The agonies that stang awake
In solitude they prod the weather-beaten heart.
An outcry for lost love
In hope it can again be found.

The lips that crack, the tongue can soothe,
Only to let the liquid of your spit
Be evaporated in the cold and evanescent air
And your own soul’s water be depleted.

The cavernous hole your bleeding chest aches
To let another soul find rest therein.
These calls that welcome, become a plea
For someone, ANYone to come fill me.

The organ plays to fill a church
With painful piercing chords that filet my hurt.
Can the flood of beautiful sound drown woes
That clutch the mast and rise again in silent calm?

Trust breaks over me like glass
Upon a hardened shale piece cut from the mountain.
It shatters and makes a weapon not to be handled
By a child whose hand has never been sliced open.

Cries muffled by a pillow make my scream
A softened surrounds for a golden needlepoint.
The heightened sense of the sheets around my head
Swim noisily as I bury myself in them.

Such noise is the song of fissures in the fabric of our bosoms
Where friends beloved come and go, and good men break their word
The powders of such explosive interruption
Are loaded in a canon aimed for the hull of nearby vessels.

“Friend or Foe?” I cry aloft
But feign to hear their polite reply.
How can they know my ship will sink
If they board and take not the greatest care?

For in these waters, all men are pirates.
Their colors or flag make little difference.
I, a pirate like them, have a vessel of goods
And none to transport to, since I have no bay.

What’s this? A ship sailing less a standard.
‘Tis white! A great white shark no doubt.
To seem to play weak, only to prove the briggand
And use their own canon when drawn in close.

But nay, the song aboard their ship,
A song of thanks spills onto the waves.
As they pull in tighter, they cast me a line.
And pray we may lee our ships in tow.

My fever heightened, but my anxiousness was lightened.
My wonder was dazzled, and my canon upturned.
A song of my own filled up to join theirs,
Though a sharp eye, I kept lest they catch me unaw’res.

Twas the song of the humble I learned in that day.
From these once pirates, who had learned a new way.
To sail thankful and sharing, on the sea of the king.
And join ships that were starving, and feigned to be mean.

My bow broke waves and liberated spray.
My canon unloaded was pointed off the stern.
My cargo stores replenished from the friendship learned.
My own royal colors retracted and His white flag displayed.

To trust, and to wait on the Maker who is good,
To look with love on the people He came to save.
To chart out new seas, knowing this thing for sure.
He is the Captain of every Soul who surrenders to Him.

O Lord, my tired hull is heavy with precious cargo.
I fear none will take before it rots away.
Please show me that I matter to You,
And give me a fellow heart with whom to share this load.