Fist and Fire
I came running from the dustbowl sand, twenty seasons in my bloodstained hands. A fistful of secrets wrapped up in my name, a heart of a preacher's son I can't explain.
Free to reign with a pistol in tow, what is peace when the fight comes close? I've stayed the course with my violent charades. My skin won't grow loose from age.
Here it comes again...Fist and fire
Fisticuffs meet Philistines, our shadows on the wall. Marching in a silent sleep, but dreaming none at all. Good is hidden by the living, and war is now our friend. The devil cried, then the devil lied and stole our souls again.
Ghosts
I know you see, I know you see I’m changing. Losing the wars that all my ghosts keep waging. Looking for time, looking for time they took in the fields. The treasures I owned are the treasures they stole and now they’re concealed.
Stay in love with me. I know we keep losing ground. Questions follow me: can all of the lost be found?
I know I keep, I know I keep on waiting. Waiting for what, that I’m still contemplating. Am I to live, am I to live as if it’s over? It’s only begun but now I have grown, I’ve grown much colder.
Whole wide world looking for time to pass. The ghosts may come and the ghosts may last...
Brothers
Truth came calling for you my friend. Truth came calling for me. It’s home now lives right between the skin. But this house will divide by a truth with two names, with the crest of a gun that sharpens its blade. There is pain in the blood and prayers compromised, where’s the kiss from the dove, not hate in the eyes?
In our days we fight to save a truth we cannot be. In our nights we’re brothers tossed by waves upon the sea
We came calling for you my friend. You came calling for me. We’re crowned by light that reveals the sin. Through the fields and the flames and the harbinger’s mane, march we on by the call of the soldiers we claim. Will we dance in the heat that gives us a scar? Will we kill just to see what brothers we are?
In our days we fight to save a truth we cannot be. In our nights we’re brothers tossed by waves upon the sea. In our hearts we will roam, we will roam on
Solve for X
...and in the end I'm reduced to a friend, a private in your regime, a cog in your machine. Analyze the variance and parse out the parts that remind you of me. The pressure in my blood descends and I collapse, autopsy: "benign anomaly." There's no axis of you and me, we don't intercept, we approach infinity.
Calculate and solve for x. Or to the mean we will regress. No algorithm; deconvolve our hearts. I was once, now I'm twice removed from you.
Unknown Symphony
Lady Grace, are we chosen, lost, embraced? Veils of trust, are we living dust to dust?
Unknown Symphony
Saints to sin, will you sing your whisper wind? Grow, children grow. Write the symphony unknown.
A Wolf In Sheep’s Clothing
I’m gonna join the picket line. I’m gonna protest the feelings in your heart. I know the truth from a lie, I’m a human polygraph. You’re a debutant, I’m a field-hand. Mill your glass heart ‘til it’s reduced to sand. In the panopticon of your inner monologue, I am psychoanalyzing every “um” and “ah”
Just when you think you know someone, you find yourself looking down the barrel of their gun.
How do you fall asleep at night when the god you pray to is the price is right? When friends are for using, backs are for stabbing, words are for lying, hearts are for bleeding. Conceal the seeds of doubt you sew, but mighty oaks from little acorns grow. Your path is winding, your footing is failing, your eyes deceive you and no one believes you …
I’m the ammunition in your smear campaign. I’m the crux in your conscience only guilt can explain. Torment without pain, I hold the reigns of what’s right and true and just…
Life of August
From your blood comes your name. Let it flow, let if flow. Kingdoms fall but hope reclaims. This I know, this I know.
Love is near when fear resides. So live to run and cease to hide. If there’s storms in your sea, bind your heart next to me
Haloes come in many forms. They will show, they will show. Harvest reaps just what it is you sow, so give your heart, make it grow.
Now I lay me down to sleep, pray the Lord my soul to keep. Should I die before I wake, pray the Lord my soul to take.
Where Are You?
Oh, I wish I could, oh, I wish I could feel like that I could know. Looking for someone, looking for someone to come down and save my soul. All the bells have been tolling for the good and low. And the fear that I felt when they came, hoping I am not alone, in the center...
Is Heaven to be lost, Heaven to be lost long before it has been found? Searching for someone, searching for someone stronger than the silence now. Strangers peer through the windows, in and out they go. And the fear that I felt when they came, hoping I am not alone, in the center...
In the center
Where are you?
Fight of Flee
Fight or I flee with my breath a being, choice of free or prison’d ends. I wish to live with my heart a’ beating, so grows the seed and sin. Caller of men, I've leapt from the table, keeper of souls kept in a cradle. Holding a gun as if I were Caesar, fighting the times so I no longer feed her.
I feel the weight of the calling, but into whose hands we’re falling? I feel the weight of the calling, but will this calm more than the seas?
Garden of my good and evil, fights among these hallowed calls. Faith and truth lie in whose keeping, buried ‘neath these weeping walls? Men of the ages spoke through the pages, fruit from the tree of life. Storms came to brothers, then split asunder, prayers for the good and wise.
Primer of peace you call, as if you want it all.
Ashtray Floor
Bowed your head, but questioned, "Why God is silent when goodness dies?" The years have grown, but the pain it poured, collecting tears upon ashtray floors.
Don’t you bury all your shadows in the kingdom come. They don’t vary, tombs don’t carry your rising sun.
You have stones in your throw, flung at those that you love the most. Is this the way that war atones? For hell has crawled right in your bones?
Grab your noose and hang it on that tree. Sing complacency’s elegies. And as it dangles it will call out to you. Wave your banner, wave it through and through.
Harvest from the youthful flood, skies unleashed before the calming gun. Hallowed halls of life that’s still unseen, raging peace still yearns for its release. Pearls of price, your sound advice: Come home.
LCH
Leroy Chesterton woke up all alone. Wrapped in the moonlight that broke into his home. The sweat he wore from visions in his head were dreams of loved ones who wrestled with the dead. They sang:
Goodbye Father war is calling, goodbye Father Lee. The choir’s called where fear is law, so sing a psalm for me. Goodbye.
Leroy Chesterton waited all alone, waited for his sons to come tell him they were home. The sun will set today, but he will never know what they saw on those fields far below.