Tag: soul care
Beyond Legerdemain
is it any wonder
that of the seven
ancient wonders
only one remains
and the pyramid of giza
is but a tomb and
no longer contains
the afterlife companions
or the mouldering remains
of the pharoah
time in subtle thunder
doth rip asunder
with wind and
weather and rain
pounds with
mocking disdain
until these monuments
of blood and stone
and workers pain
are brought low
i cannot help
but wonder if one
must go under
into the inner domain
of broken heart
and mending brain
to build a different
kind of wonder
beyond another
legerdemain
one forever sustained
by the care of soul
a new archipelago
The Lost Parts of I
i am the scattered one
fragments cast
across the cybersphere
a million pieces of me
invisible
mixing with you
over my head
in the air
like silent wraiths
i am everywhere
and nowhere
omnipresent
without divinity
immortal
in search of my soul
my essence
sucked from
me by vampire
screens
i am the silent one
removed to the cave
away from the
false gods
of fire and wind
and storm
drawing deeper within
to call
a quiet shout
like bats
the lost parts
of i
hear and begin
their returning
to me
like smoke
in the bright
red morning
Labyrinth
I have come to the realization that I am lost and will forever be.
I ran out of string years ago. I still remember the feel of the rough twine slipping through my calloused fingers. I could have turned back, followed the gleaming cord back into the familiar light. I chose to continue on, to crawl deeper into the dark caverns. Now I am captured by the endless maze of my inner underground.
This is not a silent place. I hear the whisper of past conversations and forgotten songs, captured to repeat in the endless rewind of memory. Yet these voices too begin to recede into the depths and the heavy quiet of that other Voice.
I am afraid, but that is to be expected. There are creatures here, forged of memory and pain and regrets. They hover in the shadows just out of reach until my outstretched hands blindly touch them. Then they draw near.
They join the others who follow me, a different sort of retrieving line, as together, hand in hand, we make our way down into the fearful, revealing dark.
Depression 1.3 – Searching for the Soul Doctor
God’s truths often arrive in strange packages.
Like the song by Foreigner I have been blasting on my truck’s stereo this past week.
It’s called Soul Doctor.
“I need to see the soul doctor
Before the fever begins
You know I’m searching for the soul doctor
When love is wearing thin
Doctor soul is in.”
Depression is not simply something in the mind. It is also what the Spanish mystic St. John of the Cross described as “the dark night of the soul.”
So on hard days, I’m searching for a soul doctor.
Rather than crawling into a mental hole or pretending everything is okay, I am learning to pray and accept that I am never alone.
Jesus promised to never leave or forsake me. And often, after these dark nights of the soul, joy does come in the morning.
Which means I can hang a sign outside my heart that says, “Dr. Soul is in….”
Depression 1.2 – The Loudspeaker in my Head
I misspoke.
Elegiac is not always silent. Often I find that I have begun again to pay attention to its whisperings in my inner ear.
They are so subtle.
Yet the words resound loudly within, reverberating against Id’s fragility. They feed the loudspeaker of negativity in my head.
I am pretty hard on myself. I set impossibly high expectations and tumble to the inevitable crash when they are not reached. My mind cycles through the litany of what ifs.
I stand outside myself and critique my latest interaction. Did I mispeak? Why did I act like that? Why I am not where I think I should be?
I was not good enough.
I am never good enough.
I cannot let what happened simply be.
I have confused discontent with stagnancy.
I am not gentle with myself.
My dreams have become a weight upon my soul.
I am, as Langston described, a broken-winged bird that cannot fly.
Dead Leaf Hanging Lonely
dead
leaf
hanging
lonely
secrets
i dont want
you to see
there is a
balance in
letting you
continually
cut away
that which
is dead
in me
and the
understanding
that when
you look
at me
all you
see is
beauty
(Featured image with kaleidescope filter #GodsView)
Renovation
forever
it seems i have been facing
refacing
these walls
in my ongoing
attempts to make this room
and house whole
o for the grace and patience to endure
the kind
and gentle
renovation
of my
soul
Struck Dumb
there is still so much i want to say
so much i want to share
the conversations
lessons
sermons
stories
play on endlessly in my brain
yet my fleeces remain dry
the venues i sang in have all closed
my phone calls are not returned
my inbox remains empty
the podium is occupied
the microphone given to another
my words are thrown back in my face
and suddenly somehow i am the one in the wrong
my stories remain unfinished
while others form within the maelstrom within
i see what is incomplete
rooms in the midst of renovation
the refuse of life
projects left undone
art that i must pack away because there is no place for them here
unseen
unheard
my body left weak from a week of sickness
my mind ravaged by another betrayal in a long line of them
why i must work quietly here
unknown
i know not
but that is what i am being told
to be silent
to wait
to feed on the bread of life
to let that be my work
out of that labor will come my voice
