Brave Speech Stumbles Toward Morning

Brave speech stumbles toward morning
Midnight’s velvet music echoing in the pillow’d rose night
Moon's stifled arm casts aside her orange billowing sheets
Rocky dusk wears pitched and bleeding wings
rising from the roseate diffusion
Blind dawn stammers forth
Brave speech stumbles forth into the morning dew.

Air, brown and dusty, swallows the jagged edges,
Flickering in grey and white.
I cannot read her signs
She fades into the mist…

The devil’s diamond fingertips
Scrape the parched earth
Which bleeds in furrow, flood and rivulet,
Lowering speckled clouds crumble.

The sky hammers out a thunderous music
Boulders shatter/ the devil rages more…
Mountains fly into dull powder
Evening filters and sips afternoon’s greens and reds then
Races to twilight.

Roaring proudly as a lion,
Tossing the earth on her side like a little toy.

Now we have it---the long awaited apocalypse.

Music for the end of the world
Incessant hammer cracking
Roaring Vulcan armies spark stars in endless circuit,
Earth entire, dipped into a Lake of Fire.

Mankind one in its hopeless song:
“Who can equal the screaming force of the monster
born in the bowels of earth?”

Convulsed, muttering whimpering after the banquet
“We are weak and despicable worms,
whom if Thou deign to merit grace, oh come and save us!”

Christ, call forth your legion of Armies and appear in Glory.
Christ, dear Lamb, Save me now, my heart is crying
The battle is raging…

Brave grey tumblers roll on, the tide recedes and afternoon marches,
Sun with his streaming sword has slashed open the sky,

Water down, healing water purify the streets, flood my soul.
Free me from my ignorance, heal me, take me into your sweet arms, my Savior.