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.
Copyright © David Smalling | Year Posted 2012
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