Category: Other Poetry

The King is dead, long live the King
Who rises from His grave with us,
And from us all hosannas ring
For Him who’s raised from earthly dust–

And even dust by Him redeemed
As Eden breathes His Spirit’s air
For earth is not what it had seemed
But transformed to a garden fair.

Our Paradise by Him reclaimed
As Devil howls in his defeat,
For Christ as King by Father named,
And we fall at His pierced feet.

But now He says to us “Arise,
For you’re restored to Father’s will;
I claim you as my risen prize
And say to earth’s storms, ‘Peace, be still!’”

In rustling sound of wind my dead heart wakes
From sleep induced by venom of an asp,
And hope, a stranger, now my own heart grasps–
For angel’s wings stir wind for all our sakes.

In my heart’s eye I see a Virgin Maid
With face from New Creation’s first faint light,
As she an angel hears without sin’s blight–
The first awaked by choice her son once makes

Her human “yes” brings Him in swaddling clothes;
Disguised, He comes, our hearts consent to woo,
To die for us so we can our sin rue
And Him as Savior from that sin will know.

Yet, hope in my sin’s night my heart has seized,
Tells me one day Creation all will see
Him come again and all will bow the knee
To King—completes all time: the world’s reprieve. 

Like Samson I am blinded by my sin;
My strength by evil angels has been shorn,
And long I now to see Him once again
To be with oil anointed from His horn.

And then I feel the touch of holy balm,
And eyes once blind are opened and I see
As oil drips from my forehead on my palms—
My hands anointed to set captives free.

My weakness is the gate for Your sure strength
To flow through me to others You anoint;
To save them You will go to any length
And give your cross to those whom You appoint

To be the Gospel of Your saving death—
Through weakness rise—You give us all new health.

HEART SONG

Come, touch your wounded hands to my heart strings
That I may play to you my song of praise
While in me rises, on your Spirit’s wings,
That melody with you from your grave raised.
May St. Cecilia pray at your blessed feet,
As your song played through my heart reaches hers
And joins those songs of saints who with her greet
Their Lord with gold and frankincense and myrrh.

May heaven’s wisdom, through your risen grace,
Come in our hearts through poetry and song
And in us all the beat of sin erase
With praise of you, who ends our Babel’s wrong.
In us, play notes of glorious symphony,
And through our hearts set minds and bodies free.

The Catholic Church, like Noah’s ark,
Sails all the earth to save
And beckons all on her embark
To ride atop life’s waves.

Those waves crash ‘round to kill us all
As Vine from Ark is cast,
And we aboard in His net hauled—
With us comes all our past.

We’re cleansed and given His new cloak
Worn from the inside out,
And through it we in His life soak
To learn what life’s about.

A family three we’re meant to be
Of father, mother, child;
In them, His likeness, we can see–
His Trinity then smiles.

On Ark from earth to heaven sail
All fam’lies in the Son,
As Satan’s lies have finally failed.
For us He’s heaven won!

In my mind’s eye I see your truth yet fail
To let it penetrate my restless heart,
For in me rises flesh and world’s strong gale
To block my soul from truth You would impart.

Upon myself in fear I inward turn,
Do not surrender to your truth without—
Results in body’s aches and pains that burn
Away my hope—despair, presumption shout.
                                                                                     
Yet, finally of the future I let go
As Catholic Church connects me with the One
Proclaimed in Scripture so that I can know
That He who came in me is Only Son
Who lives in Church in Body and His Blood
To save me from myself and make me good.

A bogus mercy Devil gives
     To let us have our way:
A counterfeit to “I forgive”
When sin in us holds sway.

We’re fooled by him that wrong is right
     And world cooperates,
As through our flesh spreads Devil’s blight
     With death as our sin’s fate.

But pride in our sin will be killed
     By Jesus on His Cross;
Humility from Him will fill
     Our hearts when our sin’s lost.

And Devil writhes in his defeat
     When Jesus rises up—
Says, “I forgive” from mercy seat;
     “On Me come now and sup.

At altar come to eat and drink
     Through font of my new life,
And on my truth you now can think
     When I end Devil’s strife.” 

Like burning incense Jesus comes
With Spirit’s fire to burn within
The useless chaff so we become
In Him who we have always been.

The Devil in us worked his way,
So we have fallen for his lies
And let him in us, had his say,
And with his coils he has us tied.

Then with His fire He burns those coils
So we are free of Devil’s grip,
As Devil’s plans in us He foils,
And we from Devil’s grasp have slipped.

Son picks us up on Spirit’s wings
To live with Him by Father’s side,
And here on earth we’re meant to sing
Of Trinity with us abides.

For in His love He dwells with us
On earth that’s heaven’s ante-room,
And He in us now places trust
To heaven shine through earthly gloom.

Then through the earth we all can see
His Eden New where He lives here
In hearts forever on their knees,
Where Spirit casts out all our fears. 

Come, wrap me up with love within
That I can know what should have been
     Had sin not intervened.
May I feel love I never knew,
Begin to live my life anew
     As in Your arms I lean.

With inside mantle change my face
That others in me see Your grace
     And sing with me Your song.
May all of us through endless days
Sing to Your Trinity our praise,
     For with You we belong.

In barren desert waste, I thirst
For water from the Spring of life
Raised from His grave on day the first;
He bathed our darkness with His light.

My thirst within by Him is quenched
As I am cleansed from Adam’s sin,
And my heart is by Son’s light drenched—
Creates me new; I’m born again.

Through me His water now can flow
To flood the land with grace abounds
That all the world may in Him know
That Eden’s East is Holy Ground.