reason for the doubt
As to deny myself or the divine
Cast out the devil or throw me out

Intimidation factors of unsettling thoughts
Part of the suffering of damnation is never seeing the ones we love
Whether I descend into the pit of false promise
Or inherit a place, seated up above

Separation anxiety without the cure of an embrace
Absent here forevermore, my present hell is my inability to see you face to face
Learning to cope with the reality of every moment I feel the loss
When living is dying and surviving is what it means to bear my cross...

Dirt

 

I try to fathom what my mind cannot
Just weeks ago you were there
And after a last breath, your soul vanished
Exhale and faded into thin air

Miles from your bedside
And yet as close as the heart
I had to let you go involuntarily
And it's tearing me apart

Your body returns to ashes
And all that is left is dirt
Trying to hold on to a sunnier disposition
Yet I can't help but feel the hurt

Just telling it like it is
Straight out and confessing the shaking
When every day without you is a fresh sense of loss
Everyday my heart is breaking

My mind crowded
Yet empty it seems
I fall asleep in search of you
But I cannot see you in my dreams...

Sing A Song

 

Eyes so full of hope
What vision we saw
When from the ice
Frozen in time
The moments began to thaw
 
How long it took to come full circle
After all that we went through
Our hopes collision with tragedy
I'm broken inside but I'm happy for you
 
What is death but an empty threat
Except the thief of our years
Who might've known
The thought of what was once my comfort
Is every memory made of tears
 
I don't know how to say goodbye
And all I can remember is feeling like a stranger to you
Your every word got lost behind a single phrase
When love and farewells are all but a song
 
I speak but you were the melody
The lift in every lyric of my soul
You're a song this world sings no more
And the laughter that the sorrow stole
 
But only for a moment, I remind myself
This is not the end
Yet even as I envision your joy, my heartbreak still won't mend
 
When he tells of the way
You utter remorse on a death bed
Apologetic reminiscing of all the hopeful words you said
 
Promising what never came to pass
Beauty in this world, though seemingly divine, was never meant to last
 
Uttering such sorrow
The painful truth of where we are right now
Breathing without you here feels like dying
But I'm still alive somehow
 
No need to say you're sorry
This sickness was not your fault
No matter what the reason it came to be
Healing is our inheritance
And the truth is you're whole for all eternity
 
Why aren't you here?
He asks the void, longing for you
Ending in the same place this all began
You were his love song
And surely after all is said and done
He will sing you once again...

The Truest Lie

 

snow falls like white ash from a blank sky
the cold is colder than it used to be
pain seems the only bond of my affection
as every joy becomes the entrapment of my memory

and yet, nevertheless, i willfully endure the sorrow
when the loss of what i love about yesterday
is the hope of what greater glory i will know after tomorrow

in a place of timelessness and ageless beauty preserved
in a realm where there is no suffering
when it was all that we deserved

am i negligent for reminiscing when i remain
held up on all accounts of former things
i've still got a life to live and you are free from pain
sending letters with my prayers and sentiments in offerings

shifting meditations from looking back to moving on
this deficit of your absence that i feel is the truest lie
reminding myself that you are not gone
just a final breath away, in the beauty of the day i die...

Barren Trees

 

i look out across the sea
an ocean of thoughts surrounding me
abstract ideals of infinite possibility
everything plays out only once

and it all narrows to a single path
i started from the shore
in search of something more
now i'm drowning in the aftermath

it feels like you're a lifetime away
and a stolen dream that i can never have
a single week to say farewell to years up to 31
after half a lifetime of calling me your son

lost for the thought of you
i am a stray comet caught in the gravity of everyone

horizontal encounters, yearning for a vertical embrace
all the luster of the world's beauty is fading
when nothing compares to the sight of your face
canvas of empty landscapes, the apocalypse of the painting

barren trees of our fruitless endeavors ever accursed
apart from the One who placed me in the womb
mother is the love that all have known first
and without you here, the world is a tomb...

Broken Reflection

 

overthinking, ruptured understanding
losing my mind for the solution
letting go of the need for an answer
is it what I don't see
or something I'm not ready to hear
yet in light of my will to best deduce
is it in the promise or theology that seems unclear?

when all I'm left is the question as to why
knowing love through the eyes of loss and letting go
the faith of what I longed for disappointed
for all the hope of what I do and do not know

short sighted by this blind reality of perception
how do I trust anything that I see
when life feels like deception
having faith is not without the consequence of what might be

lost inside the mirror
is it the glass or reflection that is broken
i am one with the fractures
what's left to say or better left unspoken?

finding the courage to hope again
despite the way it all fell apart
whether or not my faith is to the point that I can raise the dead
I still trust in the love of the Father to heal a broken heart

the end is not the end
and our best days are yet to be
even in the midst of darkness
there is light beyond what I can see...

Heavy Vapor

 

the coast is unclear
are you brave enough to live again
or am I being interrogated by the mirror
when it's mountains versus mustard seeds
and I'm fighting for my faith

headlining intimidation factors
consumerism caution ads
torn between two topics of my self-discussion
writing as a recreational pass time
caught between habits of therapy and self-destruction

I retreat back to fixate on what won't go away
and time will make it easier if we just take it day by day
here's hoping for it if what they say is true
when I'm feeling a bit like a broken record trying to sing a song for you

stuck on repeat, the trauma of our last time face to face
our final moments together spent crossing camera bridges
I couldn't hold you but you were the only one I wanted to see
yet I can't help but reminisce again on a beautiful and tortured memory

our last week romance of dreams and possibilities
based in visions of our hopes on the verge of finding a spotlight in the sun
as everything led up to loose ends tied together
and just before the beginning, everything was left undone

critical conditions and life support
gauging the pulse, all I see is death in everything
cancer memoirs of an onlooking son
set to the cadence of the news coverage of COVID-19

postponed endearments of a vow renewal
as a coffin beats us to the altar, you remain unseen
the cremated remains of all things turned to dust
media hype, panic pandemic, consumerism fiend
get all you can, all for everything and nothing, survival lust

I cannot accuse in this standoff of stones
shotgun funeral before the wedding
subject to the integrity of our fragile and breaking bones
endorsements of our vices
coping with a life we parade as if to enjoy
when suffering is the devil's game and everyone's a toy

R-rated dialogues in our will to express our upset
frustration is all apart of the routine
both horrified by and mocking the insinuated threat
the hostage situation of COVID-19

shadows in my mind competing
the darkness of our present view
international crisis steals the thunder
and everything is show business
just leave it up to Hollywood to make a movie out of you

safeguards, security blankets of the mind, set the scene
telling myself to breathe, my lungs are made of paper
psychosomatic suffocation, fear is a truer contagion than COVID-19
can you bear the weight, anchors away, drowning in this heavy vapor...

3 weeks in 6 years

 

Another letter I won’t see you read
Praying that these words are getting through
Another night, another day, another moment, thinking about you
 
Priceless sentiments written before the witness of a thousand eyes
Like my heart in the firing line of the views of the silent scrutinize
 
Audience regurgitated messages like playing telephone with perception
Everything through the filter of our relative sense of love and loss
Off topic distractions, the awareness of the onlooker is an altercation in my thoughts
 
Getting back to square one to try to recapture the essence of what I want to say
Reminiscing on different angles of another night of day
 
3 weeks in 6 years I saw you face to face
With the majority of our connection maintained on the phone
When I was vagabond and outcast in my own world your voice was my only home
 
You knew me better than anyone ever will when you saw me in my most distorted frame of mind
When a mother's prayers are a GPS to sanity, when I was lost you were the only truth that I could find
 
It feels like 6 years in 3 weeks now that you're more than just a phone call away
But a lifetime's perspective loss and a never dawning day
 
Relative to us is this, when you're in a better place
And yet I feel like I'm worse off longing for your embrace...

Life As Unusual

 

How do I say what the words won't convey
When I don't feel anything at all
Left in the wake of the silence
Awaiting both the best and worst moments of my life
While caught in routines of life as unusual

Everyday a new report given
Relative perspectives and cloudy points of view
When I'm both caught in the rain and soaking up the sun
Both basking and drowning in the thought of you

In loving memory and unpredictable outcomes
Nothing is certain right now
Everything fluctuates from day to day
When it all feels like a rubix cube
Looking for the signs that lead us back to a state of normalcy

I can't feel the fractures in my broken heart
But the break is making its way into my mentality
Psychological scars stain my eyes with blood when red is my reality

Feeling like I should be on high alert
And yet I've always been one to feel more at home in the chaos
When darkness is familiar and light is uncharted territory
Disappointment is a lesson in expecting nothing more than catastrophe

But I have to fight my inclination to say anything that they don't want to hear
To silence every lie and stifle the pride of honesty, somewhere between love and what I fear

Is overcoming an obstacle a lesson in learning what might make them stumble?
Accepting loss as a part of the game is the only way we still find courage to play
Trivializing the fact that we're at war
Everyone wants an enemy they can defeat

Crucified to repeal consequence
Authoring promise on the premise of adoption
Estranged and raised by the wolves in our own ways
What befalls us, when our lives are made of a dead endeavor?
Death cannot extinguish our hopes when our dreams last forever

Seeking the same God the world has made an enemy of
Speaking of something that they do not know and faking love

A question makes its way from my suspicions to my head
What if we never see the day we're waiting for?
It feels less and less unreasonable to doubt the horizon
I'm left lingering in anticipation without knowing when and if the timing will be right
I got lost in route within the tunnel when I lost sight of the light

Waiting for the best and the worst day of my life
Vows spoken beside better said goodbyes
If only I could see it from where you are
Learning to trust in the vision of what escapes my eyes

Just give me room to breathe
In the midst of the monotony
What's the difference between a paper cut and bullet wound?
On two opposite ends of the end
Caught between the panic, the drama, and the truth
Self-involved we are in our relative view
Maintaining the rotation of the world
Everything is in motion but I am frozen without you...

Longing For Yesterday, Waiting For Tomorrow...

 

I've yet to find the words to do justice what I feel
Or to feel it all to the extent it seems I should
Speaking as if to solicit for comfort in your stead
Yet it's as if some days the memory of you is more alive
And I'm the one who exists as if I'm dead
 
Caught in routines and safety precautions
With generic encounters with strangers
A few words in exchange
Just enough to find parallels in everything
 
Anticipation in waiting or growing weary
The volume of my heartbeat to a dull roar
I'm still trying to figure out how I should feel
And what is it I'm preparing for
 
Closure to our endings and embarking on the new
I want to make a memory but what's a memory without you
As my joys compete with the ache that swells within
And I sell every love song short with the secrets of my sin
 
No justice done, just perpetual lamentations spoken
Trying to breathe and pretend that I'm okay but everything is broken
On the outside looking in, on the inside looking out
Spectacle to societal observation
I've got a fishbowl heart, making vulnerability out to be a marvel
 
Shock and awe, the unreal nature of a reality so bleak
I'm choking on my will to express it
But even when I say it, it doesn't really speak
Lacking depth to give utterance to the scars it all inflicts
Faking my integrity and trying to find a way to process, while prone to be an addict
 
Is it all just a will to medicate
When it's something in me that I can't tolerate
And the same to sedate in the moment drives me further into sorrow
When I'm lost for the one I lost, longing for yesterday and waiting for tomorrow
 
Is it getting too real?
As I quote the irony of our day
When we fear more the man without the mask
In denial of our faces when it used to be the other way
 
What is a secret but the truth concealed
And the lie we make of ourselves
When it's too much to face reality
The image of who we'd like to be is all that sells
 
Profile sales pitch
The fabricated ideals of how we want to be perceived
In love with our favorite liars and willfully deceived
 
Separation anxiety, words bleed out of loose lips
I am a gaping wound in consciousness
Seeking fantasies and dreams for escape
Caught between waking up to losing you all over again
And actively participating in my own mind rape
 
It'll be my first Easter without you here
And this is all I'm trying to say
As I trudge through the swamp of my thoughts and their emotions
In my efforts to convey
 
Torn between what I feel
And the brighter message of resurrection as a holiday
To celebrate forgiveness, rebirth, and miracles
Yet somehow feel as if mine was robbed when I watched you pass away
 
To think no less that God was grieved to know the pain of death
Yet the thresh-hold of a Savior finds the joy set before Him
Was all that inspired His endurance to the cross and name me worth His final breath...