Nervosa

*Published in North Greenville University's Mountain Laurel
                                                                                               

Hit the ground running
Run until exhaustion
Exhausting calorie counter
Countless, the hours
Hours that melt like Dali clocks
Clocks which spell a battle of loss

Each pound is a loss

Every night, until midnight I am running
Each stride, see clocks, sea clocks
One less, bright bones, sheer thin, my lover, exhaustion
So slim, the hours
The scale, stepper-stairs, thin air, a failure counter

My heart, a dying rhythmic counter
My life they might count a loss
But I am strong; I lie inside myself for hours
My mind racing, running
For the battle that lives there knows not exhaustion
circle-chasing perfection, around the clock

Pendulums swing, tick tock, sleep - enemies of clocks
to stand, I grasp the counter
One, two, five, six fingers bleed in exhaustion
My best  friend was a loss
She never stopped running
now, she is dead in the hours

Stop the hours
Stop the clocks
Stop the running
Stop the counter
Stop the loss
Stop the, me…exhaustion

Tomb-made exhaustion
I want to sleep for hours
My dreams are long lost
The clocks
on the counter
are still running

I…running, until exhaustion
Counterfeit the hours
Beg to bribe to…stop this scale-clock of loss

Forever_

I hope this doesn’t wake you; peacefully asleep.

I can see you as clearly as the orange and yellow toothbrush,
left on the sink like the memory card in my computer.
It holds pictures of your lips, hands, eyes.
As you slept beside me, although I worried,
it was all worth knowing you were right there.

The days that I wake, I hope to your voice,
because I have you
I know that I am worth living for.

Listen to me, let me find that t r a n s c e d e n t
place within myself
that will one day find the words,
the ones that will give you that a-ha moment,
that will make everything beautiful.

You are alive for only awhile.
And do we measure it in moments that we feel
alive, or the amount of air that’s in our lungs?

I have given you a name, I call you friend, yet we are

Something more
My entire life, I hope to spend
being here with you being there, too.
And if you aren’t, it will all be worth
knowing you’re somewhere,

with breath in your lungs.

I hope that you will see
when you stand before yourself,
you stand before Me.
You, yourself are worth living for.

Although you grow weary
from walking that line,
the one that crosses my collar bones and
hopes to die, the one the rests in my laughs
and runs on my sighs,

You are here, 

like barbells in the crook of
my ear, and bandages on bruised knees.

The time I’ve spent on them,
swirling in the s u p e r n a t u r a l,
hoping, praying, that you will know.

You are the strum in a stream.
Guitar necks prop your broken soul,
and I am praying you will know,
You are worth living for.                                                                                                       

One alone is only half the heat,
I couldn’t bear to sleep without
my feet entangled within your feet.
You keep me warm, grounded.
Like Gravity.

Here are these letters that make up words;    
I want them to tell you something you’ve
always known, I want them to keep you through
the morning.

And the next.
And the next.
And the next.

Forever.

I want them to keep you,
You are worth living for(ever).

Sanctuaries

You are fearfully and wonderfully made.
An anchor that refuses to sink beneath the dead-tossed waves.
Jesus holds you in the highest of arms,
Because even on the ocean floor on which you lie, where the deepest of sins
Are slain, His loss still drowns the flames.

Believe in the love that guides from the True North,
Even when you hide in the shell of past mistakes,
The screams of dying dreams burst forth
And the whispering wind claims your life a funeral wake.

Love has warped out of sincerity into concluding conversations,
It’s become a lazy I-L-Y abbreviation, when it’s meant for your heart,
Your soul, your strength, your mind,
For your neighbor, your spouse, your child, your God.
A color visible only to the blind.

Do not wish hell on even the bitterest enemies,
For we know not when we entertain angels,
caught as patron saints of lost causes
or lukewarm worshippers of inactivity.

Be still in the equality of sin and the unfairness of life,
A seemingly broken and scattered church-wife,
Regard the sanctuaries without steeples, missions mismarked, off course,
The crooks will steal, and the possessed pigs squeal,
But there is no evil
that could ever divorce God from His people.

So, my God is enough for me, and it is well with my soul!
For who have I but You to conquer the things I’ll never need,
Who have I but You to claim my victory?
My freedom is here, with the spirit that touches the coal to my lips,
The One that designed the most delicate of maps on my fingertips.

For even the smallest of sparrows are fed,
By faith as swift and sure as resurrected eagles mounting the morning air,
On each created crown, not one unaccounted for hair,
As a seal upon my heart, a debt paid crimson red,
I have been crucified with Christ, and

The Savior is not Dead.