noose

if i commit suicide Lord

will you hold me in the noose

let me swing in the breeze of comfort

drop me gently to the floor?

i awaited your visitation

but patience met my fiend

anxiety won the argument 

and dead is how i swing

may my face register peace

as i enter into your door

hug me in your light

dark has been my life

despair they'll say

midst thin anger and tears

but you alone know

the things i couldn't say

my words held back

against a dam of concrete stares

so now i swing loose

arms and legs falling free

entering into your paradise

on this noose which set me free

having let myself go  

falling into your arms a prayer

*Voice Lesson

out of a suitable

silence, a cave

perhaps, a mist

you come to

the awe

hiding in loneliness

out of infinite

attention to nothing

above

or beyond you

you

sound

-Jerry Schroeder, Cap.

*Some people don't want to know of the presence of personal demons: they pretend not to know even when they do know.  And there are others whose consciousness merely dances around the edges of their dark-side reality all their lives.  Those folk never step close enough to look even one demon in the eye.

-Sidney Poitier