Without the reassurance of a sweet by and by,
how should I bring a frail body forth in stoic motion
towards an end it will never attend?

Return me to my valley.

Faith is a valley
where rolling hills bend like still waves;
reaching for the heavens and quitting in intervals.

These are the mountain walls of dying,
reeling down to form a divot.

Sit me in it.

With nothing left of me to steep up from the cradle I shape,
I turn to this sea and I say, "unmake me".

These hillside submissions are all a sanctuary for the battered pride
that let us idealize strife, and silence the nature which revolts against our exertion.

With my reason bending to the will of you
i'm deprived of a thing i've had a right to.

Life is now not much more than something which approaches a second one.

My beloved only living ever.

Liberty's delight is blazing
a brilliance which she howls as a beam.
That harsh gleam is softened
by the deceptive blush of a tacky cathedral window.    

Tongue flicks, flickers, this tricks—
That gross dialect.
Awkward, and pretentious, and flamboyant vein,
its often open ended.  

As he speaks his tongue lashes
like a thick rug is whipped around, dusted out.
Tamed by his teeth to annunciate a strident vowel and seldom otherwise.  

It does filth the air.
******—
                       I don’t like it at all.                    

Fathers, sons, and brothers—
who are hacking up phlegm;
barking back at mothers
that hack up phlegm back.
The derived from who turn and detest it
with the maternal disgrace.

A man strays from all virtue once he has turned away from his derivative.

Lesser men saying, “yes, let’s”—
They follow and they wallow in adoration.

Why does he abide by his assignment?
Many seem proficient enough to assign it.
They give him his strident vowels.

Why does he wish for a creed?
To be pleased in his pursuit of a satisfactory compatriot.
A peer is a prole is a liability.
Himself, and his Lord, and he.

A few men posses an increasingly uncommon quality;
they've got a light on in their heads.
He flinches, he's cowering.

He pulls his tired arm up into a salute;
shades a squinting gaze from the bright.

An instinctive gesture is heretical still.


( . . . )

My attention is brought back to God
and for the first time I see his face;
contorted, as one would be in the presence of disgrace.

The superior, holy light of his demeanor suggest
he knows all transgressions, disregarding confess.

He turns the other cheek.

And though he’s averted his furrowed gaze,
the weight of his judgment stays.

Kingdom, come! And will be done, I do believe—
I still see the face of god, and he, I.
But, I cannot reach it.

This is not so nice as my lavish sacristy.