Learn

Learn to humble yourself
fall on your face
Look up to Him
and receive His grace
Learn His lesson of love
Learn to follow His way
Learn to walk by faith
And start learning today

Learn to flow in His joy not to merely endure
Learn to simply believe so your faith will be sure
And more than anything else that you know
Learn how to give so that your faith will show

Anew

Trials may come from day to day
And dreams get lost along the way
When we look upon the things we see
And settle for reality
Instead of pressing toward the light
And doing what we know is right
We diligently grind away
At goals that lead us to the grave
We focus on how to survive
Not that which makes us come alive
And we adamantly defend
Every wrong turn and each dead end
For we are doing what we must
Whether we succeed or bust
When will we ever dare to start
Pursuing dreams within the heart
Are we too scared and filled with dread
From memories within the head
Of all the times we tried and failed
When others we relied on bailed
How much the past rejection stung
These lessons learned when we were young
How can we overcome the fear
When it’s so deeply rooted here
When love is distant and grown cold
And there’s no hand for us to hold
We flounder about on our own
And dredge through this dark world alone
So how can anyone dare hope
When we’re struggling just to cope
With disappointments that we face
And disillusionments of grace
Yet deep inside a fire burns
An unacknowledged passion yearns
More sweetly than we can conceive
And desperately we believe
That love will bloom and dreams come true
When hope and faith are born anew

Good-night

Good-night to the walls, good-night to the air
Good-night to the sound of nobody there
I lay alone in the dark and remember the days
Of trying to hush and still childish ways
Up and down the hall when I said get into bed
It’s time to be quiet, but they’d giggle instead
Now how I long for a less peaceful night
As I simply roll over and turn out the light

Like an Autumn Rain

Things that don’t seem right to the human mind
are his delight time after time
Like an autumn rain on a summer’s day
or a winter wind in the month of May

There’s a brightness shining on the darkest night
When nothing adds up even when you’re right
and although you’re trying with all of your might
and you think you’ve seen the light
it still won’t go your way

There’s a fire burning in a rain-soaked land
causing a desperate yearning in an empty man
tired of building castles in the sand
knowing they won’t stand
still you continue anyway

And losing everything you’ve owned
to remind you of the simple truth you’ve known
you’ll keep falling short no matter how you’ve grown
you can’t do it on your own
still you fight through one more day

Things that don’t seem right to the human mind
are His delight time after time
Like an autumn rain on a summer’s day
or a winter wind in the month of May

Recurrent

I’m walking down the hallway with windows on both sides
There’s a faint glow beneath the door stretching out in front of me
I never reach it, though my pace hastens, panting, breathless
My legs are lead balloons, utterly useless
My head is swollen, pounding, throbbing
Sweat begins to pour down my face, the heat unbearable
I look to my left; the window’s clouded over with a pale fog
I spin to the right and see a view of the ocean
With the horizon vaguely visible in the distance
Oh to feel the cool, salty air, the wet, gentle breeze
But the jamb is stuck, won’t budge, inoperable
I linger in the moment with relief just beyond my grasp
I thrust myself at the glass, nothing
So I ram it again, no progress
Repeatedly I slam, I beat, I wail
But still there is no improvement, no movement, no relief
Then I sink to the floor, melting
Reduced to a pile of slime and goop
No structure, no form, just a people puddle oozing down the hall
What am I to make of this recurring dream?

Ashes in a Cage

I’m trying to escape
There’s not much more I can takebefore I melt away
Still the heat gets turned up higher
and I fall into the fire
And everything I hold onto is burned away
Yet somehow I survive
How can I still be alive?
I can hardly take the pain
Disfigured and severely scarred
horribly – permanently marred
with no one else to blame
What was I thinking?
Was it all just make-believe?
Am I so quickly deceived?
Was it all I could perceive?
Or is it my reality?
How else could I explain the way
I have been maimed by my own anxiety?

By my overwhelming fears
by my ceaseless flow of tears
and indulging impropriety
as a way to numb the hurt
as a way to hide the dirt
through foolish denial
But everyone can see the stains
on what little bit remains
undefiled
And those not quickly scared away
I refuse to let them stay
to experience my torture
I make some kind of lame excuse
for everything I do
And I keep so many fooled about my future

Once I’ve dug myself so deep
how could I even think
there could be hope for sanity?
Is life all a masquerade
trying to guess my own charade?
Or is it vanity?

I don’t think I care to know
There is no other way to go
Simply let the fire rage
It will consume all in its path
I’m left as scorching aftermath

A life existing in a shell
it’s painted so well
I bet you can’t even tell
it’s a self-imposed hell
A life of ashes in a cage