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Falling on my words again,
These breaths that only run skin deep
I starve myself and feel the sting
Of hunger in its cold release.

The face of One who softens hearts
Peels back the thrund'ring hands of time
To place new hope within our arms
Beyond the scope of fragile minds.

Untitled

I will sing a son of brokenness
That you may be known as complete

At the cross, You took my place
At the cross, You killed my shame

I am not alone
You've captured me, You call me as Your own
You beckon me to come
You've beckoned me to come
You've rescued me

Untitled - Rainsong?

VERSE:
Nights like these
Leave me down upon my knees and asking why
Begging, please,
Won't you put a little blue back in my sky

CHORUS 1:
This is the song that the rain is singing,
"I'll be around just when you feel your heart grow hard
And I may not have the answers,
But hope has a way of filling up a dried out heart."

VERSE 2:
Days like these
Leave me tired from the moment morning starts.
Begging, please,
Won't you let me trade the daylight for the stars.

CHORUS 2:
This is the song that the sun is singing.
"I'll be around just when this world feels cold and dark
And I may not stop the questions,
But hope has a way of waking up your tired heart."

BRIDGE:
I get lost, I get lonely sometimes,
I get lost, I get lonely, I get lonely

CHORUS 3:
This is the song that her smile is singing,
"I'll be around just when you don't know where to start,
And I may not stop the aching,
But hope has a way of picking up a desperate heart."

All This Time

VERSE 1:
He said,
"Boy, you've lived long enough to know some things by now."
I said, "You might be right, but somehow I feel
like I'm just finally waking up to brighter lights."
And he said, "Well, let me give you just one hint:
all the glitter and poise ain't what it's sold to be."
And I said, "Hey, that's fine with me
I'm just tired of all the noise inside my head,
Keeps telling me
Who I'm gonna be,
Still catching up with who I am

VERSE 2:
So listen,
Lately I've been caught staring at the sky,
Wondering what a girl would call that shade of blue
Running into smiles every time I stop watching where I'm going.
And I can't tell what it is that's changed,
Maybe just my particular point of view,
And seeing that
Being caught alive is no excuse for barely breathing
While chasing
Who I'm gonna be
Still catching up with who I am

CHORUS:
All this time, I've been waiting for what?
I couldn't name it, but I
Think I've been wasting mine.
Now I'm spending more time chasing the sky,
May never make it,
But I can say I gave it a try
I've been blind, but I'm gonna get it right this time

VERSE 3:
He said,
"Boy, you've got a life to live,
It may be just one day,
But don't you throw it away,
'Cause one last day
May be all that it would take
To finally reach that sky
So I won't waste
One more breath -- no second glances
Asking how or why
When here we have the when
And I won't wait
Here giving any second chances to my yesterdays
That keep telling me
Who I'm gonna be,
Still catching up with who I am...

[CHORUS]

BRIDGE:
Don't go wasting, don't go wasting time

Again

Lead me, oh lead me to Your arms again
to where I stop and You begin again, begin again
Breathe on this dust and start my heart again
Oh hold me 'til its beat is Yours again, is Yours again

I want You, 'cause all I have
Is nothing I can take away
You, 'cause all I have
Is nothing to me anyway

Save me, oh save me from myself again
Tear down my pride and take this throne again, this throne again
Take all these pieces I can't understand
I'll trust Your heart to be my home again, my home again

Break on me like a wave
Crash over me, just
Come wash my heart away
With these two-faced loves
That drag me down each time I look away

VERSE 1:
It should be simple.
I'm looking to find a way / To see the world through Your eyes;
Wondering if what I see / Will come as a surprise.
But I keep dreaming up the reasons why

I can't get started
Just give me one more day / To get this whole thing down
Just yesterday I felt like I / Was coming around
But that's when gravity found me

CHORUS:
Don't go slowing down,
I may not have it all worked out right now
But I'll trust You for the answers when it's time
Won't go walking out
I'm waiting here 'til I have lost and found myself...

VERSE 2:
So take it over
I've been here long enough / To know I'm in my way
Putting in my last word / For everything You say
But Your words are breaking me down

The Sky Swimmers

The clouds look up to where we are,
We, upon our windblown tufts of sand,
Turning amid precariously hung oceans—
Puddle-ponds weakly echoing the true depths of a shoreless sky.
The old grey guardians must needs wonder at us,
Our strange conceptions of permanence and greatness—
We, who think ourselves unmovable, and therefore strong;
While they, the sky swimmers, are stirred, bound, and released
By the very hand of God.

What taste, that stirs this once so weary moment,
Tempts my heart to stillness ‘mid its blush-like stain?
The sky has filled, unheralded, the veins of hope
That hovered there, winter blue, and wary
Of our fragile, silent, oft-bruised dreams.

The clouds are torn, their oceans spilled and well spent
O’er the green-soaked sprout and slowly stirring plain.
While here, my eyes are pulled to wander heaven’s slope,
And linger, hushed, and light, and airy,
To sew my heart with your smile’s seams.

Carya Illinoensis

O the depth of creation within a single tree!
Bear witness to the full, deep, branch-fraught timbre,
Tracing her graceful sweep into the feathered sky.
Sit, neck folded, thinking oneself beneath her smoke-like, time-placed frame,
As the ripple of a thought finds its way from beneath this, life’s loam-filled stage,
And rises, vast and rumbling, from somewhere beneath your quiet earth-strewn perch.
Into the mind falls the simply-carved vision of the vast, hidden half of her hourglass;
That, like her poet-born brother, fills the heart’s eye with wonder
At the woefully limited scope of its own age and vision.
Like the self-woven plight of we simpleton farmers of the earth,
Who orbitedly cast for ourselves roles of the crouchers
Far below the trunk-raised heights of the truly blessed,
All the while daily ignoring the ground-covers roots,
The twisted veins of the hope-starved that lie beneath us.
Great storm wrinkled maiden, your Maker knew well his craft
When He spilled your mighty arms from His heart.
It was He who filled your rough pages with soft, brown Light,
That we, the hate-blinded children of the dust,
Might bask in your within subtle glow.

The Rain on Her Face

It is but a moment. Soft, intangible, wind-swept: a fallen leaf from the shadowy limbs of time—skittering beyond the boundaries of vision surrounded and jostled by its countless brother-children. She is captured by a rush of swirling mysteries, held captive by a heart still ponderously balanced on newly-formed legs of emotion. Yet, inexorably, inescapably, relentlessly, her heart-fawn presses—is pressed—forward, forced to translate the native language of her skin into the oversimplified monosyllabic tendencies of her partially defined reactions.

Her eyes become the novice baker, spilling the myriad contents of a well-mixed second onto their wide surface, sifting through its intricate recipe and willing her to distinguish one infinite ingredient from the next. Still her heart plods on, held within the tender grasp of an instant, willing her to taste its subtle mountain of flavors as a whole—more fully than well-trained connoisseurs with their inhibited, overly-experienced criticisms.

This moment is hers; dawning on her Eden-heart with rapid, concurrent emotions, collapsing in an ecstatically shivering heap upon her doorstep. Here cold, laughter, joy, fear, and curiosity vault her inevitably still for a small handful of heartbeats. She is lost within the brilliant, bewildering cacophony of impulses and questions, careful to select the correct homage to pay to this sudden stranger.

And when at last she is pulled past this moment by the mere necessity of existence, with which color will she paint her face for the next? What, more than the mere currency of time, will be lost in the picture she will paint there? For, in choosing a response to each moment, we become the ever-compelled merchants of life. Finding a smile, we lose a frown; or, finding the cold, we miss our chance for a moment of laughter amid the rain.

It’s said that hope oft times runs dry,
Amid this plague of tepid dreams;
Yet my heart swells its flesh-dulled cry
Against this solemn, desert-claim.

For here, I find my soul adrift
Amid a well-spilt sea of hope;
Yet I, the time-worn sailor lift
My cup, and drinking, parch my heart.

For this vast sea of liquid promise
E’er amix with salt and sin,
Must tear my palate-heart asunder,
Felled now to these dark planks again.

Oh! Come again, Thou day-bright Shore
That cradles mid Your inland folds—
And to its depths surrender me—
The tear-less pond that Mercy filled
That my dark heart could never stain.

That I, a man adrift at sea,
Might quench my thirsty heart in Thee.

She swims the light at break of day,
Parting chordant melodies
Of hope and sunlit life beyond the night
Floating through the morning, she holds his hand,
Beckoning her brother to awaken
Full and soft and clear;
And when she fades beyond the reach of light,
This side of the half-lit sphere,
Oh, once more let me find her
Before tomorrow breaks anew.

[Note: Actually written some time in late 2005]

Stay near, unchanged, for one breath more
Beneath the fragile tide of leaves
And hearts—that we may still the door
Of joy within their quiet weave.
The strident chords of daylight fade,
And we, behind the entourage
Of light, will feel the burning stray
From mem’ry light a pale mirage.

And, firm between the stubborn days,
Away from kings, and courts, and time,
Here, caught beneath the moon’s bright sway,
We two shall teach our hearts to rhyme.
So stay, that we, like unborn stars,
May wake to find the heavens ours.

Here

And here our words break upon the shores of reality—
Tide-less blankets of liquid thought
Pulled along by our incandescent hearts;
Spilling their force upon the all-too-familiar coastlines of this spinning island.

Here we sculpt with patient letters
The ever-shifting visage of a world so foreign to our gypsy souls.

Here we tap the boundless flow of shivering, shadow-filled ink—
And test the mortality of our fears.

Here we stare into the faces of our spectral longings,
Haunted by their passing,
Crouching beneath the covers of our wisdom
And making ghosts of angels.

Yet here
Oh! here let it be that we find again
Our castles, our warriors, our worthy beauty;
And see these pages, held firmly before our eyes,
Spoken into a whisper
That clutches away the aching dust from the mirror.

She swims the light at break of day

She swims the light at break of day,
Befriending the lonely shadows and
Turning their hearts warm, their eyes bright.
Her presence gently sifts through the dawn
Like a bird’s song at the end of winter:
Piercingly lovely, fragile, hopeful.
Smile! O let your smile touch my face too
That I, like the cold grey clouds of the horizon
Might be touched by the sunrise and lost in its glow.

I placed a stone upon the ground
And waited for the rain to come
To wash away the ringing sound
Of earth against my heart.
I walked away and turned to see
The silence there, that followed me
And hummed a tune of quiet loss,
My heart, a lonely drum.
I waited for the light to dawn,
While sitting underneath the sea
But nothing reached me but the song
And words I tore apart.
I swam away and turned to see
The darkness there, that followed me
And hummed a song of soft regret
That didn’t last for long.

Caught up in this cloud,
The rain washes away your outline
Sending the vagabond colors through the soft earth
To the light beneath.
Somewhere,
More than here.

And let it be that yesterday we feared
Our lives but a whisper, lost amid a thunder of the ages,
And today find we are a piece of the Whisper
That shakes the clouds of fathomless eternity.

The grass whispers at daybreak,
Fragile-clad in the morning dew,
As life holds out our unprotected hopes
To be pierced by an ever-nearer, ever-broken reality.
The fiery watchman climbs his weary way through the sky,
Pulling the threadbare ocean’s tide away from the weary soldiers of the soil.
And we, the bearers of souls, are hard pressed
To stand against the tongues of men and stars.
Yet somewhere there are those who have found their face hidden from the searing sun.
Lost beneath the titan shadows of the greater:
A towering pylon, scorched but not withering;
Rebellious and firm against the tearing lash of heat.
The struggling grass finds safety below;
Just as we, the weakened children of Strength,
Must fall beneath the shadow of a tree
And cast us before the healer of our blistered souls.

Your eyes are like
Twin homes in Autumn;
Warm and fiercely soft
Against the returning tides of cold.

Epitaph for the Lost Dream

Where have you gone? Here time stands still,
Pushed slowly to its knees by the gravity of your memory.
And this, your song, the holes once filled,
Stand open to the sky, seeming, somehow, far more deep.
The smoke from fires remembered, guiding weary pathmen home
Whisper from graves of sodden ashes that they, too, felt your strength.
This cross that lies, unsplintered, on your footprints near this stone,
Unmoved, for lack of guidance, untried by the age-wrought skeptic: our once so childlike faith.

Forest Heart: a fragile allegory

Ripples of darkness whisper across the open air to touch the old ranger’s waiting eyes. Night has fallen, and amid the measured rush of silence he scans the horizon. From his vantage point above the tree line, the forest spreads out below him like an unconquerable army, quiet and still for centuries, wrapped now in shadow cloaks, silent sentinels holding out for the dawn. But the ranger knows that this army, though vast and splendid, is not unconquerable.
Many are the nights that this same low sky has been filled with a daylight of its own: small patches of hungry sunlight licking up the ranks of the evergreen army. Soon the patches would grow, spreading, brightening, flaming, and the silence would be replaced with the roar and crackle of a force far more powerful than the tall dark soldiers.
The ranger steps down from the rock he has been standing on. No sign of fire tonight. It has been a long time since the last flames were put out on the north side of the forest. Since then, time has slowly slipped by in the form of long days full of rain and waiting. A light drizzle begins to fall as the ranger makes his way along the old forest path. He can feel the soft, dark earth give way beneath his feet, smell the sharp fragrance of pine drifting in and out between the trees as it follows a path of its own. The air is thick with moisture and small noises—the rustling of wildlife in the low foliage accompanied by the soft groans of trees: quiet protests against the weight of the atmosphere resting upon their shoulders. And still the ranger waits.
He has long since given up carrying a torch with him as he patrols in between the tall mountains and down into the rounded “palm” of the valley. His eyes have grown accustomed to the company of the dark, shifting green and black shades of darkness. Long hours of walking the forest floor at night have sharpened his eyes, yet still the darkness holds its secrets, unwilling to tell all even to an old friend. He looks around him as he walks, noting the old shadows, eyes tracing the familiar wrinkles in the underbrush. It is in this way that he can be sure to see the flames when they come; able to see a pinprick of light on the mountain from miles away. But it has been so long, and still he walks the forest floor, echoing the footsteps of so many years.
There is a strange benevolence in the fires, he thinks as he climbs over the crumbling bones of a fallen tree. They come quickly and without warning, flowing through the old forest, coming with a speed born of hunger. Yet as they pass they make way for life, new kinds of vegetation that will reshape the face of the valley. For here, beneath the “elders”, below the towering visages of the long-standing traditions and customs of the old forest, some plants can never grow. The pale flowers that flourish above the tree line could never take root here beneath the towering cedars. Here the sun’s cascading waterfall of light is shed only upon the seemingly immovable canopy of the forest’s tallest citizens. But when the fires come, this world is shifted. Where once only the strongest, most obstinate trees stood, the smaller, more fragile beauty of these valleys slowly spills in.
The ranger comes upon a just such a clearing, the soft moonlight sifting like bright sediment through the misty clouds. He breathes in the open air, quietly watching the slowly dancing carpet of plants sway to an unheard music. After a few moments, he raises his eyes from the dance floor and smiles. Somewhere, far off in the distance, a piece of dawn has pricked the dark heart of the landscape, bleeding light across the miles to the old ranger's softly sparkling eyes.

Let my joy in glory hide

Let my joy in glory hide
Beneath the sunsets of Your sky
'Til it find me in Your arms amid Your heartbeats,
Let my air flee from my chest
And leave no slumber, sigh, nor rest
'Til all I breathe is heaven's golden breath.

Or bring sweet pain its dwelling here;
If You hold glory in my tears
Then let my heart be torn from pride
And gladly for Your glory die.

And sing of love, love come down
The love my heart wears as a crown.
To sing of Love with all I am
Unending flow my soul demands.

Let earthly love be cast below
To where no seed can sprout or grow
Unless Your rain brings sunshine to its field.
And knowledge yield a kingdom's fool
With care to only be Thy tool
A sword, but yet a heart that You should wield

And all my wants or needs as be
Should wither, fall, for breath in Thee.
And leave my winged heart to fly
For in Your heart I find and love the "why?".

And sing of love, love come down
The love my heart wears as a crown.
To sing of Love with all I am
Unending flow my soul demands.

[NOTE: Actually written some time around 2003]

(Untitled)

Somewhere I heard a wise man say
That life cannot be bought or earned,
But must be lost, and found the same;
That what you long to hold, indeed,
Is that which you must first set free.
This, still, my heart has yet to learn.

One Day's Lifetime

The rain begins to fall, softly, subtly—warm, bright accents diffusing the deep, full color of thunder, painted on the tapestry of our hearing. Stepping out into the galaxy of winged dew, clasping hands, our first steps are unsure, explorative, a testing of our skin and our hearts. Small shivers playfully chastise us for our reckless steps, but they are left behind and easily forgotten, thrown aside and dissolved by our all-conquering smiles.
We walk slowly at first, without destination and without need, just us two, alone among the crowd of the tiny, softly laughing children of the clouds.
Two old men watch us from a porch, hiding just within the shadows of their man-made arbor, cheerfully laughing along with the rain, but they with us, and at the years they have watched from our eyes, and now return to through them. Ours are years that they can no more return to than our words can stop the steadily growing sheets of rain persistently tucking us into its shining folds. But our road leads us elsewhere, and the watchers are soon left behind.
Soon our clothes, our disguises, become useless, washed through and through by this temporary waterfall ebbing and flowing down upon us. Still, they hold on, clinging to us as we cling to meaning, to each other, none of us willing to risk letting go, none of us needing to. And they, a dripping, shivering skin of cloth, can no more protect you from the sighs of wind than I, a sliver-shield of loyal yet imperfect affection, can protect you from the coldest wind of all: the inevitable moments of heartache.
Yet it is not for us to live those moments, but to pass them, to better them, to crush them with a laugh. For we are held in hands stronger than their small, withering appendages; hands that split galaxies and paint the cheeks of small children; hands that gave us to each other.
And, as the grip of sadness must, the clouds, too, relax their grip on the sky and move on. For some time their unfurled sails of gray satin, now orange tinted by a marmalade sun, peek at us from above the horizon. We return home from our neighborhood swim still smiling; I at you, and you at me. And as the smell of evaporating rain rises back to the softening sky, we reluctantly unclasp our long-shared hands, and find the insides dry-- a perfect, fragile haven from the afternoon storm.

All has been said before

All has been said before:
Is this sufficient reason for silence?
There is nothing new under the sun;
Is there, found in this, cause enough to halt creation?
Oh, the blessed tongue who re-forges molten words,
Echoing the rhythms of forgotten blacksmiths,
Yet crafting its armament with incomparable gilding!
That joyful brush that parts the day-worn light
And crafts the reborn prism of a silent, time-stilled masterpiece!
Shrink not from words for the sake of ancestry.
Laugh not at your newly created galaxies of reflection
For their rough-hewn nature,
Nor for the fact that they, too, share the common stream of human thought,
As did their predecessors.
Fashion, shape, conquer, press on!
There is nothing new under the sun;
Yet nothing is the same.
All has been said before;
Yet these words are ours.

Wilt not, O silent flower of the soul

Wilt not, O silent flower of the soul,
Fragile sprout of hope's light and heaven's water.
Thou who rests on the edge of heartache's cliff, in bold
Defiance of the cutting winds that blow
Across you heedless, thrusting, cold.
O valiant bloom, adorn the hair of sunset's daughter
That she may find her beauty whole.

Love is a rose, slowly burning

Love is a rose, slowly burning.
Growing from the ashes of many-broken hearts,
Its petals consumed and sustained
By the sun-bright flames of sacrifice,
The soaring heat of passion,
Its radiance of feelings unassailable and impenetrable
By the mercenary armies of our words.
It springs from the soft fabric
Of life resplendent, life untouched,
Yet forged and battered into ringing splendor
Upon the anvil of the heart, by Hope.
It is the native forest of untamed souls,
Rising up to defy the merchants of oblivion;
Souls who cry, “I will not buy your shining wares
Or fall before your poorly crafted trinkets.
Give me pain over nothing,
Give me blindness and a candle over your darkness,
Give me heartache and tears over your half-priced numbness.”
Open the gates of that small stem
And find the strength of a thousand hearts
Willing to fight what they were and are,
That they might spend one orphaned breath on the doorstep of what they could be.

I am a heart adrift

I am a heart adrift. All around me flows the dawn, the dew, the soft caresses of song- all around me flows She. O save me from the shore, that I may never again know its harsh lines and unforgiving cadence of stone! Here, on the steps of drowning, is where I will gladly breathe my last. Only the heart that finds itself dying can truly know what breath is. Only the starving can tell of what it truly means to feast. Only the blind can say what it is to find Her face before you, framed by the surge of spring. All of these I have known; a heart that is dying, starving, blind. And for a thousand times more to feel its return! that this moment may linger, as it is, as it has been, for one moment longer. For here She flows around me, young in spite of time, perfect in her rare imperfections, radiant even in sadness. Here her heart washes over me.

I found a smile today

I found a smile today. It was tucked between the cracks of the sunburned sidewalk, whispering to me in shining phrases. It's not every day that you find a smile- most are not left out in the sun for just anyone to find. I glanced left and right, inside and out. Quickly I tucked my newfound treasure in the only place its whispers could be heard: the back pocket of my heart. It sat there, mysteriously alone in that small pocket, a pocket torn and re-sewn, faded and patched. How many smiles had I found just like that and then lost just as easily, unintentionally letting them fall to be lost and trampled in the wide, wide world? But not this one. This one I 'll keep. Because I know that somewhere, forward, through, under, and past the deep shadows of these tall buildings, past weather-cracked streets and wandering people, beyond the gleaming storefront windows calling out in bright letters, there she stands, exactly as I have always seen her in my mind. For it is her smile that I hold in the back pocket of my heart. It was she who carefully placed it where only I could find it. I hope that I find her before the sun goes down. All I can do is keep on walking. But when I do find her, when I make it past all of the buildings and shadows and streets and maze of wandering people, I will walk slowly towards her eyes, and place my borrowed smile in her outstretched hand.

Give me some time

Give me some time to find my thoughts,
Collect these lines, and label all my feelings;
All I feel, still nothing I can name.
Sometimes it’s hard to understand
Just which comes first, the words or meanings.
Burning questions, “Does it all add up the same?”
Is a tear only a drop of spray
Quickly cast off as it collides
Upon the shore of quiet smiles
That somehow I can’t seem to find?
Give me some time to find my thoughts.I
t’s funny how they scoff and rule the kneeling,
Stand elusive, close enough to crush, refusing to be tamed.
Or maybe not to understand
The heart is grace unbridled and
To fill with wonder is to leave the soul unchained.
In that world: I wash away
And drown myself inside your eyes;
That quiet shore of whispered smiles
Only your heart and mine can find.

Cathedral

Splendor, stain the light and stay, O keeper of the day, and I, of solemn thoughts.
Float your stars o’er the graveyard of my heart—motes of slowly swirling memories
Caught within the atmosphere of a world threadbare with secondhand agonies.

Silence, steal the pain and kneel beyond the peal of hearts too lost to smile, too young to fall
Breaking the tides of song beneath your vagabond stars.
Teach my heart the strains of the sky, untouched by here and now
And what and how: the strains of living—the gravity of hearts.

Reflections on a Commonplace Mystery (Song of a Perfect Sky)

Sighs of deepest blue
Thunder from shade to shade,
Spilling into the next
Until they are caught between the waves of cloud.
Mirroring the ocean of cares
And overcrowded lives,
Or refracting the silent, endless darkness behind,
Creating a vast diluted glimpse of the roar of light beyond?
In that shimmering depth plays a silent orchestra,
Vibrating and coalescing into a hymn of color,
A symphony of colossal, unbridled existence.
How many have heard its song
But never grasped the myriad thought
That painted its melody of incomprehensible blue?
A Song that seeps into the ears of our hearts;

Hearts that have so often forgotten how to listen;
Hearts stepping their crippled, staggering beats toward it:
That final, forever hope of hearing.

At night my soul lies awake

At night my soul lies awake
Full of thoughts of tomorrow:
Hopes of breath, dreams of life...
Half buried heartbeats
Sunk beneath the faded earth of a watercolor life.
At night my heart lies awake
Hoping once again to breathe,
Longing for fresher air
Than can be found in the ever-present
Smog-ridden downtown of day to day appointments and schedules.
And again I see You,
Through the distance of my so-called life.
You are the Soul Waker,
The longed-for beat of every heart;
Who defies logic and flies in the face of our Towers of wisdom,
Only to redefine them, to build our hearts and minds back to
The Source that pierced the emptiness, the Cripple’s First Step, the Tidalwave of Color in the Newborn’s first sight.
And yet I let this watercolor life call my name
Louder than the sound of your love ripping galaxies to find me;
And the smog of these days fills my lungs, stops my heart.
This is my town. Sometimes it seems like it's all I've ever known.

Prayer

Give me a song
That I may sing it for her.
Let me breathe her in
And hold my breath past time.
Let me catch her petals as they fall
And glory in each new bud as it adorns her graceful branches.
Let my heart find its strength not in itself,
But in my promise never to fail her.
Let me never fail her.

(Untitled)

He has let me hear her heartbeat
That I may feel.

I love you to tomorrow and back

I love you to tomorrow and back.

It's funny to think that there can be a love can't be proved, no matter what we do.
It is out beyond the goodbye kisses or the heartfelt smile-framed words we offer.
It is out beyond the quiet side-by-side moments when the sun slows to let you watch it melt along the horizon.
It is out beyond the perfect gift, the deepest embrace, the most tender kiss, as we seek to pass on wordless world-sized emotions carefully packaged in a single touch.
But this world cannot contain a love not from it, not made for it, not seen in it.
Even trading one's life for another cannot encompass a love that is deeper than life, stronger than death.
For the human body is not powerful enough to portray something as big as oceans-- oceans whose mountain-filled liquid skins have sparkles that hold their own galaxies in their blinding depths.
How can such a love ever be proved in a world that cannot hold it?
How can time ever tell of something far greater than times greatest imaginings?
How can love that has been given the very breath of heaven and can walk the fires of hell and not be burned-- how can such a love ever be painted in a single lifetime?

I love you to tomorrow and back;
With this breath and the next.
I love you with all that I know, and all that I never will know.
I love you with a heart that knows its own weaknesses but refuses to surrender to itself.
I love you with all of the tears that I couldn't cry.
I love you with more than I can feel.
I love you with a love that is bigger, stronger, faster, fuller, and more pure than I can ever be.
I love you more than you or I or anyone will ever know.
I love you farther than I can run and higher than I can see.
I love you past all that I wish that I wasn't.
I love you longer than I can live, and nearer than I can feel.
I love you to tomorrow and back;
With this breath and the next.

Let me rest in this moment

Let me rest in this moment,
A breath from your lips,
That I may see your face
And hear you breathe, and nothing else.
Let memory desert me
And the future wait it's turn
As I baske in the glow
Of your sunrise.
Many are the men who have sought you,
And many are the poor souls
Who have sold themselves to an earth-made counterfeit.
But no one who has recognized the seal of heaven
Can deny the loving craftsmanship
Hidden and streaming from everything that is you.
Like the light of a thousand mornings
To one long-pressed beyond the night of eternity
Is My Only to my heart.
I cannot but feel
That my heart was made in part and in whole
To seek to grasp but a whisp
Of the fragrance of the splendour
So carefully woven into hers.
The mystery lies in this:
My heart is His
And hers because she is His perfect rose.
Let me love Him with all that I am
That I may love her with
But a strand of the tapestry
Of love that he has spun for her.
Let my heart be lost in His
That I may see her face
Through the light of heaven's
Brilliant grace and unfading truth.
Let me give myself to Him
That someday He may let me borrow
Her for but a day.
My life is but a moment,
My striving but a breath.
Let this end be my breath in this moment.

(Untitled)

Some things in life don't seem to make sense
until you're able to see them in past tense.
But even then some things don't seem to get clearer;
they only fade like watercolor in the rain as you come nearer
to the place where you thought that everything
would be alright;
finally in your sight,
ready for you to hold.

And there you are,
and I want to run to you.
But am I finished running from myself?
I'm ready to fall forever and never get up
from a love that never asks if we'll be strong enough.
And if my heart breaks let it break beneath the waves
that leave me knowing that I loved all I could and never asked for more than that-- never wanted to be saved.

Old Song 1

I'm breathing, but life is more than this day to day
Leaving You behind with open arms
Feeling like I've lost myself somewhere along the way
Kneeling to see if I'll find Your heart here on the floor

What would You say if I asked you to take everything
To take all of me away
What will You do if I offer all of my heart to You?
I guess that's the chance that I'll take

I was young once

I was young once. Staring at the world through the eyes of youth—watching the birth of a new valley at the top of each hill. The world held sun-filled unquenchable colors that flowed from horizon to horizon. Layers of carefully stenciled glory flitted through every moment, changing in the next only to be more beautiful. The air was sweet on warm summer nights when time stood still and the stars left their deep blue home to be captured and treasured in the small shining jars that echoed our hearts.

But time was ever reckless, hurling us onward toward the sunrises and sunsets of a thousand new days, heedless of if our hearts are ready to let go of the hand of yesterday or not. And the colors, once so brilliant, soon hid from our eyes in the shadows of our memories, lingering on the rim of our sight and calling to us from the dreams we forget as we wake. And eyes seem to forget the meaning of sunsets when hearts feel only the ever widening distance, the ever lengthening steps from the doorstep of yesterday.

Until I met you. Hidden in your heart I found the unquenchable colors once again. The stenciled glory of every line of who you are captured my soul and reminded my starving heart of what true beauty is. And I found, once again, those moments when time stands still as I try to catch the fireflies in your eyes and treasure them in my own small shining jar.

I was young once, and there are times when I wish to once again grace the doorstep of yesterday. But when my weary eyes finally rest on your heart, I find myself wondering what new valley is being born on the other side of that hill. And it is then that I am ready to reach out and take the hand of tomorrow; and learn how to grow young again with you.

The voices of evaporating rain

The voices of evaporating rain
remind me of the times that will never come again.
Captive in a moment,
I've done my time when comes the next.
But will the gift of this breath be freedom
or a notch upon the wall to prove that I was here?
And I realize that we can never capture a moment;
only let ourselves be captivated by it.
And the more time that we spend inside the cell of every second
makes us thankful for the next
and longing for the last.

Here outside the garden I've found things that scream of You
With the strains of bold remembrance fighting through.
But the days, they lose their meaning when the war drowns out the songs
Of a time when time was never meant to heal all wounds.

So don't lay me down when the world has layed me out
And out of reasons to go on.
Dust me off; I'm down, not out, when weak is strong.

Life is full of casual observers. People who would rather stand still and never have to face a new horizon, than to join the race and risk being trampled. They are the living sidelines, wishing for a chance to feel the wind in their faces, but fearing that the same wind will keep them from pressing on.

Not all of us dare to run, because when you run, there's a chance that you'll fall. But the joy of the Christian life is this: when you fall, you can fall on your knees and ask for the strength to carry on. Jesus died so that you could run.

New TNS Song

Brian Bandas and Chris Webster

I sit and watch the world live out my hopes and dreams
Sick of hearing that it's better than it seems
And words lose meaning when the silence leaves them numb

Do I keep this hope alive to watch it die
And is it failing if you never get to try
All that I can see are the things I've never done
Is it wrong that sometimes I want to go home?

And as we've seen this far
It's a cold, hard world
But close your eyes and it's gone
If you dare to run
There's a chance you'll fall
But at least you dared to run at all

Heart to Grace

Sail across the oceans in your heart
The sunsets in your eyes
Turn the pages, things you never said
Swim the tears you never cried

So far away from where you are
Wish I could silence all ways
The darkness falls upon your heart

If I could stop the world
And heal it just for youI'd let my heart be ripped away
But could I know more than
The One who drew your eyes?
I will trust your heart to Grace

The pages that we keep

Walk the fading captions of memory
Through the words and whispers stuck inside the head
Silent, screaming colors caught from blink to blink
Folded up and kept, or thrown away instead

Will this moment carve a masterpiece of mercy
Hewn into the sands that time sought to unmend
Stained with the colors of the love that never flees
Or will it join so many others on the floor
Crumpled, unarranged in the quiet confusion of their end
Tossed aside and laid to rest among its scar-torn brothers, evermore

Time has no enemies but these
No adversaries but the pages that we keep

It seems there are oceans,
More than miles between who I am and where you are
With silence, the distance
Tears the miles into years and the light is fading

But if there are miracles
And hope for today
I'd follow this rainbow
To where you are
And if their are moments
When time has no say
I'll wait for you anyway

And if
I had the chance for one more dance
I'd give
my breath away
If I
could hold your hand, throw my heart to chance
I'd stay
Until moments dance away

Where do you go when smiles have lost their meaning?
Where do you run when the tide of life is beating on your heart?
Where is the light when the sun's been gone for hours
And the showers of your tears tear you apart?

Someday I will run
In open fields of sunlight
Someday I will be
More than just a fading memory

Would you fight for me
If it meant that you might lose part of yourself
Would you stay with me
If -I - told - you - that I can't feel much else

Would you dare to try
If - I cannot see the sunset in the skies
Would you know my name
If what you found was I've already died
Would you bring me back to life


And all the things I see
Start to fade away without you
And all the things we've dreamed,
Or lost along the way, they call my name


Would you take the time
If time was all I had to help you see
Would you stand and stay
Beside me when my world turns grey
If I fall away


Do all the things I'd say,
With the laughter start to fade all about you
'Cause all the things I see
They start to fade away without you
And all the things we dreamed,
Or lost along the way, they scream your name
They light my way, back home

Pocket Change

Sometimes I get tired of me. Tired of the same old struggles, the same old face staring back at me in the mirror. Sometimes I feel that I am a person I'd rather not know. I'd rather see me on the street, a beggar calling for real change instead of it's counterfeit, and keep walking. Sometimes I'd like to see what it's like to be you. Maybe if I was away from these step-brother sins, I could see the real picture and never forget it. If I could see me from the outside, would I know when something is wrong? Would I have the strength to ask myself and not fear what the answer would be? Could I convince myself to embrace more than pocket change? Weariness is an unfit companion, but one who refuses to leave. He dogs your step from the beginning of the road to the end... which is sometimes the place that he choses, and no farther. I am a place that I can never vacation from. I am a never-ending project with few rewards. I am a word that never seems to look like it's spelled right, but never loses its meaning. But I am never far from hope. I will never give up on lost causes. I will not buy the neatly wrapped package of resignation. I have not given up on myself. And I never will; because I was not given up on.

Clay

Shaken and bruised,
All that's left of you
Are the pieces that you never quite could lose.
Out on your own,
All you wanted was to be alone.
But your mind keeps buying lies your heart can't own.

And someday really meant to make its way to where you are,
But in the rush and static of the day it seemed too far.

And so you wait
For wicks of hope to flame.
But that fire is the one thing you can't tame.
When colors fade
Did your blue skies change
Or did they just forget their colors on the way

And someday really meant to make its way to where you are,
But in the rush and static of the day it seemed too far.
We'll start again when the flowers that you kept for dreary days
Through the broken heart of winter on wings of color fly away
We'll begin once more where all is either faded or forgotten--
Not forgotten, just unable to be known.

Never Far

When the moon gives up its gleaming
And the sun falls from the sky
When the sunsets lose their meaning
And the stars forget to shine

When the oceans leaves it waves
On the shore as water's castaways
When the flowers cease to bloom inside your eyes

Until then I'll say, "I'll find you."
Until then, I'll say, "Don't run for long."
With all the roads you leave behind you
Know the road back home is never far

(Untitled)

The look in your eyes-- the teardrops of a world full of oceans finally run dry.
And everyone's running, but you feel you're the only one falling on the inside.
Here I am, a begger, offering all that I have, though I've not much to give.
But the light cannot reach you if don't chase the sun and it takes more than breathing to live.
I would give you my heart for a smile on your face,
Or offer my life to the wind.
I'd give the light up forever if you promised me never
To run to the shadows again.

Mirror Song

Put on your bravest face
And watch the world through glasses the color of roses
But you still can't erase this place
Or somehow unlearn the things you've known

Hide deep inside your heart
Where the world can't find you or make you bow
Or tear you apart
And you'll hold your eyes shut tight to keep them out

And you've tried to see through the mirror
And you've tried to run that far
But the lies always seem so much clearer
And the hurt leaves more than the scars


Maybe someday it will rain
Hard enough to wash me away
But until then I will wait
For You to hold me again

Let Me Listen

I want to see you from the inside. I want to lay beside you and listen to your heart beat and see what I can find. What makes you tick? What are your hopes, what are your fears? What do you daydream about? What keeps you awake at night? Or maybe it’s best not to know.

Would it hurt too much to understand and not be able to fix it? My heart’s not big enough. I’m trapped in a shell that won’t let me feel. I’m captured in a fortress that leaves me unable to rescue you. If I could, I’d break free and run until I found you, no matter how far away it is or how many times I might trip and fall.

I want to feel and not care. To stop wondering why I feel this way or talk myself out of it because it’s not the way I’m supposed to feel. I want to be your refuge—a place unlike any other. Somewhere you can run and hide and not fear the outside or the walls. A place where it’s always bright and warm, and you finally realize who you really are and smile.

But my arms can only reach so far, and my walls are sometimes cold and cracked. Sometimes my roof leaks… and lets the tears in no matter how hard I try to fight them off of you. Why can’t I be enough? Why can’t I ward off all of the things that hurt you, take them into myself and let me hurt for you instead? But I find that the enemy is much more than a beast. And the fight is waged on more than an open battlefield, with the wind slanting the pale grass. It is a battle waged outside the depths of physical strength—I cannot grapple with those things that hurt you most. And all too often I become the very thing I want to destroy. There are dragons waging war on your heart that are far too big for me to fight with a sword—with fires too hot to be warded off by armor. How can I protect you from what I cannot see? How can I save you from the things that you cannot tell me about?

So I will fight with more than a sword. I will protect you with more than armor. I will fight on my knees until they are no more. Rather than fix my cracked walls or patch my leaky roof, I will ask the Skymaker to calm the wind and stop the rain. And when there’s nothing else I can do; when all else has failed you; when my best efforts are useless…

I will be here.

A Stumbled-Upon Truth

I am lost for You, will be lost for You, can be lost for You. All that I am is a corner of Your footprint— a message to the world that You were— and are— here. I am lost for You; lost for breath, lost into the folds of life, lost from the clutches of hopelessness. I am lost for You. At a loss for words, unable to speak lest my words betray a frailty that is not Yours. Unable to move, lest I find that my footprints are out of line with Yours. I am lost to the world, unable to be a part of it any more; my heart is forever forbidden to find its resting place in the shadows of earthly things. Your cross is my pride, my joy. I am lost for You.

He sits by the old train station

He sits by the old train station—a cracked and worn hat hovering above a face more or less the same. Are those lines beside his eyes from years of smiles long past, or from squinting into the sun of another hopeless day?

People stare as they walk by. Not the open, wide-eyed stares of carnival-goers, but the furtive half-glances of people half-interested in—or only half-conscious of—his existence. They pass him and go on about their own half-lives. Yet, for those who would notice, he accepts his rank in life with a quiet dignity—a grace sometimes lacking in those fate chose to deem more fortunate. But Fate has always been closer to him than they. Never far off—in the sunshine next to the shadows—Fate has stayed, beckoning for him to face another sunset.

In his eyes is a sort of ragged nobility, and, nestled somewhere within the clear blue traces of those twin skies, is a depth that few would guess, and none could fathom. Those who pass him do not know him. He is just a glimpse in their hurried, time-torn lives. They could never guess the feelings that lie behind his eyes; nor do they realize that he, too, has lived a life. He too has felt warm breezes brush his smiling face. He too has shivered in the biting cold, and laughed and danced in the summer rain. His has been a heart both full and empty. Hopes are not something alien to him, and hunger is more than a desire to be fed.

But where did he come from, this half-glanced at mystery? Where is he going? Does his path stretch far behind him, or, as it seems, has he always been there, seeking the solace of a wall and its shadow? What are his thoughts, his hopes, his fears? What does he see in us, those who walk by and forget him the next moment? What would he say to us if we would only listen?


He sits by the old train station—a cracked and worn hat hovering above a face more or less the same. Don’t ask me much about him, though. I only saw him in a half-glance… and then I was on my way.

Your Sentence

All our lives are a sentence: One statement to the world—A solitary reminder that we were here. We are given one chance to write it; one parchment, one quill. We have all the time in the world—enough time to make our words count. But still, when it comes down to it, we are not given not all that much. We are given the vocabulary, the knowledge, the opportunity to learn what eloquence is, and put it forth in blazing words on our eternal tablet. We are sat next to the Great Author, the Inventor of Language, the Keeper of All Knowledge, and given unhindered answers to all of our questions if we only ask. We are handed the choice to produce as many copies of our work as we desire, but not the chance to recant and burn it once it is written.

All our lives are a sentence.

What will you say?

We are the wanderers

We are the wanderers. We spend our lives staring at the self-chosen few who cast their message to the world: "We have found the right direction." But few have. And even those who do find it are often filled with doubt, shaking their compasses and beseeching their unrelenting maps for ways around the mountains—or under them.

We are the hurried. Some run with reckless speed to hide from the world around them; cloaking the all-present enemy in a cloud of blurred out statements and unintelligible shapes. But their running only speeds them to the finish-line of realization and, tripping over their weakened false perceptions, they coming crashing to a halt in front of their small pile of hopes and accomplishments.

We are the fearful. Some cling to their surroundings, seeking to paint them on the canvas of permanence. But they, too, find their worlds tipped sideways; their paintings diluted and washed away by the rain that is time. Nothing stays but the wandering…

"Listen to me...
Hear what I have to say...
I can tell you something you’ve never heard before...
I can make you listen...
Stare at me...
I have found the right direction..."


...We are the wanderers.