There is much to this life
that is quite simply
hard to take… it is these such things,
these unwilling realities or unsettling truths,
that will press against your clay bones
as if with intent to refine your shape and leave fingerprints;
the peculiar thing about humanity
is that nothing defines you
except you.
Be as stubborn or malleable as you like
but don’t dare blame the world
for the shape you’re in.
I find that in a breath I might rekindle all my affections…
then in a gasp rekindle such unrelenting bitterness…
“I treated you better than you ever deserved but I finally had enough”
“You don’t have a Christian bone in your body”
“As long as I live, I won’t ever let someone treat me the way you treated me”
“You just scare people away from Christ”
…these just resound and resound in my head.. I acknowledge they are fresh breeds of the enemies old tricks ..
Today i reflected when i helped her uncle with a wedding and her aunt was rushed to the hospital but i stayed to help. I felt helpful and useful. We sat under the stars as the night winded down.
I remember parks and gifts I labored over trying to think of the perfect new way to show love. Drove an hour both ways just so that when she left work she could be surprised with 5 letters on her window. And many things like this.
Somehow she never wants to be treated like that ever again..
I put myself between
wrath and mercy, pleading to be
swallow up in each.
I pray to Whom
all fiery dwells and all mercy
pours still; as if from His veins
out His open flesh marred
by ill intending men who
praying for justice, condemn their names…
But who could know it when the end punctures the thin skin yoke of sky
and the sun like blood weeps like a Man in gardens pleading for who may bare His cup…
they are fools
and I am like them with intent
to be saved and leave unsaved
the fools with intent to be free
and stay in chains
simultaneously.
how frightening a thought. To be unchangeably deemed
uncouth, unconsciously brutal, unwittingly outright
with all your demons -little terrors which keep in your eyes
then up out your heart,
bush up the helm in rushes of pressure and displeasure
they misguide my rudder
missteering my ship. Missgoing a way
toward unchangeably unhappy me
..dear God not tonight…
please be changing me…
Did you finally
hear
my actions speak
Louder
Than my heart
Can scream
In poetic language I hear us often speak
banter upon banter of what we could not
convey with little human words
so stanzas pass with very little said.
we let little words spray the page
…little words to trace the way
to my saying she is diamonds
each a hundred thousand cut
casing her incandescence
to see her…my word, is to see her
turning perfect light
into multicolor skies
well I want this light
I want these skies
for the rest of my life
I wrote once, told friends once
That every moment when I expected I may get that confused looking “youre and idiot” face girls my whole life have been so good at giving; I never once did…
Well now that’s all I get, even when I didn’t expect it at all…
The truth validates itself. A word like “love” has no definite truth outside of “a word that describes our God.”
To claim it, is unlike claiming anything else. It is to claim you desire to imitate that which you do not fully know, but to claim it assumes as ones understanding grows, as does ones actions. This entails every facet and sort of love. Intimate. Brotherly. Parental, etc.
There is a story of two sons, both are told to go work, one says he will while the other says won’t. Yet the one who says he won’t is the only one who does, and Jesus tells us he was the righteous one.
This parable always concerns me…
With no reason to go out I stay in
because the reasons gone out
were those which if had stayed in
would be here to maybe get me
out from always staying in when
all I have on my mind is
the things I wonder why I’m not out
doing when otherwise caught up in not
something I meant to even stay
in as long as I had been in it
but what will we do to go out now…
my reasons absent I stay in
nathanael.ink 