The red tattoo

My heart is a zillion whirlpools

spinning in symphonic chaos.

I race 'tween doubt and doubt

to touch one second of assurance

enough to push me through the gate.

The twisted road of his'try

where the sure and the lame are halt,

is the only trail homeward

where You stand at the door.

There I'm Yours, all Yours

a tattoo upon Your arm

written, "Mine, all Mine",

my name inked in red.

No mad eyes rolling out of sockets

no putrid anger torching the toxined air

but You, a Door-jam Daddy,

eyeing the distant past

awaiting my return from the stockyards

where I fashioned a house of filth

midst the stick horses of the world.

Tis there You stand

searching the far-off vista

as bedraggled I come, remembering

Your tattoo writ in red.

*Thoughts of Alan Jones:

  -Penthos or compunction is the way believers accept both the judgement and the mercy simultaneously.  The gift of tears is a sign of the mending of creation.  We and the world are on the mend when we wake up to our deep desire and longing for God.  We wake up to the fact that God reigns.

  -In order for me to have an accurate sense of who I am, I must also have a sense of limits and order in my life.  Life without borders, with no reason why I should do one things rather than another is, in the end, destructive.

  -To be truly free we have to be accountable, to be able to answer for ourselves and our actions.  A world that has no place for us to lay our burden of guilt (the real not the neurotic kind), and which allows no possibility of our expressing gratitude and joy, is s deeply broken one.  It is a world over which one would spontaneously weep.