Soul Aging

It seems a hundred life-times

Have passed through just so many years

It ages you inside

But only shows in your eyes

And through occasional tears

You can only scream so long inside

Before it begins to leak out aloud

Tears have long since lost their value

Pity is no longer enough

Perhaps it was never enough

But long ago, it was all you could hope for

All that was there to see

When did common courtesies and compassion

Shift from expected to surprised

Now over again, back again

Familiar, but not close enough

All the dreaming in the world

Can't change fact to fantasy

Change reality to something kind

Though fantasy can turn cruel

And often does

When did sleep become more real than foreign

Bedding down your emotions

To put a stopper on the cruel retribution of love

Numb as the ice-caps on some distant mountain barely seen

What was old became new

Now what is new begins to mould

To rot in the summer heat

Pummeled by a summer rain that you cannot help but cry

The air is always cold 

The warmth felt through someone else's skin

Though joy sometimes fills fit to burst

 It is a slow leak that steals its strength

And lowers you back to reality

It is not the tonic of mortality that sickens you to think

It is the more bitter potion of the minds immortality

That chokes its way down your throat

Strangles out the thrashing heart of you

That struggles to remain whole

It is a spirit cracked with age
That still remembers innocense
A life begun anew
That still remembers dying
That knows it will die again all in the process of living

You love in order to live
And live to die with love
To be reduced to something barely breathing
Afraid to look yourself in the eye
As precious and perfect shatters
And lies broken on the floor

A life-time or a day?
 Shown from the inside-out
Who is the child and who is the master?
Both lost again in some blue-enshrouded night
Somewhere beyond dreaming

Storybook Knight (UNFINISHED)

It was a story-book of innocense

A world of rainbows and laughter

And blue alabaster skies

And you were always near

Every time I'd shed a tear

A child just cannot see

The horrors of reality

We see with blinded eyes

Blinded by our innocense

Believing it will never change

Rain is only rain

And rainbows always follow after

And every fear

Of darkness or of dreaming

Were sheltered by your arms

How often I would cry

"Daddy, daddy!  Come and save me!"

And never would you fail

To come and rescue me

Still storms blew in

And lightning filled the sky

I couldn't understand

How you could ever die

My knight in shining armor

The hero of my story-books

His face was always yours

And when I closed my eyes

You were always near

Life is not kind

Not to a child too young to know

What pain is, grief is, how it feels to be alone

And still I cried for you

When the shadows came at night

When right all turned to wrong and you were gone

And for the first times, not the last times

You did not appear

Though I cried,

"Daddy, daddy!"

I know that you would never hear

And your arms

Were no longer near

*     *     *

And still in dreams, I'll see you

Just how you used to be

And your promise is the same then

As it used to be

"I will never leave you.  And someday I'll meet you.

Just inside heaven's gate."

*     *     *

 

Years they passed so slowly

 Feeling lost out in the dark

*     *     *

(I know)Though there may be times

When I will have to cry

"Daddy!  Daddy!"

I know that You will always hear

And Your arms

Will always be near

The Depths Of Self

Press against the darkness

With blinded fingers

And damaged heart

Look deeper into the heart of desire

Than any reflection can see

Mirror back a double-meaning

Unknown shores

Distant white hills

Green seas

Blue mountains

A beautiful power that resonates inside our souls

Like drums in the ocean

A hear-beat through our palms

Reverberating to our knees

Question the existence of life

As more than a refuse of mistakes

Refuge of lost souls

Who wander only to find their place

But grow more lost than before

White petals pearled with blood

Morning dew for some cosmological mind

Tears a trickling stream that sings the lament of the lost

Concave universe that's barely full

I'm watching the decline of my old self

Stunted by the constant presence of me

Like looking at the sun

And all I can see is stars

Looking at shadows 

When all I can really see is the light

When you look at a crystal

 You can't help but see many sides

Many sides to the same coin

I lose myself trying to find You

Sometimes this bubble seems so small

The one that I peer out of

Such a fragile, brittle wall

Feeling

Acid rain that scatters rainbows in the sun

How you find the deepest parts of me

Unfailing

Pretty petals in the sun that drift about in errant breeze

Circle dance like butterflies of memory

Though remembering is so hard

And time decays them in the sun

Dust beneath realities feet

No less real, but dead and unchangeable

No less formative, but no more alive

Not anymore

Chemical as carbon-based

Down to simple equations

Transformed into vital, intense, and breathing

Raw as the beating sun tender in our breasts

Joy, sadness, and love

Wrapped around our inner selves like twine

Barbed wire around our soul that can only hold us together

As it slowly tears us apart

In the blistering heat of emotion

You flare and you shine

Then you wilt and cry

And something dies deep in the softest parts of you

Sea Dreams

I had another dream today after a rough night last night with anxiety.  When I went to sleep today (cause of the night-shift), I had a dream.  Usually, my dreams are nonsensical, but they have just enough story pathway in them to mark them solidly as mine.  This one though, while surreal, made a lot of sense to me...and I consider it a gift from my Heavenly Father.  It will never cease to humble and amaze me that God speaks my language.  I know that your time is limited, so you don't have to reply to this one.  Sometimes it just feels wrong to me though not to share something after I write it.  This was another of those times.

Just for background I should mention, if I never have before to you, that among my many other 'timidities' I have a fear of 'high water', ie: waterfalls, high waves, or being suspended a good distance above water.  Its from childhood, but it plays into this a bit, so I needed to mention it.  Also since childhood, I've harbored a fantasy of flying.  I've always wanted to fly.  As I grow older, I've felt more and more rooted to the ground by the problems and realities of life.  I guess we all have.

DREAMS OF THE SEA

I dreamed that I was a bird flying along an ocean pier.  In the background I could hear a loud-speaker droning on about the Titanic and the Mauritania and how this new ship was called the 'New Mauritania'.  I passed several ships looking at them at times from behind the glassed-in walls of the tour building, each ship bigger than the last.  They were huge and grand and imposing.  I flew on seeing the boardwalk and the fenced-off shore beneath me.  As I continued, the landscape beneath me began to change.  Flying beyond the boundaries of the sea-port and cities, the shore-line was less precise, and at times the ocean crashed against large black rocks beneath me that jutted into the sea.  The sea spray splashed high into the air and I could feel the gentle, cooling mist of it as I flew through its skyward arc on my set path.  The land grew more rough and rugged the further I traveled, ocean stretching on to ocean, shore-line to shore-line beneath me, sun rising and setting but my aerial road never changing.  There were times too when the sea rose very high and I saw walls of foamy water clashing together from both sides like a wall of powerful natural turbulence.  I knew I should fear, and tasted a twinge of it.  I knew also that I should change my path to veer aside or I would fly right into it.  But I didn't.  When I did close my eyes and fly through, all I felt was the fine, cool mist again that I had before.  The waters did not overwhelm, they fell beneath me, and I was able to fly on.  

Eventually, as the flight progressed, I flew over a colorful sea-side jungle.  I landed then and became human again, weak and mortal once more.  I walked for a time on a circular pathway with my sister - it was not unlike a nature preserve I guess, with the boundary fences and man-made paths.  But then, I knew I must take to flight again, something my family did not understand.  My sister rejoined our family, and I took to the air once more delighting in the freedom of the ocean air and exhilarating breezes.

As far as the dream went, that is pretty much its total course.  However, when I woke up, I glanced over at my a daily Bible Quote email that I get ('it was random') and read, "Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God; and the peach of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus."  Philippians 4:6-7  It was a very clear and obvious message - the moral of my dream.

As I continued to reflect on this, I realized further that life, while we live it, is a constant ocean whose pathway we walk alongside.  While the terrain of circumstance may change around us, still we walk.  No, in Christ we don't walk, but fly.  As much as things change and move on at a speed we're not always comfortable with, the creator of the storm and sea and the winds keeps us up and helps us to fly on.  And when the high waters do come, as they often will, they do not overcome us.  They are, as we see in time, simply light, refreshing mists that purify us as we move on, reminders that nothing can separate us from His love or overwhelm us completely here on earth.  God promises this so many places in scripture.  My favorite has always been the verses of Isaiah 43.  (but the next several chapters in Isaiah are absolutely BEAUTIFUL too, up through 46.  Promises from God to His previous children.  Sunrise and sunset, someday we will fly above a shore far greater than these...

 

-Kaylie

Shaken

Like a rock out on the ocean

Beaten by the sea

Parts of me shake and crumble

I cling to what's left of me

Like a bird over the water

Tides over different shores

Winds change from rough to gentle

Can't fight against them anymore

The core of me is shaken

Like a tempest on the waves

I know You could calm the waters

I'm so tired of being brave

With every step I stumble

Though I try to stay upright

My reflection and my shadow

Are the enemies I fight

A part of me is empty

A part of me is full

Will it be the good in me that wins

Or will it be the fool?

Lord, this is my weakness

I fall so far from grace

Trying to be perfect

Falling flat on my face

But greater is He that's in me

Than he that's in the world

The work of art He is creating

Will be like a tapestry unfurled

While I cannot see this wonder

With my mortal and waking eyes

In nature and in the sunrise

I see this promise is wise...

While in the midst of life's temptations

Its sorrows and its rains

Remember we do not now fully see

But as through a window-pane

Clarity will come in time

You've made no promise in vain

Whether in the midst of rejoicing

Or in the midst of endless pain

Meadow

Did you think I've never known

What it's like to cross a meadow

That has no end and no beginning

It just goes on, and on, without a break in the clouds above

You have a voice, but cannot sing

You have a name but no one knows it

Sadness

 

Its just a pain that squeezes your heart and steals your breath

Makes you desperately gasp for peace.  

Quiet.  

And the next day it will be the same.  

And the next.  

Pain that never fully ends.  

Wounds that cannot fully heal.

Inexplicable torture of the soul

Worse than death

More consuming, more final 

The totality of love must embrace its futility

Farewell to the dream

Tie a ring around your heart

Watch it strangle the life out of love

Puncture lung and breath

Leave it gasping alone in the darkness 

I'm falling asleep in arms that cannot hold me
That have dropped me to my own devices
To my own self-torment

Mirror Of The Sky

Blackbird upon a wire

Staring down into a mirror of the sky (pond)

Movement beneath the ripples

Darting between the long-grass

Peeking up beneath the waters shadows

To You who watches up above

Compare Your posture to one who grieves

One numbed by too much hurt for too long

Eyes that stare and see

See through and not at all

Wandering but not seeking

Knowing there is nothing left to find

You hear the stranger with your face

Scream futily at the clouds

'You did this!  You KNEW it would happen!'

Now only silence remains...

Never Easy

You never said this would be easy

Still we pray things turn out right

We hold on tighter fearing what we could lose

Watch the lights burn low at night

We wonder where we've come from

That life can hurt so much

And yet we remain alive

We breathe and move pedantically

While part of us has died

We dare to say 'Hello'

Yet so often say 'Goodbye'

Old and far away are memories sweet echoes

Yet nearer to the heart of the matter

Than anybody ever knows

Bleeding Colors

The color has bled from the world and is pooled in these sporadic, leaf-like shapes

Amidst the dark and brackish water

Like blood coagulating in some undiscovered, murky depths

Deep and fierce the pain blossoms in these stars and clusters like late-blooming blossoms of despair

As the bitter wind has drained out the feeling from warm skin, now pale and numb

So has time drained out the vibrancy and pungency of this grief

Yet still, in lonely deep layers in some hidden place within my heart

The colors have concentrated, fallen into darkened waters

Like infection set into deeply scarred wounds

This beyond the sight of waking eyes, beyond the hearing are soft cries

When all is still and covered and cold

Forgotten the summer's warm touch, the sun's embrace against this chill

Amidst the colors marking hurt as a flag heralds its country's pride

Gold glistens faintly, as hope emerging in the blackest chasm

Stars against the blackness of space

Who can know, who can tell

What Mind and matter, but mortal cannot see?

How Far

I told you once
That I would never leave you
I've repeated it every moment that has passed since
Ripple passing on to ripple
In a pool of summer sunlight
Stretching to an invisible crystal shore

I told you once
That I love you
It has echoed down the moments like trickles becoming a stream
Stream becoming river, river meeting the sea
Ending in a bottomless waterfall trickling to infinity

I told you that you were forgiven
And it was extended from fingertip to fingertip
On a rough-hewn tree
Hammer-stroke to hammer-stroke
Each stifled cry and parting sigh
Becoming a breath of pity, a prayer gasped for your pardon
Even as the nails were driven deeper
The sun becoming black above my brow

I remembered you as I was forgotten by my Father
Drew you close as He turned me away
Bleed for you as you heal before me
Hurt with you when you cry

Though you can never understand how much
My love is extended towards you
Never fathom how much was the cost
How great a sacrifice given
My love stretches to you
Farther, wider, deeper than any you could ever dream

~Jesus

(written: 04-02-2012)

outreach

So many unasnwered questions
So many broken tries
So much beyond my comprehension
And this world tells so many lies
I'm trying to live by a truth that I know
In a world full of deception
Help me to see through the eyes of Your love
And learn not to compromise

Empty me of expectation
Take all of my pride
Grant to me a heart that sees
Beyond these weary eyes
Help me to be the unexpected stranger
Willing to carry the cross

written: 2-21-2012