I am brutal in my pride and anger,
Lust and greed and sin;
I am sad in whom I cannot be
When I seek for my soul’s life within;
I am sorry for how much I failed in the past
For the sinner I am and have been;
I am sick when I cannot slow down the procession
And am caught in the same daily spin.
2012.08.20.0900 ©
This life is beyond prayer,
Beyond ritual,
Beyond faith;
It is more thinking I am a sinner
Than a winner or a saint;
It is trying more than the yesterday
That I forget in the Kingdom today;
It is finding a joy in the moment,
In the wonder is it pray or is it play.
A new day is the recurring mantra;
It is the lesson;
It is the song;
It is the finding that in this life we live
We are loved and we belong
To a greater Will and Wisdom
That is surprise and mystery
Because I would choose to abide in the Father
So that His Spirit would abide in me.
2012.08.22.0700 ©
I am at the mercy of the weather,
Of the other and of my past;
I am at the mercy of my body
And the thoughts that pass so fast;
I am at the mercy of what’s good
That changes faces and won’t last;
I am at the mercy of the will of God
So wholly vast.
2012.07.09.0700 ©
Simple being
Wanting nothing
Grace of God sufficed;
Knowing that which is Eternal
From the empty passing life;
You and I, confusion’s sinners
When we find ourselves in strife;
What becomes too complex for the humble soul.
Senses calling endlessly
Disturbing inner peace;
Turning what is child of God
To what ourselves can please;
Fighting any thought of suffering,
Dying, sickness or disease;
We become the shadow
Which from the light the body stole.
Man too human
Lost at sea
Without an inner rudder
No longer speaks in Spirit flowing
But stammers, stalls and stutters.
2012.07.26.0900 ©
I feel every inch of my body and skin
My mind, like the air, is slow and thick;
What is too long in the moment,
Anything that I am with
Would to every sensibility seem to stick;
I would move a slower rhythm
That my breath might follow suit,
Any cover to come near me
Would need be soft and light and loose
And exertion would find no acceptance
Only justified excuse
For a long and cool and shady kind of treat.
Yet I fight the same engagement
On this day as any other
To find God and soul and prayer
And maybe sister or a brother
As a subject or an object,
The intention of a lover
For the journey that does not change
Despite the heat.
2012.06.22.0500 ©
what turns emptiness
from an asset before the fullness of grace
to a longing liability in a larcenous place
where one takes what one needs
and then makes all the space
that is required by a ravenous heart?
why it is vanity
that has all which it could envision
and then reaches for itself in each moment’s decision
to stand steady before any rank or division
that would conquer it’s ability to start
shining as the light of creation,
brimming with its own expectation,
longing for some spark of sensation,
to avoid the experience of the dark.
2012.05.07.1200.dipa ©
Prisoner of who I was or who I came to be.
Captive of the image that the other sees in me.
Struggling more than the American spirit in the effort to be free.
Finding what my soul would need to keep it orderly.
Lost within a ritual or not one there to find
As I journey too much round my body and my mind
Moving in a pilgrimage too bereft of grace
Speeding to an end unnatural, gone without a trace.
2012.05.29.0300 ©