so long until you find your voice
i know you'll find it you have to
but i'll be walking somewhere else
until you find your voice again

i know i'll see some pretty girls
and find somewhere to sleep
and food will taste just like it does
when you fixed it for me

but songs will sour in my ears
and lilies lose their lure
for you have lost your voice my love
and that's no good for us

i'll be out walking call me soft
i'll hear you when you say
you want me back and want to talk
even with nothing to say

watching the long grass in the wind
the color of your hair
smoky mountain snow tops
shaded by blue grey eyes
foothills climbing to your lofty perch
i will ascend again to view
the vast expanse of your generousity
layed out as a feast before me

no sound listen
no sight look
you will not find me
because i am not
you will not feel me
for i am gone
no breath gasp
no scent sniff
you will not miss me
because i am you
you will not need me
for i never left

morning light intrudes i wake
my dreams lost again to ether
night id left to die alone
surprise you sleep beside me
my dreams are true awake
your hair a corona of relaxation
face slack and lovely
night and day collide
in expensive overabundance
what other blessing
could i ever require of God

there's a place we've been where the rain smells fresh and clean and the ozone blares at your brain like spic and span, though the inspiration is backward, of course, where we held hands and smiled a few moments and wondered what the future held for us while we gazed at a sky of white and blue...and now there's stained carpets and baby messes and our vomitous couch cover to contend with and my unfailing refusal to engage in any meaningful way so that failure is always a mystery and surprise, but you are faithful and you work hard even so, though i see your reserves getting low now and again, a different kind of stress, one you had hoped to avoid in life, i think, a dwindling of candlepower or wattage or brightness or something denoting potential usefulness and diminishing capabilities, and we wonder how we let ourselves go so long without looking around to see the beauty God has placed in the world

what's funny is how you look in my mind, you still shine like the first day you walked sideways at me before we drank our coffee

i knew at moo that you'd be soon be nekkid and i was happy happy happy, but it's not so much the nekkid that matters, even then, as it was and is being known and still loved even so

i have always always always wanted to be worthy of being known by you and i see so many ways you cover over my sins by pretending not to see them if nothing else and i know God is faithful even if he's given you a tough row to hoe

it had been days, or so it seemed
since last we talked or wrote
and i was feeling just a little down

it has been weeks or more it seems
since last we held each other
and i am feeling lost and inside out

it might be months until i see you
before we scream and fight
and i won't feel the hatred anymore

it must be moments till i feel you
for i am still not dead, you know
and all my heart is dedicated to you

i can't fail too long anymore
i can't take this day anymore
i can't find my way anymore
i can't understand you anymore

and there's no way
to remedy
the hole you left behind
when you left me right

right now i want you
dead on the floor
like i wanted you
when we first met
but the drive is new
and i'm not used to
the way it feels in love

and there's no way
to see the road
or close the hold you had
when you left me blind

i can't find you
you won't listen
we won't talk anymore
you keep running
and i keep dying
and we won't love anymore

though i tried my best
you left behind rust
in place of the love
that held us
though i was a failure
you saw the future
and you skied out
like a bandit without me

i can't take anymore
i can't breathe anymore
there's no one left here to hold me

i blame the president

there's no more room, you insist
while i calmly add to the pile
it won't hold up, you cry
as i stuff another load into the gaps
i don't want any more now, you plead
while i place a handful in your arms
i can't take it anymore, you scream
as i add some more to your head and shoulders

love is not like pizza or boxes
or furniture or clothes
you can stack it anywhere
and it won't fall over
it just keeps soaking in
and adding up
and it almost always has a shine to it

empty room
as you consider
hands on hip and lip
the painting and the spackling and the scrubbing
while i stand holding
the checklist

we are in love to our ankles
where once it was a flood
but now steady and sweet
and clear like sunshine

there's a not quite flying in your hands when we walk
and a not quite singing when you talk
when i breathe in your hair and your breath
in the dark snuggled close
i wonder at the mercy
for God is gracious and generous
to sinners like me

though the rain is falling you walk on
through the blinding and the stinging
through the tears and the shame
through all the broken promises
through so many futures unlived

home is chilly and dark
because no one waits your voice
but you know that's only part true
you know there's one who waits
one who follows
one who watches

wet clothes in a heap
more water running
but hot and at your will, not God's
you soak out the cold and in the warm
you pray for solace in the steam
and comfort for your heart
and you pray for one who hurts
because he cannot love

and you wait some more
for God's will, not yours

there is an emptiness inside loneliness that we do not talk about or explore, a longing and aching and feeling of being lost that cannot be put aside most of the time, it can be endured certainly, but it cannot be embraced, and it does not allow for prevarication, you can pretend it is not there but it does not let go the pressure, ever, it only allows you to be distracted, like drinking, the problems seems less important but you know it'll be there when you sober up

there is a fullness to love that allows itself to be forgotten, an easy comfort that lends itself to forgetfulness, a sense that we deserve the warm wrapping and the soft or callused touch of another on our face or shoulder or back, that the normal state of man is togetherness and all other states are false, or unfair at least, we have rights, after all, and this is one

this indicates we were made, not born, made, fashioned, constructed i say to you, for fellowship, with one another, with our creator, with whatever is at hand, including volley balls if modern mythology is to be belived, and in this instance we may believe it, we require a voice to say what we already know and we will settle for our own if we must, we deserve it, we might die without it

God talks quite a bit more frequently than i tend to acknowledge, and though he does not drone he did fashion us to endure all steady state situations and his talk is so frequently overwhelming that we feel we cannot take it up close all the time, in a seed, in a blade of grass, in a leaf, in the tree the mountain the bird the pet the styling of furniture and appliance, in the smell of a new baby's head and in freedom to love or reject, in breathe and in smiling and in turning on the remote a sense of God so strong your head will spin if you think on his glory too much, he designed a world we could begin to understand, enough that infra-red, a color we can't see and only feel in massive quantity, enough that infr-red will reach out through the air in the room and tell some zeros and ones to change back and forth so our television or dvd will come to false life and entertain us, probably to remove us from our thoughts of God, he gave us that option

i think lonliness is a kind of desert and fellowship a kind of jungle and the dweller of one can barely speak to the dweller of the other

we long for a touch, so Jesus touched the leper and said he was willing after he said i love you though you have suffered but maybe he meant i love you because you have suffered

i run from cistern to cistern and you are always full, somehow, so i assume you get your water from that spring of life in your belly that he gave you, so continue to teach me about how it works

when there was nothing i had no you
and sometimes now i imagine
but there is no life without you
so that doesn't last long
when there was you i had me too
and that's what i wanted anyway
so thank you for making me
though i said i wanted you

i was alone and dying till you came to me
and stood smiling and waiting
you give life and love and reason
to poison and filth and waste
you brought light to dark corners
and blew away cobwebs of deceit
with a smile and a nod alone
you were pretty much alright

it's funny but i think the u2 treatment is working, but way slower than i had hoped...

it should be easy to react in love and kindly spoken words but i find more and more that i want to be selfish, to take advantage of your love and make use of it for my own ends even though i may pay later, should pay sooner, and i feel like i'm killing some small part of myself when i am evil to you...but one day i won't feel the sting of that pain, it will come as easy as breathing to kill you slowly with a love that doesn't quite give but is happy to take and take and take

i think my God must sustain you in our love because i don't think i provide much for you to feed on, and i thank him for making up for my lack

when there is a gap in the line
will you fill it
when there is a sin to overlook
will you cover it
when there is anger in my voice
will you hear it
when there are lies in my eyes
will you see them
you were always faithful in the main
you were always willing to be slain
you were always there for us both
when i fell through the cracks in my heart
when there are scars to be healed
you will heal them
when there are wounds to be bound
you will bind them
when there were truths to be found
you will find them
when there is love to deliver
you feel that

run run run
or i will find you
run run run
until your lungs seize
or i will find and punish
or i will treat you mean
run run run
or i will teach you
run run run
until your eyes bleed
or i will find and blemish
or i will treat your meat
run run run
or i will tempt you
run run run
until your heart freeze
or i will learn to love you
or i will let you go

i found you thinking in the stacks
and i wanted to touch you but i knew
you would leave yourself for me
and lose forever what you'd been wondering
and i thought i'd rather have
all the story instead of the frustrated beginning
so i sat
but i could see you
and to see you is to want you
and i waited
and i bit my nails
and still you thought
i thought

i wandered away because i did not want
to break you away
even if later you would say
i was deciding between
macatunie and grilled cheese tonight
because by forebearance
i learn to taste distinctions

don't i

you can walk around the world
but it won't bring you home again
unless you tie yourself to me
you can fly too high and burn
but you won't float on the breeze
until you're tied to me
you can rest upon the sea
but you won't see the depths
until you sink with me

i wonder when you're flying if you see
i wonder when you're walking what you mean
i wonder if the sun sets in your eyes for me

you walk and run but you can't leave
you float and fly but you can't be
you hold on tight but you're not me
and i won't let you crash
until you're part of me

this is 108 though it should be 1275 for hope ends with sight and you have filled my eyes for years now and i still feel desperately in love with you and awed by your beauty, your wisdom and your desire for me, not to mention your apparently unwavering love for God

thank you for your steadfastness despite the internal fury, even if you think it inaction due to fear it inspires me for i act too quickly on my own whims

u2 running through my mind as i sit here thinking of what to say and wondering why it always is so long between jags when it would be easy, it seems, to say something nice each day...perhaps you are familiar with the ebb and flow of my affections in word and possibly in deed as well, so now i'm all self-conscious and whatknot and why didn't that guy have to untie the know instead of just cutting it or was that the point that he just wailed on it instead of damaging his brain needlessly and that's how men solve their problems and now i work with engineers, or shall i say beside them, who get paid to solve some of those problems...when an engineer says it's impossible he only means it's expensive and i don't really want to do it anyway which reminds me of the bid i need to put together for the air plant in town, we have a plant that makes air, how's that for a racket, or is it that they extract stuff from the air and isolate one component from another in exchange for money