prodigal lungs

while you wrap the sky in yellow fog
I watch you swim to Babylon
it's not the city where you live
it's just the room you're always in

inhale exhale toss and pitch
you love to drink your god like smoke
in time you'll spit him out and walk back home.

I swam through all the wires inside
but I still land here every time
shipmates on a swollen sea
always shipwrecked ever green

inhale exhale slam the sea
stir the surface incense me
I say you'll spit this out and walk back home.

you're open to attack my friend
your arms have never been this limp
it's what you want it's what you want
you wish your bones were made from salt

I sank four stories through a leaf
the blacktop wasn't underneath
what you can say, what you can do is much more than enough.

the salt is lighting up your skin
since you forgot your coat at home
your ears aren't covered for this snow
my son you've never been so vulnerable.

I crow I grin but I don't know
what'd ever make you walk back home
no it won't, it won't be you who walks back home. 

khloi

the water's thick with sunbeam spit

and slow with sunset glow

heavy with the fall of golden

shafts like fall of snow

I hide you in the deepest heart
that opened once to me

I'll find you in the deep green pockets
of the seething sea.

in a year or ten

blushing ears, wind-slashed tears

sun squints, slowing years.

blasted lands, scorched dust,

voiceless looks, unraptured sands;

sold, golden, wintered hands.

yesterday resonates
grates its teeth across the walls
dances off with flighty sleep
while the fractured next few hours
fog the headlights and the laws.

same black fissures, repeat scars
marring pages, claying laws.

there's a breathing animal,

a fist inside my mouth,
lets the silence overgrow
and blind our open eyes;

I think a scream

would let it out,

but I still haven't tried.

walk until you reach the edge

and stop there, stop your crouch;

let the wind run round your face

let the wind run out

check your pace

check your eyes

the edge's look will pull you in,

make the fire come alive,
for a second's gasping dive

bluish eyes, desert dreams

miles I've seen, the miles I've been. 

the flat heaves up then drops for miles
it's tossed by every weakness known,
known in every hollow bone,
the ocean feels its bounds

these quick lifts current down
the faint lick of sullied frownings;

yet deep in this pure, colding pool

I still shelter hopes of drowning

the heartbeat of the coast is strong
and so is the sky's salt-flecked song

surge up, fall back
you keep running, I attack.

could you abandon all at once?

somehow I've known it well for months
I've loved the One who showed me how
but I've loved myself more.

my strong fear met this fragile trust
in this way which to live I must
I must lose hold of all my self;
yah I feared losing hold of my sweet self.

you live above the shifting blur
or you fall deep into the cure;
when you scorch your sense of fear
falling's a little easier.

Maybe playing with fire can never be enough;
So let all of my defeated ways be sharp with oil
And let me be the one to drop the torch. 

touchstone

 my ears are full of famine
   Your voice fell like rain  

 a blue gloom gathered, coiling in the thick
between the cloudbank and the brush

  and I found myself in danger
   of welling up with trust

I wish you’d shed your stone-cold skin
I wish you’d lapse into sincerity again

Infested

So you say it.
And it feels good.  It feels really good.

Double-edged words.
They’ve been upset from their condensing in your dark hallways
and now they stream into your mind, dive-bombing its walls, feeling out for
a release, a weakness.
Your tongue budges, once, and their ears prick to it on the instant.
Their attention is locked. 
They are pouring in.

So you say it.
And you probably mean it.
But right then, an inch more of you goes dead inside;
right there, an inch more of you slinks back to the dank, familiar hallways echoing,
‘slave.’

The thoughts exist, they grew up with you,
but now all they are are dull prophecies from an ancient rule.
They can be denied.
 Because under your new Mastership, there is strength to do all things.
There is power greater than yourself.

It’s when you start retracing your steps,
running your hands through the pages of your old haunts,
dwelling on the old master’s voice,
dwelling on your voice,
that you are left tempted.
Vulnerable.

But always with a choice. 

It’s when you are on your own, though,
doing things your way,
when it’s your life you’re living
that you back into the shade of your familiar safeholds,
your old home, your ruinous kingdom.
And it becomes impossible for you to deny these.  It always has been.
So many things start to go cold inside you.
The rebelling outcry within is so natural,
you don’t even notice the numbing.

Every time you fulfill those thoughts, by obeying their urge,
the old, familiar mastership is allowed to loom that much more over you,
and slide his claws that much further around your throat.

But it’s all a choice.
Every time you deny fulfilling those thoughts, boom,
self-control gets a foothold in you, gets history with you,
and the deadness encroaching the mind that thought those thoughts-
softens.
Withers.
Turns to sand.

There are new prophecies over you,
of freedom, and re-creation. 
It’s these, that, when they are denied, thwart life.
It’s not like your new Mastership is weak, or even precarious.
The new life is stronger, so much stronger.
But sin makes me immune to it.
So be careful who you choose.
Think about how much you choose Him by.

There are structures that stand like chains inside. 
They are abandoned, but they are ever-present.
The closer we walk to them, the more they tower.
Evil things crawl and swarm from their chasms.
God can collapse these.
When?

When I finally choose that I value obeying Him
more than fulfilling my sin.

"Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already been made perfect,
but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. 
Brothers, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it.  But one thing I do:
Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead,
I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me
heavenward in Christ Jesus . . . our citizenship is in heaven. 
And we eagerly await a Saviour from there, the Lord Jesus Christ, who,
by the power that enables Him to bring everything under His control,
will transform our lowly bodies so that they will be like His glorious body."
Philippians 3