What are we now?
A half-buried sentence
A message delivered to
The wrong address
I reach for you and touch nothing
I hate the squatter in my skull
Your voice pacing my corridors
Your face nailed to the
Backs of my eyelids
You’re gone
But I still wear your fingerprints
Like burns
The safest place I ever knew
Has collapsed
The walls I leaned against
Are rubble in my throat
I gag on dust
I choke on your ghost
Everyone tells me to “move on,”
Like it’s just a switch I forgot to flick
But your absence is marrow-deep
It hums through bone
A phantom limb jerking at nothing
I want to amputate the thought of you
But the blade keeps turning back
Into my own skin
You are everything
And nothing
And I am stuck in the wreckage
Beating my fists against a locked door
Leading to nowhere

The passion has almost gone
of love and longing for Thee;
there's no meat left on the bone
for devotion's heart to see.

Instead of looking within
the mind is focused outside
with the body getting thin
life's mercy is to confide.

One just can't ignore the signs
that can be seen by the eyes;
age seems to be drawing lines
and there's no comfort in lies.

Like a dog eating a bone
it soon gets to the marrow
and for this it eats alone
with its eyes being narrow.

We become what we're to be
over a lifetime of years prone
to the ups and downs we see
and fruits of our efforts grown.

It's by grace we can transcend
what it is we have not seen
so the hours we've got to spend
will determine places been.

If we stick fast to the path
and don't deviate too far
we won't incur any wrath
and even shine like a star.

Life's course involves such a plan
that we may glean in the mind
looking deep enough to scan
at its source of light we'll find.
____