No More Closed Doors

I'm not surprised you hide in there
For fear of finding truth
Inside of doubt.

Will you come out to face the sun?

One hundred years have now been won
And will be fought for more to come.
There are open doors that close
On those who shut them first.

Will you come out to break the curse?

To show them that the worst
Is over when books are closed
And opened fast and read beyond
The broken past.

Come out for all to see at last.

Human Nature

Your face turns a deathly pale
As winter bleeds through
Your fingernails and toes.

The bodies that were drowned before
Have lost their color, soaked in
All that couldn't last

But even they do not look back.

The ones that see the tops of trees
Leaving what they know as home
To dodge the deadliest attack

But never once do they look back.

Some of them strip themselves to bone
And risk the snapping sounds of death
For just the chance to live again.

While others dig their graves for warmth,
Waiting inside a starving hole
For the future coming fast

And even then they don't look back.

But you and I and all we are,
With arrogance of mind and heart
Will stab each other from behind.

On a Hill Behind Our House

Once in the winter I hid in the shed.
The one that dad turned into a playhouse
And put up on pallets
When the ground would get cold.

I wrapped up in a quilt your grandmother made
And pretended the wooden bench
Was a bed I'd sleep on for days.

My plexi-glass breath helped pass the time
Which felt like forever
But I knew it was minutes.
I only was sure that I suffered alone
And what could you know?

The fox we had seen the autumn before
Drew a map in the snow
And asked me to follow him
Into the woods, to where we had laughed
So hard we were sore.

It was only a look that split me apart
As I struggled to breathe and
He fell to his knees.

I wasn't afraid of freezing to death.
I'd die there of hunger just not to forget.

The Bones of a Bird

The holy ghost is out on loan
Inside of what it couldn't break,
More than just the marrow's bone.

A check-out card that's carved in stone
So red birds know they'll never take
For the holy ghost is out on loan.

A pleading voice comes through the phone
And begs and begs for him to make
Her more than just the marrow's bone.

The answer rings in darkest tone
Startling all around to wake
'The holy ghost is out on loan'.

For what could he have to atone?
Filling the empty shelves with snakes
And more than just the marrow's bone.

We are alive but much alone
But written there just for our sake,
The holy ghost is out on loan
With more than just the marrow's bone.