Christmas

We sacrifice a tree.
We hang pretty trinkets on it —
These we call 'Christmas decorations'.
Lighting up the night sky,
We rejoice, in awe of the splendour.

God sacrificed His only Son,
We hung Him on a wooden cross —
His name is Jesus.
He can bring us eternal light,
But do we rejoice in Him?

Why aren't we as eager to unwrap
God's greatest gift to us:
His labour of love, founded on the cross,
Available to all, any day, any time, for the taking,
As we are to unwrap those given
By mere humans,
Found under the Christmas tree,
Available to too few,
And for only one day of the year?

Driving Back the Sliding

These lusts from my life,
I'm just learning to drive
Yet I'm cutting too many corners,
Impatient, I'm speeding, I strive
To make too many
Consecutive green lights
In this recovery route
Which ends far beyond
My mortal sights.
Why do I take so long
To learn the rules?
My mind professes,
My tongue confesses,
My inadequacy, the travesty
Of my faith.
I'm breaking the law
Without meagre comprehension,
I'm taking too long
To learn the rules,
So why is it that I am not victim,
To suspension
Of my unworthy inheritance?
This repentance
Will not be exhausted.
Satan persists in attempts
To run me off-track,
With ample diversion
Of things the flesh feels it lacks:
Of wondrous signs,
Impossibly insatiable promises
Of deceit-filled bounty and
Although my soul admonishes
Wrongful want and greed,
I'm tempted to stop off
For a quick fix of this worldly need.
I'm hoping that these lusts
Will surrender to conviction,
With sweet wisdom's time.
I'm praying that the Holy Spirit
Will suspend their advertising license,
And that the victory is mine.
One day I will journey without vice and casualty
But before then, if I should break down,
I pray that, humbly and apologetically,
I'll not call on the RAA
But on my Father,
That He may help me to see
The Truth, keep me safe and
Encourage me,
To walk instead
In faith.

Eating Garnishes

What's wrong?
Oh! Did I allude
To my innocent attitude  —
The seed of my worldly sin;
The clues betraying me
To where I have been:
So far from your world,
Detached, I yield,
Occasionally to my slip-ups.
So, you say I must:
Watch my tongue, zip-it-up,
Unless it slanders;
Pander to materialism,
Misplaced greed,
Feed glutton's
Selfish need; and
Buy the clothes
Every one knows
Cost a poor child's life.
Tell me, am I now
Your kind of a good wife,
Even if I do still
Eat the garnishes?

Gamble II

Love is the only gamble
worth taking...
For if we never play our hand,
we never may delve into the realm
of possibilities, of opportunities.
Irrespective of win or lose
we've gained,
Especially since the odds
Set against true love
Cannot compete
With the greatest love
Of a supernatural God.

Lust

Is love but a sigh away,
Or pie in the sky,
Pigs may fly,
One rainy day --
A victim of dismay,
She remains unconvinced,
That this labyrinth
Of possibilities endless,
Has a true destination, unless,
Her eyes cannot see
But preconceived,
And instead by lust,
Will remain deceived.

Picked Up

Like young children,
As children,
We may be tripped
As we struggle to walk,
Crawling blindly,
On our own accord,
On our own merit,
Often towards unseen peril,
Incapable of saving ourselves.
But in our incomprehension
As we dismay, unnecessarily,
On our grazed knees,
Jesus will extend his hand,
Share our hurt
By shedding our tears,
Heal our grazes
With scars that mark us as His, and
Remind us of His insurmountable, enduring love.
So we learn,
With our hand in our Father's,
To walk
In faith.

Saturday Night I: Tricking Deception

Tom Cruise —
The magician
Twirling cocktails and
Winding his pinkies around
The lusts of the orange-brown girls
Who even manage to make
The white sands look artificially bleached,
As a perfect accessory to their brittle hair,
While their inflated breasts
Compete with
The overabundance of beach-balls
For tropical air space,
On a beach where every one
Would rather play with one another.

They were all like that
Those Saturday night movies
That were supposed to remind me
Of the blatant lack of lust in my life,
For the kind of fun that bursts at the seams
And shares itself with every one else.
Sometimes I'd press mute
So that I could practice.
I flirted timeless lines
And chatted myself up
Before the mirror that made me look skinniest,
Well-practiced, I danced up a storm
But only in my imagination.
But at some time Sunday morning
I choked hard on reality and
Woke up to the bad taste of inevitability.

Saturday Night II: Riding Journey

"How did you grow your eyes so wide?"
Pardon? That's right,
After sucking in too much
Smoke of expired oxygen,
The last thing I recalled,
Was overzealous toilet-bowel hugging,
Whilst not too subtly trying to locate
The direction of gravitational pull.
There was vomiting
Poorly aimed at a leering pin-hole:
(A miniature sideshow-alley clown,
Shaking its head at me, taunting me),
Laughter floating all around, without direction,
The discordant music distorted, droning and
The coloured lights flashing
Unrelenting in insult, accurate in assault.
Someone took me for a ride.
It was rare opportunity
For someone so smelly and soiled.
"How did you grow your eyes so wide?"
They're just gigantic black holes
Sucking up sights of empty memories;
I wasn't born with eyes like these.
You have to work really hard at
Letting someone else work really hard at
Messing around with your life.
Scars like this don't just happen
To any old victim; I'm a professional.
"Perhaps someone tampered with them?"
The hospital clarified the medical matter,
While we pondered the matter of responsibility.
I was innocent to intent but guilty to a degree of vulnerability
That just wasn't necessary.
Does not every one have a guardian angel
Whose night job is a taxi driver?

Separation

Our separation
Is like an apparition
Barely real
Except for the pain
Which my intellect fights
To deny
Or profess to any other status
Than temporary.

Silly Putty

When we feel a little empty
Satan will pull out his mighty putty
And stuff us full of our feed
Of greedy crap
That doesn't belong
But can be painful to let go of.
We're so easily convinced
Of materialism's satiety.
As the celebrated prodigy,
Excelling ourselves at being deceived,
We over-spill with pride, lust,
Self-filled desires,
Irresistible temptation
For non-needs,
Until we resemble in perfect form,
The god of this world,
Who was never intended to be
A celebrated creator  —
For he, as the loser, resorts only,
Just for here, just for now,
To stuffing up
The beauty and love
God so gave the world.

Super Saviour

It's a bird.
It's a plane.
It's Super Man,
Come to save us.

No, it's Jesus Christ.
And he's the only one
Who came to save us.

Though He too, did live as a man,
He defeated much more
Than the kryptonite,
Or any villain of fiction.
He achieved this, not through physical might,
But by His supernatural and eternal love
For His Father and His Father's children.
And when we cry out for the sight of dry land,
His hand will always be outstretched;
He'll never let you drown,
For He forever bears the crown,
Marking Him our Super Saviour.

Untethered

Isn't it strange how
When you anchor,
Thinking you've found your land-feet,
Sometimes you are set adrift,
Sometimes you set yourself adrift?
But never mind the mistake because
The Father will calm the stormiest seas and
Redirect the current to guide the Way.
Jesus never said that faith
Would not involve stepping out, taking risk, conquering fear,
But he did say that we will be set free
From that which binds us
And tethers us unnecessarily
To this transient world.
Your Father will never let you drown,
Should you be ship-wrecked & thrown over-board.
For although fallen man, & his fallen creations
May cast you out,
God - should you believe in Jesus & accept him into your life - Never will.

Debt

Only in my dreams do
Fantasy and courage meet.
Shall we follow the pain
For the sake of memories
Or shall we retreat
Further, stake our claim
On defeat as our only victory —
A mere down-payment
On misery and regret;
Why is happiness
Our greatest debt?

Waiting for the RAA

Dusk flushes out day, as we wait for
The over-night stay, of darkness.
My heart is as still as the breath,
Of the midnight sky, as it silently spills indigo ink
Over the sleeping land, smothering its light;
The moon commanding its share of space
Too perfectly spherical, hangs unhinged,
Too low, over this temporary place,
Just waiting for the fall, but continuing
To deny reality, just for this dream-filled hour.
So I greedily devour the oxygen of my life, and
I am caught up in the surreal, of my surroundings,
Blending in like I was born for this romantic naivety,
As at this moment, incoherent, I am almost convinced
That we are inseparably tethered, in a love, that befits forever.

Unevenly Yolked

To think that
We breathe the same air,
And we blow random kisses
On the winds
To travel aloft and afar
Above and beyond the ravine
That separates our lives
So completely —
The water of life for one,
The torrent of judgement for another;
One may drink,
The other may thirst forever,
Poisoned by the world
On the other side
Of Truth,
Where deception lies.
I don't think you will ever
Swim upstream
For me,
When you can never believe
That He walked on water
For us.

War

Is this just another TV show?
Do they bleed tomato sauce,
Cry water,
Rehash stirring, heart-felt lines,
Well rehearsed;
Are they professionals engaged
In a seamless performance?
I certainly am convinced.
Mouth agape in awe —
How cleverly shocking —
For surely this is too horrific
To be real,
But this is war.

Disbelief

What am I doing but
Nothing about everything
Everything about nothing;
A professional at charades,
An addict of masquerade,
I display my falsities,
Like fine china —
The job that dissatisfies me,
The life-style that doesn't recognise me —
As I neatly fold and place my dreams carefully,
On the top shelf, beyond my easy reach,
Saving them for good, or perhaps
My rainy day.
Or is it that I wear my fear
So close to my flesh that
It breathes life into, and feasts upon,
My sinewed soul;
Trepidation stole my belief, leaving a temporary fix
Of relief, and I'm stooped lower than ever,
Wondering, ever so cautiously,
Is failure perhaps better than never?

80's Kid-Hood

My body aches as it smiles,
My mouth yawning at the warmth
In every molecule, every tissue, every bodily system,
But my spirit.
Yet that's OK as for now
I'm a kid in the 80's again.
The masses drive home from work;
How I have deceived them:
They would never know.
They stare at this strange woman-girl,
All alone in her dizzy, gone-by-world,
Grasping a piece of the past,
A strand of crumpled aniseed,
Held on to like gold.
I'm sold on walking away my 20-something-going-on-30 fat,
Hooked on taking a path that promises an aroma from my past,
The present holding no gift of its own.
I'm on a memory crusade, for the recollection accolade.
I feel shorter; I walk taller; my wrinkles let go of their agitation,
As I walk somewhere else, at another time.
I remember how we would stop for water, or perhaps the cordial
Sold at another kid's front yard stand,
For 2 cents a cup, constituting their pocket-money,
A sum well short of designer drugs,
Rather than an e-to-go, chased by a Macca's coke.
When we wouldn't need Play-station, Nintendo, or Game-boy
But got by on Imagination.
I'd forgot.
And so this nose of mine,
Sniffing aniseed like an addict of yesterday,
Wets the eyes, but cannot damp the appetite,
For more memories.
It's 2003, and I'm chronically malnourished.

Dreaming

I know you love me so,
So why can I not let go
Of this hurt that remains fatally wounded,
Of this emptiness that professes to defy filling.
I'm spilling over in despair;
Reality — I'm rarely there,
For any one.
I've gone deep within me
To play a little pretend,
To mend a few more
Fraying memories,
Bridging better times
With now.
How did I live, when life was alive?
How did I feel, when I'd strive for something of worth?
I crave for someone else's crumbs:
A mere morsel of meaning,
Yet I can’t help but wonder:
Was, or am I, only dreaming?