At war with an enemy we build, from our shadows, of dust, and creaky floors.
Gods versus heathens, our hearts and our minds, are both lost inside open doors.
In the scabbards we wear at our waists, these weapons we think that we own.
Wielding hearts toward the battle, we stifle the rattle, of the fear in our heartbeat’s moan.
On our tongues the memory of blood, we taste the ghosts in our ancestors’ robes.
Our armor can’t fit, and our fears we remit, as we dress in our parents’ clothes.
The teeth gnaw at our imaginations, as they nibble at our weak repose
We are awkwardly fitting, and dauntingly sitting, as we live in another’s abode.
On rocky ground and on two trembling legs, that are uncertain as they shake.
Between the light and the dark, the truth and the fiction, we trip up the ladder that breaks.
One can only fall forward, making paths with trembling footprints
Clad in monotone gray, we choose not to say, what’s in our heart in its state of tense.
We want to laugh into the darkness, cackling wonton at unsure facts.
Another choice to shed tears, that can’t water roots, shedding life their solitary act.
Our minds were built to falter, and so it is that they do.
Our safety belt is the divine, our struggle in mind, as the lies our souls see straight through.
For a home on the horizon uncertain, holy hopes in imagined films,
The dirt under our nails says that progress was made, as the brambles rip stitches from hems.
Worn more by the rain than the stone, we keep digging grinned faced and shrill
This life earned at the bottom, of an empty wallet, holes in our pockets they threaten to spill.
To the pavement without even knowing, the trail that we leave behind
An unsure path, that threatens to grasp, a map to an imagined divine.
We will be picked up along the way, loose change upon the sidewalks.
Salesman’s bait dangling shiny, their hooks sharp but tiny, through clenched teeth as they grin and they talk.
They give meaning to things undecided, and all along they smell of deceit
The tales that they tell, as they spin and they sell, pretty lies to the ears of the weak.
They make promises of comfort, and they speak of getting closer to god
False hope and heartache, we threaten to break, against the cursory facade.
We sell pieces and bits of ourselves, one crumb of skin at a time.
For the comfort of falsehood, all along knowing we should, not chase these lies of the mime.
Numb will be forever comfortable, and feeling always breeds pain.
It’s no wonder we choose to sleep through the heat of the sun and the soaking rain.
Heathens they’re collecting bruises, and scars they wear into their flesh.
They’re marred and they’re stained, but they always remain, in the woods and the lichen fresh.
Peering from under the strands, of unkempt hair and dirty cheeks
They make their way forward, with their eyes always toward, the truth that they constantly seek.
Their path will never be mapped, through this terrain that they choose to trod
But walking with vigor, their thoughts never linger, on whether or not they’ve found god.
They’re sure that their freedom is worth it, their fees they are constantly paid
Feeling sunburn and callus but forgetting the malice in lieu of being self made.
Gods of comfort are gods of peace, their cost is pain and their cost is war.
We sleep drug assisted, having dreams we have grifted, from the self that we abhor.
Inside us the cancer is growing, unless it’s cut off at the quick
Leave the guidelines behind, break the chains on your mind, if you ever want not to be sick.
The key to the padlock is is rusted, in disuse as we choose to stay bound
But it still fits the lock to the chains on the flock of disciples who threaten to drown
In the sea of the dimming man’s journey, a well worn path filled with eons of traffic
The feet always pounding, their light slowly drowning, as they climb to their old dusty attic.
Staring holes into the backs of heads, walking blindly in faith and in trust.
Gods versus heathens, I choose not to be them, our path is in sunlight and dust.