My heart’s happiness is trapped in my chest like a red-breasted bird whose vocal cords are shot. His dumb fate blocks him from singing out the songs of lament locked inside his throat, while numbing memories of the unrepeatable songs of praise he once sang as a chirping little one mock him mercilessly. The bird’s fixed idea of how impossibly filled with grace he used to be imprisons him in the silver cages of yearning. His magnetized mind takes flight from the muted now to the musical back then, and he feels no desire to come down. He feels the fire and the magic have forsaken him, and he aches to hear aloud the latent notes Time has pushed down to some hidden crevice of his being. He has gone deaf to the ever-present, everlasting Silence, which asks without force to inhabit him from the inside. Lord of bird and beast, let there be purpose and will to this creature’s suffering. Let him still rise and glide through the skies; let him still dive-bomb the earth; let him still play the role of high-flying bird, tied down though he is to the flights of his powerful reveries, left pining and unheard in his severed world of silence.
Author: Brian
Inside the pages of night’s book
I wake in the evenings in this season of my life, an hour or two after the sun has gone down. I sit at the desk at night, and I lie back down as the sun climbs up the sky. I wake in the supple arms of a darkness distinct from every other darkness that has come before it, so why should I, and how could I, stay the same, as if I am not subject to the same law that keeps the seasons changing? The law of invisible evidence tells me I too am distinct, but not separate. No space exists between my essence and the presence of night, for I rest inside the pages of night’s book. It is a good night to stay within these lines.
Lend me courage
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Lend me courage, Lord and Master, to enter the stillness with a willing acceptance of my lack, and yet with fullness of hope that I might someday inhabit the castle at the center of my soul. Light your lantern in this dim forest, this thick Amazon, or give me the will to wait here until you do, until you take my hand in the dark night and lead me through. Until my trust in you is complete, I will pray in my thirst to embrace whatever roadblocks you place in my path. I will not pray for easy fulfillment of my every dispersed desire. I will not pray to complacently retire from the world of strife, the world of violence rife with polluted minds and tortured hearts. I will not pray for immediate and everlasting freedom from the enemy battalions whose only mission is to topple the towers of virtue in my own heart. I know the battle will go on for a long time. And as long as it does, I will pray only this: to always hold in my soul’s steady hands the double-edged sword of passionate discernment, in order to understand which cords of my bound original nature it is my task to cut through, and which of these cords I must leave for you.
I Walked The Streets at Midnight
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I walked the streets at midnight
I knew that you were near
I can walk these streets till I die of thirst
I know you will never appear
Everyone tells me to settle down
But I know I must persevere
I will walk this endless road forever
As a lonesome pioneer
So when it’s Saturday night in the city
And you sit there all alone
And the tears stream down your lovely face
I pray you don’t pick up the phone
To try and reach me in your hunger
From your opulent penthouse throne
In the center of 5th and Broadway
Never again will I hear you moan
Now all the noise in the world
Could never take me away
From my purpose and vital passion
Where to succeed is to be led astray
I stay true to the work of wandering
And my torn shoes are my resume
I submit them to the proper authorities
Who send me on my way
But loneliness comes around again
And some nights it will not leave
The morning will come but in too long
On these nights I cannot believe
In God or Man or in myself
All I’ve lost I will never retrieve
The lonely heart is a hunter of yearning
It does not need permission to grieve
I get up and walk the streets at midnight
And there’s nowhere I need to go
Nowhere is as good a place as any
I’ve been there before, I would know
I will not stop; no, I will not rest
‘Till Truth rests deep in my marrow
With an empty wallet and an empty heart
I walk on the way rivers flow
I want you to give me the key
I want you to give me the key that opens the door to the room where there is no ‘I’ and there is no ‘You.’ You want me to hold the final hour of my life in the wholeness hidden in the center of my chest, whether it is midnight or midday. You want me to tend the dove you send, and take the olive branch, when it lands at my feet, not as symbol but as fact. I want to rest my left cheek on your lap. I want to see each one of your creatures in the same warm light out of which she appears, your daughter, my close companion in the night. You want me to stand alone by the strength of your name. You want me to breathe on the ember and restore the flame. I want you to break my fixed belief in the immortality of my brokenness. I want you to give me back my unspeakable name. You want me to leave the judgment up to you. You want me to fall on my knees, struck dumb by the truth, undone by remorse for the thousands of hard dark-blue nights in which I failed to call on your mercy. I want you to warn me when I’ve nearly reached the gates of hell. I want you to teach me how to earn your help. You want me to realize I can never deserve what Forever freely gives. You want me to live in the room where only the dying and the risen live. I want you to give me the key that opens the door.
Prayer: Do not let me fall prey
Do not let me fall prey to the mechanical animal in my brain that calls me away from you. It looks and acts the same in me as it does in any caged creature. This beast is always ready to sever links with its human family, being altogether in pieces already, at the mercy of the crashing seas of circumstance. It cannot remain at home on its own shores, nor can it bask for long beneath the strong rays of another’s sun, for it lacks both an anchor to hold it steady, and an ark to take it safely across the river. Hone this loss-addicted, lusterless machine. Release the cold hand from panicked demands for another’s warmth, so the man can remember whose hand holds the key. Though I am eons from any final clarity, let disparity itself become fuel. Do not let the mud of confusion bury the blessing, but let the perishing puddles evaporate into the western wind; and, as the sun begins to set, let the spirit of beauty spearhead my inward evolution.
Please, let me sing
Let me not deplete my strength attacking the thick vines behind which my head, bed-ridden with the sickness of words, hides from the living world. Instead of seeking peace by means of increasing violence, let me breathe deeply into the heart’s vaulted silence. Let the work be accomplished in this private canyon, which the clean red rivers in my veins continually carve. Let the refined Will find me upright and still: quiet enough to hear the cries of a crumbling spirit for guidance and clarity; honest enough to number myself among the hungry, the fearful, and the helpless; humble enough to fling myself at the feet of my Lord and beg, Please, let me sing.
Prayer: Lost in the silence
Lost in the silence, oppressed by want before the sun rises, I haunt the borders of my heart, sucking my hitchhiker’s thumb, greedy for milk from a substitute mother, hungry to be held. I struggle with ancient luggage, too heavy to carry alone. Strum on the strings of my heart, reassure me of your presence. Wait for my voice in the morning, and I’ll wait for yours at night. Let me speak as if you are with me, sitting poised across the table, able to respond in kind. In the heat of time I blind myself to your mercy. I fold with a full house, go all-in with a ten-four. I drift in a cloud that holds nothing else. Drop me into the ark again. Send me down to my place when somehow I end up at the helm, awakening to the shouts of deckhands, Captain, sir, it’s high time we get moving. You know I don’t know what the hell I am doing. I never learned to read the currents. I need so much help to reach the calm seas and clear skies. I entrust your law to guide this ship through flood and fog. I stand in position on the leeward deck. Now take complete control, and steer this hull to the distant shores of my soul.
Prayer: Let your wisdom swim through my skin
Let your wisdom swim through my skin like the breath in my lungs, like fish in the sea, like a school of dolphins taking turns at the lead. Lead me out of the shallows, into the deep. Play your hallowed verses through the wounds in my flesh, and let your music release the sobs in my chest. In the sealed room, in the healing darkness of morning, let me learn anew what it means to keep my heart center open.
Love, kill now my best intentions
Love, kill now my best intentions. Will me into your presence, with gentle guidance or with firm control. Place the bread on my plate and forgive my hesitation, my demand for something else to eat, my rejection of your gift, my abandonment of your tender touch that never abandons me. Grant me the clarity not to avert my eyes from the unrelenting stare of my dying, but rather to widen my heart to include both sides of the balanced scale. Let the events of the day be the daily pill I take to make me well. Help me to hold both the precious dove resting on the olive branch, and the hungry vultures circling the charnel grounds, inside your balanced heart, which cannot grow bitter, which cannot be harmed.
Brian Leibold 