Anyhow, I'll probably post several more poems as they come to me, but here are two that I wrote in notes on Facebook and I figured I'd go ahead and leave them here.
Dogs, We Are, a Dog for Me
Dogs, we are, all in captivity
Many bark and bound to mistress vanity
Others of us heel to reasonable sanity
And a few still sniff for our lost divinity
Dogs, we are, coming to our masters
Heads bowed low begging for peace
"Give us, oh please, scraps from your dinners
Pity us in this short life we lease"
Dogs, He called us, for dogs we are
Wandering out in this dark street
Barred we were from His wedding bar
For from His table we ran like harlots in heat
Cast from Eden, we run and head east
Empty and hungy seeking our own feast
But, dogs we are and once again we sit
Returning to lick up our own sick vomit
Yet, while I, a dog, ran and ran
Down He came, a dog He became
And a dog He gave me, colored tan
A golden, white
A precious delight
She, a dog, loved this poor fool
Licked and cleaned me with warm drool
My golden sought me wherever my lost heart went
Down she'd lay her head by my seat
A living sign of eternal love at my feet
For love was her way until I could see
The Master who came as a dog for me.
To All That is Real
There is story beyond time and space
Telling a truth that is often effaced
To a heart that has stopped its race
Forgotten, but not false, a word not contrived
Tales and myths, old and jaded
Speak of a world unseen
But so often now left only to be decreed
As naught but fables of an escapist bein’
Night no longer frees the dreams
Of a World too true to be seen
Drowned are they by the jeering screams
Of medicine laced with an artificial sheen
That hides from us its plastic nicotine
Right, they may seem to rule the dark
But wrought in their governance
Is the seed that smothers our Spark
And all that light is unable to hark
Us back from this sorcerous trance
Woven, weaved out of the heart it springs
Splitting our minds into contrary themes
Concupiscent cravings to be our own kings
We forge a hell alone with no dreams
When will we hear again
The voice in the calm of the mighty wind
That, like the molten setting sun
Melts the stony hearts of men
If yet we be stilled,
Awed anew by the Deep night with no din
We will behold again the once killed
Fearsome Light given unto men.
The First poem, Dogs We Are, has multiple points. First, and foremost, it is about my golden retriever who died about year and half ago right after I think I came to know Christ for the first time in my life. In many ways, I feel like she was given to me as a symbol of His love until I came to know Him. When she died, I knew instinctively, her work was done and God had truly given her with the purpose to love me unconditionally as a sign of God's eternal love to those who He calls His own.
Second point, had more to do with the first part of the poem. We are dogs in a very real sense, and we act like dogs in comparison to the humanity and divinity God has given us (notice, I could have used the word humanity in the first stanza, but left it out). In fact, Jesus at one point in his ministry is begged to come heal the daughter of a gentile and Jesus replies that gentiles are like Dogs coming to His table.
Once I heard a preacher expounding upon this passage along these lines, but went further to say that not only are we like dogs, but Christ himself took the place of us, who are dogs. So in a very real sense, though we are gentiles, Christ came to take the place of us, who are dogs, cast from the covenant of God and long since unreconciled to him, so that we could be one with Him again. What a beautiful truth!
Second poem is a bit more complex and probably not written exactly expressing the thoughts I wanted to express, but hey, it was my first shot at it. Overall, I was trying to describe the state of humanity when we lose our ability to dwell and imagine upon the beauty of reality. Reality is not simply a machine of natural actions that most of our world seems to believe; it is full of things that go beyond simple naturalism and into the spiritual. We often divide the spiritual and that which can be physically known and we end up dividing our minds into two seperate themes. In many ways, we don't allow what are imagination and hearts know to be somehow, someway real into the realm of actual possibilities. Ultimately, we shut off the very incarnation of Christ by doing this, dissallowing us to see what Christ did in His coming as man yet still fully divine. He's proven that they are not seperate, we don't just live in a world of shadows of true reality and beauty or a world of only hard and fast reality, but one that is deeply physical and real yet also fully spiritual. Both our imagination and reason must be combined to see the world God has given us rightly.
