The Last Line Of Defense

Confess and pretend
That the world is going to end
All your money you spend
All your things you lend
Your heart, you suspend
The rules, you bend
But in the end. . .
Were you any better?

The army I lead
To victory
The women I lead
To bed
Happiness avoided me
Unlike the worst of disease
And a bullet I put in my head

I met Peter at the gates
The man called me by my name
And then shook his head
If looks could Kill
I was already dead
"I tried to tell you, he wasn't coming down" he said
Again and again, we shook our heads

The mistakes we knew
We thought we'd take
The margin of error
We thought we'd break

We thought there was room
But he turned us away
We thought he knew our faces
He said he was never in those places

The Son of man was turned away from the Inns
And we were turned away from His gates
Out of his forgiveness supply, we were too late

A Saint's Saint

I have been so delicately arranged
My arms, my head, my hands, my legs
Perfectly laid out to be perfectly in order
Like a mason, an art with his bricks and mortar
But unlike buildings, this is a small package
Perfectly sent to the imperfect masses
Where failures, poor decisions, and many mistakes will go
Where we become our own poison to our own soul
We are all the same, cut from the same image
But still, some of us are Saints and some of us are Sinners
We were too pretty
Caring about the petty
He came down from the clouds
When we weren't ready

Old Man Spring

A needle
A stitch
But the cloth still rips
Over the rug
You trip
So you stitch
And stitch some more
But you still hit the floor (it breaks)
You get a hammer
Some nails
And some boards
Your hammer hits and you have it fixed
Now you hoard
Good Lord
You keep to your own
Your cover won't be blown
But a pain comes with dizzy eyes
You can't ignore and you can't get by
Heart beats, slow beats
With your own hands you try
Slowly with a knife you try to pry
Can't fix this one, sir
No P.H.D. on the wall above the rug you stitched
No Knowledge in your head above the floor you fixed
With your knife you pry
But with your pride. . .
You die
I.
Died.

It Saves The Date

This is It...
I don't think I've figured It out yet
What this really is...
What it could be
What it has been
Is it what you get when a dream is one step away from a nightmare?
A sowing machine
One stitch
Two
Needle jabs the hand
It bites the hand that feeds
Cross stitch
It
Is knitted in
Burned
Stamped
There was no lie when these words were spoken
The hardest part was waking up
Like staples in the head
It was nailed in
To comfort at times
To torment at times
Please tell me what It, is
Cold water on the face
It won't be erased
I try, but It can't be misplaced
Where did It come from?
It, can't be traced
You can't look at It in the face
It can't be raced
It can't be chased
It can't be placed
It can't be cased and sealed away
It can't be tied to bay
It can't be made
It can't be thanked
It can't be hate
It can't be late
It can't be locked
It can't be blocked
It can't be bought
It can't be caught
It simply cannot be.
This is all that It, is.
This is It
This is It
This is It
And I won't forget

Road Motel

I would leave

But for the details, I stay

My sins catch me

But at least in another town it takes a day

And if I lived alone, is it really alone?

Does he still watch the place I call home?

Over this hill, or if I am under it

My burdens will bury me, a clean soul I will covet

If not to add another one, the tenth one will catch me

Simply wanting to be better, for simply wanting to be

And I'll hit the road
With no clue where to go
Running from the pit
Where my soul should sit
They won't find me
Nor can they catch up
(I don't even own a cup)
Staying at empty road motels
With a pack on my back
I will walk the walk
I will run roads that no man owns
I will see towns where no one lives
I will own the stars where only animals roam
I will seek
And you will seek
For you say, "To each his own."
But you will only find
What you have been looking for...

No More Nightmares, At The Cost Of No More Dreams

If we didn't have to sleep



Life Would Be Twice As Long...

Dear Dead Man, I Never Knew You... Daddy

The hall creeks with your footsteps

This is all too familiar

Daddy is that you?

I should have known by the silence you kept

Quietly, oh so quietly you crept

You snuck away from me like a mouse

Oh so softly away from my house

How would I know the difference without you?

How would I know...
Knowledge...
To be absolutely certain...
To have a mindset and a view...
Knowing will change everything, to the point of knowing you
Knowing to the point of "the little me" saying, "daddy do not go"
Even a pin drop can wake me with the knowledge in my head
Even knowing nothing, I lay restless in my bed
Time
Bye
I was taller
I was thinking
How did I know, daddy was leaving?

But of course this was all in my head
Daddy left in a figurative sense