I cannot reveal all my sins,
only God knows their damage
and the gravity lying within.
It is a list filled to overflowing
Greater than the unredeemed and unknowing.
But in humble penance,
God pours in grace,
bringing back an ancient purity,
a reflection of love and tenderness,
reborn in traceless sincerity.
So now I watch all my words,
I tame the body and its impulses,
letting silent conscience instruct me,
teaching me what virtue knows.
I entrust myself to God’s hand
that guides me in everything,
I strip my mind of all vile thoughts and vice
And live anew, blessed on the shores of Paradise.
As entity in the dream we conjure
we know not we are both the dreamer and dreamed
how then may we wake up when we are in trance
In bondage to illusions we ourselves streamed
In hopes of escaping a reality that is unredeemed
How do we exchange one prison for another
Even if one seems better than the other
In hopes of finding peace
or something as rare as a Golden Fleece
A sea of imagines and illusions
A hope and a goal
What truly is a dream?
I was born in a landlocked getaway town
Where all the colors were black, gray, or brown.
Jobs at the steel mill were ratcheting down.
It was not in my future to stay.
So, I took a long walk off a very short pier,
An unschooled, untraveled recruit buccaneer
On a quest to cross Neptune’s vast salty frontier.
Hopped a slow boat to China one day.
Underway on the Crescent City, it seemed
The ocean was wider than I’d ever dreamed.
A ship load of sinners, our souls unredeemed
Steaming west toward whatever there was.
Keelung told Hong Kong to call Singapore.
Subic Bay badgered Mombasa for more.
Sea legs, as always unsteady ashore,
Even more so with liquor and drugs.
Bilge water sloshed in the depths of the hold.
The mizzen mast learned what the typhoon foretold.
I was sea duty tempered and Shell Back enrolled;
Wasn’t nothing but maritime norm.
I was born in a hard luck blue collar town.
Half the way broken and half the way down.
But time gifts its renaissance scepter and crown
To a jack tar who’s weathered the storm.
Holy hearts
Set apart
All bond, caught up
In emotions
Heart skins dried out need some lotion
Unsettled mine
Unredeemed time
Circumcised dreams themed nightmare
Harden skins dried out harden love
Loves not... need some lotion
Not at all bonded caught up
In unemotional set apart Holy heart
6/23/23
Written words by James Edward Lee Sr © 2023
The other side
of knowing
A padlocked world
of dreams
Whose key is tattooed
on my hope
Till opened
unredeemed
A treasure chest
of wisdom
Whose prescience
zero sum
Instinct crowned
in jewels of fire
Burning
—to become
(Dreamsleep: May, 2023)
Are you hiding inside your writing,
making it impossible to see what you mean
Camouflaged words based on muddled intent,
to confound, confuse, or mislead
Is it cryptic or gibberish in nature,
your attempt to impress with your scheme
Are your words still unlived as you write them all down
—unpurposed and left unredeemed
(Villanova Pennsylvania: March, 2020)
'You are the tea leaves I am the teapot
I the tiny snowflake and you the snow’
This is how the essence of life shuffles
Forth and past you and me.
I am the head you are the crown
Making me feel the king
Of our fancy land, in which
The subjects were but two, you and me,
Who owed allegiance to whom
Remained still unredeemed.
Beaming down from the sky
You are the sunlight, gushing down
Towards the mother earth
In a flow of transparent bright,
I the rainbow, beset with your rhyme,
Proclaim my adoration for the sky
Only on days rainy, by embracing
It tightly in my seven-colored wings
To save it blushes in its dress-up gloomy.
You are the gold I am its ornament
You are the verse which hides in me
To make me glitter and
Give me a feel angelic.
I am the rose you are its smell
Who's the one who'd
In its contentment versify
To make the other get its due?
A life that thirsts for the other
Is incomplete in its solitude,
A body and soul enshrined in one
Is a deed that captures the life
In the essence of its being.
‘You are the tea leaves I am the teapot I the tiny snowflake and you the snow’
Ode to Mum by Maria Williams
I am full
Of emptiness
I long for longing
Crave contentment
The insensate pain
Of intangible touch
Indecipherable ciphers
Choreographed madness
Craggy comfort
Of blunt condolence
The decorum of anarchy
Deserted crowds, social solitude
Miles given to intercept steps
At the dawn of abundance
I see only
bones of ghosts
Whose meager admonishment
I forgot to unlearn
Unredeemed
And unrepentant
I am in love
With loneliness.
9/20/19
decayed as corrosion seeks a way to abort fear
into realms of subconscious oblivion-
seeking what needs to be seen, I gaze only at sights
ahead that lead to redemption;
enlaced and cuddled inside burlap (craving silk)
needing only one seal to close a letter to pain,
but you attach anguish inside the envelope in case;
signed with a signature from...
you
I sit confused; contorted-
I awoke this morn with silent dreams;
startled from all that delivers what might have been-
disconcerted with remorse I am left muddled and
confounded in a cave of self-pity and weakness,
trying to align my soft heart with a harmonizing
aria of brilliant tears, longing not to shed;
astonished and filled with surprise I close my eyes-
I see the my dusk meant for dawn in the eastern skies
August 24, 2019
Ten word Challenge 1 Poetry Contest
Kai Michael Neumann
Finish the Work
John 4:34-35 KJV
Adapted: by Tom Wright
12/18/2014
The granary isn’t near overflowing,
Room exists for all who’d yield.
The need for Jesus is forever growing,
To reach the chaff yet in His field;
With fields white and near the reaping,
Let’s gather fruit unto eternal life.
The time is not for ease and sleeping,
When God’s fields are laying rife;
So let us reap what another planted,
Laboring for Jesus while it’s still day.
Getting the unredeemed transplanted,
Unto Jesus, for there is no other way;
I have sown the seed of faith,
And have reaped the harvest that came to be.
Thank You Jesus!
Tom
The hell with anything
You have to say
You never loved me
Not even one damn day
Nothing that you ever said
Had any substance
I was a fool for being so reluctant
The warnings in front of me
That reflected you and I
Were never meant to be
Now I am in an unredeemed abyss
Because I’ve strayed
From marital bliss
In my heart I knew that
You were always a great risk
Where do I venture from here?
After all the squandered years
I must learn how to forgive
The agony I’ve endured
All the while you misused
My devotion and certainty
Now I know I’ve had enough
Of the abuse you inflicted on me
I just wish I could see
Of what my future is to be
Greater is He
Written: by Miracle Man
7/31/2017
For twenty eight years I withered on the vine,
Without the bread of life to satisfy my hunger;
I had relegated Jesus to a spot on the sideline,
Having lost whatever desire I had when younger.
God cleansed my heart, and took my stench,
And filled me with a burden for the unredeemed;
So now the Holy Spirit I no longer quench,
And life is much easier than once it seemed.
Today, I’m just an old sinner saved by grace,
Who was living each day as he thought it should be.
I’ve moved from the sty to a better place,
After realizing one existed greater than me.
The Unredeemed
There are flashes when my liberal views falter
and I ask myself, these people like Breivik and
the killers in Ankara and Paris would it not be
better to shoot them down like rabbit dogs?
my loathing for them is boundless but I will not
shot them and not ask other to do the killing
in my name or in the name of humanity.
Behind their fanaticism their hatred to a society
that will not listen to their rantings; there must
an inner voice telling them how despicable they
are, perhaps not today in the flames of hate, but
In time in their cell, they will ask for forgiveness
only to find stillness a mist of their breath and
they cannot forgive themselves.
San Francisco, the City by the Bay; an enticing treasure;
relocating with family, I found it
Appealing to all ages.
Nesting there; moving forward in this City of unlimited
possibilities. It has
Fascinating cultural diversity; people and places make up
its foundation. You can
Ride a bike, drive a car, or take public transportation;
getting around, made simple, having everything in place.
Appetizing, fragrant dishes; eating is never boring in this
town.
No sites unseen; playing tourist, losing time unredeemed,
where
Cable Cars speed up and down; tourists hold on for dear life,
to prevent falling out. You find
International visitors posing at sites, asking friendly locals to
snap their pictures.
Spending time with family and friends; adding to treasured
memories, then
Coming back home to resume my life; treasures are stored
in their special place.
Once in a while, I take them out; wondering, to what degree
this beautiful City has enriched my life.
We try to forget those who harm
With words which cause us alarm..
For it rankles within,
May even cause sin.
Like a snake which may bite or may charm.
A festering wound must be cleaned
The poison is otherwise a fiend.
The cut may give pain,
But while pus remains
Septicaemia lurks unredeemed.
And as with the body,the soul.
Poison will spoil thus the whole.
We must loosen our hold;
Our resentments unfold.
To perceive all, we must now become bold
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