Regret sounds too awful
won't let me say exactly
won't let me go
-it doesn't set free,
but binds me back
to left-over words.

I should have said hello
or maybe more than half-smiled
but as you walked by
I felt like hiding
covering myself for shame
at those missed moments.

Once stepped aside
it's all passed by,
leaves woven for a mask
that only repeats the sin,
multiplies by dividing,
stretching the gulf again.

Words choked or hollow,
invisible silence of my lips,
departed ways
without return to summer's
new evening fest,
till now the self is broken.

I cannot let this go,
can't follow the voice,
the still quiet one,
where I laid down my war
between you and me
and let Christ be divided.

God, I want to dedicate this time to you,
but for some reason I keep coming back to me.

--------------------------------------------

I want to talk to you
to tell you how much I want you,
but me, and mine, my life,
my stuff, just wants me.

I can't shake it, this place
is yours; just visiting,
I can't shake off your
presence, your love.

But I can't reach out
I can't break this fortress
I've built around me
this place of unsafety.

Step, step, stone cracking open
and flesh inside, beating,
pleading for more, for time,
for space to be.

I'm looking to be
just a place to live,
but none of life without
you is life at all.

I can't breathe except
you breathe in me
I can't find my place
unless in your world.

God, I'm blind
I can't even see your scars,
the place of death
where life really is.

Step, step, stone cracking open
and flesh inside, beating,
pleading for you, for time with you,
for space to be near you.

Speeches caught in frozen ice-ways,
locked in casques of shining brilliant
hard, lapidary motions to reveal
what I keep locked in seal.

But when I break it up, chop it to pieces
I do not see, I do not recognize
the self of what I knew was me.

Why this crux, the un-able to move about?
I cannot make the words come out right.
Do I wait or do I move? Do I come again?

I'm silly, not happy, nor sad,
but moved up and down and side
to side at once.

What move, what piece to play,
its not the words I can't decide,
nor the meaning either.
but the move before.

They shook the spear so long ago,
before the speeches and the war,
but I cower.

Three paths diverged in a yellow wood,
and I circled round and round and stood.

I praise you oh God, from the midst of my darkness.
I praise you when life is a shard of glass
poking, prodding, pouring out my life-blood.
when I can't think or feel,
but only hurt through all the trepidation
of a missed opportunity to shine
in the glory of your brilliance.

I praise you when I want to run,
leave behind the striations of an underpolished life.
But you hold me here, you tell me to push forward.
I'm afraid of stubbing my toes,
of cutting them open as I walk over
sharp glass, but you hold my hand.

You bid me step, step, once more.
I'm trying, but I'm already feeling the pain
the problems of my own doing, where I
wasn't what I though I was,
or can't seem to figure out if I was, if I was.

It's noisy when the air rushes by,
when the all the past heights to which you soared me,
are all up above, so far. It's a little cold.
Hold me up, Lord. When all this world falls.
When all of myself falls.

When does the arc of sky echo the moon's false light?
Return refracted realities to the pitch,
the rough of sand-paper heights?
And where the sun shift in hue from lightness
to the sanguine halls of ancient Olympian dreams?
How does nature slip so far from the hallowed day
to mystic night where age old seance strips bare
and shows its ugly wrath,
half dead, the death which light once praised.
But there where darkness trickled round
and red revealed the somber divest,
a golden thread, a honeyed wine,
a mellow note to null the end,
and name the power which wrests a light
for night's long journey,
and so return the barque to deepest blue.

Ninety-Six panes fill eight windows of a wall,
each its own amber, taupe, or cerulean casually mixed;
The pale evening glaze halts by reflection the call
of my eyes, which the sight of my heart predicts.
The coffee won't cut it tonight, won't let me jump
to an easy thought, to another way, but stabs
these jellies; God, the smell of lifeless life, a lump
of disease with nothing; yet hope still grabs
my being, shocks me to step from my floating tomb,
You did so much for me, how do I give it again?
It is all our joy to see beyond hope, the loom
of Your sustaining healing, as it rushes round to gain
our gain, like a shining from beyond inside/outside
a sweet chocolate swirl in the ice-cream where peanuts and caramel reside

As you all know I was robbed and assaulted about 4 months ago. The following represents my struggles with God and myself, and my situation. Throughout, I have found that even in those dark times and the depression that the attack caused for me, God was there, ever holding on. These poetic thoughts were written in the week after the attack as I was deeply struggling with many issues. They are at times vulgar, at times horrendous, at times gut wrenching. Nevertheless, if they may help you through your dark times, and I may step aside and let God use my words, I want them to be here. They may not be theologically "right" they are just my thoughts. If any are good, they should rightly be attributed to God, and not myself.

Part II - The Attack

The taste of yellow rang in my ears,
yellow like vomit and piss in a pool of blood.
In what terror did my soul consist?
God! God? God.
I, a son, like a son, the Son?
Instant ripped, furious, fast, fripped, frapped-
what hatred, what terror,
what utter darkness, outer darkness,
hell in a searing, burning battle broken out,
broken in, inside.
"Forgive them for they know..." You know?
Why, why brutality, violence, evil cuts
against the heart of all creation?
Against the universe and God?
A wound I'm continually picking at,
a scar that will not heal;
How can I heal it?
How could I do it - how can I hate?
How justice, how peace?
How do I open my eyes when I'm already blind,
or seeing red, seeing the nothing?
How do I turn from the void,
from the nebulous negativity of the gap?
I grope about for a hand,
for a lift, for a moment to rest.
Warm wet dripping down my face,
or my spirit.
Slipping away into the dark of nights
that won't end or let me go,
that drag me on further to the foot of suffering,
the feet nailed to ageless time
and all creation,
stopping short my crying agony.
Whence the stitches on my head,
but whither the scratching crown?
My blood has stopped but His still flows.
I hurt, but how little, but how much,
how much is really so little.
God, your Son my pains has taken.
My sins have beaten;
how, how is it so?
How could I strike
-how could I deal such blows to You
as dwarf those dealt to me?
God, I never saw, I never knew,
but what I knew fell so short,
so short-sighted, how you felt.
Love. Love.
Come into the emptiness, the despair,
the open gapping wounds
of my own shortcomings,
my own failures, and my sins.
Forgive me for I knew not what I ...You know? Yes.

Part I - Before and After : From studying to struggling.

Feasting on some drowned out reasons,
lays of past thoughts not quite germane
to the relevancy of today,
I find myself lacking, yet whole,
thinking life without thinking life,
without the notion that time or all its trials
mean anything to today.
A faint stop, not yet blinding echo
asks a step into the darkness.
Needless self in front of all, yet me,
but not because of me?
Hesitation palpitates the forward march,
slow, stretched, stuffy taffy,
bitter flavors that won;t come out,
turning spicy, hot,
seething from under the failure
of an ill-fated universe.
Side steps, slide-steps, slipping out,
tipping out, sparks and smoke,
running;
I want to laugh, laugh it all up
and let it out
on the sidewalk with the Blood.
God I think I caught your eye,
a glint just between the shiny chrome,
by the finger pointing out
-between the trigger and the guard.
A beaming, smiling sun in all the dark
between the fists
and my scarring flesh.
Flash of grace, stopping short
the building fury.
God, you're walking beside,
inside, outside, along the way,
before, blazing trails.
God, were you there with your hand
on his shoulder too,
did You touch the violence
and make it stop?
Your Son, like a fire trap,
pre-burned grass to stop the flowing
tears.
Burn, between the blows,
burn on, burn out
-not a stripe upon my back,
absorbed as fire into the ashen grass
which took on all, and takes on all.
God, your hand, I think I felt it
smashed between my skull
and the butt of a gun.
But You were there too in the hope,
You were life, that kept our minds firing.
God, You are the spark that cried peace
through the synapses of all,
grace blasted out to catch the faint
to carry the fury of a vigorous fog;
forwarding new life into my bloody corpse.
My life retained, but now my fears,
my questions.
You hug me when I can't breathe,
your breath fills me,
like a trache, you skip the broken parts
and free the imprisoned,
let my soul breathe and smell.
I'm not there yet,
I'm afraid of dark,
afraid of my house, my life, my school.
Why the fear, why the flight,
why the need to run and run,
to walk away again, again.
I need your assurance,
your wisdom;
teach me how to walk
when I can run and fly;
my feet feel heavy,
hard to lift when I wonder,
hardly weary,
how I find myself almost dead
when I am fully well.

Part III - Frustration

Why I hate, hate hate,
and all the anger grinds
my bones, burns my grounds,
grounds for standing up straight;
Am I a man?
Agh, how can I scream,
give vent my anger at everything
without making a muck of it all?
Dammit!
What can I say but
"take my jacket" ?
Take, take, take,
only spare my life,
my life unsaid, lest saying,
saying might unsay
might separate the fibers
of my patched up, unwoven life.
I've got to stop grating my hands
on the cheese grater,
I want to feel normal,
to get myself back,
you didn't take it,
but I almost lost it.
WTF is happening?
I hardly care why, but what?
I want my security back.
But Lord knows we don't
sleep in safe houses at night;
Death stares even the young
and the old,
no matter what
the violence is there.
There is no safe place,
no safe world.
Whoever said God was safe?
I can't put the past in a shredder
can't destroy it, or decimate it.

I don't see it anymore,
just its possibility,
I dream I'm known, they whisper
who I am.
But why, it's silly, stupid, insane,
a vain mess of mixed up
stringy stuff,
like a mesh that wants to catch everything.
I can't see it, all I see is the shit
that gets caught.
My emotions are constipated
and I need to take a shit.
I want joy and happiness,
but when I've got it,
it doesn't last.
It's so sweet, I practically
vomit the whole mess up.

It likes to fester.

Don't let me walk alone.
It's more than I can do,
or less than I can think
or save thinking and imagine.

How do I live with, walk with,
play with my own vulnerability?

Why can't I be angry?
Spot, net, what is it?

God they were no more
in control of my life than I was,
because You were in control.

I'm angry, humiliated,
angry that I'm humiliated.
I don't know how to feel
and that makes me angry.

Part IV - I play my violin so hard that I break my bow, and keep going, tearing myself apart before God, to find that He's holding me together. I finally let go, and God catches me.

God use me!!!
Do with me as You please!
I release all.
I'm in your hands
(Alleluiah - from the Michael W Smith Agnus Dei)
God is with me!
God be with them.
God, let there be peace in New Haven.
at this school
in this nation
in my life.

God, I trust You.

("It is well with my soul")
("Praise God from whom all blessings flow")