Here I Stand

Here I stand Where the golden image rise A Babel Bowed before its feet And music like eternity Etherized the skies. The cost, the cost, the cost of it The surging pain of love's betrayal I cannot put it down again. I must stand, I must proclaim God stretched out on wood, Bids me enter too the flame. Shall I flinch Because you claim the power over fire I am branded already deep Far, far, below the papyrus of skin Look for my belief. Here I stand A burning bush unburning me Shoeless, behold my naked soul Your only look at fired gold. I cannot otherwise then than stand For I have sought it sleepless This faith clutched tight by night This hope longing to breathe From traditions strangle hold I searched for it And found only history wrong A majority self-drunken with fear And I the prey Before the predator's dismay. Here I stand Against the lies of swaggering tongues And foolish worship of gender norms And self blinded by self pity Staggering drunk Impeaching innocence By night's dead deceit, robbing truth Of right before accusers invisible. I have walked the fire's gut alone Felt its venom wrenching gut and bone But out I come to stand again A better man Without the baggage of the profane. Here I stand, By the invisible mediator's grace Silent while the angels acquit my case.