Alone With My Sin (A Collection)
Michael Harris

 

Lonely And Yet Not Alone Villanelle #3 First draft 1/25/12-1/30/12
 
Being beset this saint has much struggle to bemoan;
Seems set apart amongst wanderers and strangers;
 Solitude holds sway; say in Christ I’m not alone.
 
Forlorn as if bearing bondage of a millstone
 God has deemed fit to ensnare me in dark dangers,
Being beset this saint has much struggle to bemoan.
 
Take solace in that this will not be long condoned;
 Though he strikes me often with Fatherly Anger!
 Solitude holds sway; say in Christ I’m not alone.
 
Flesh waging wars, wanton habits to make one groan
 Under sin; Satan sends agents to endanger.
 Being beset this saint has much struggle to bemoan.
 
Will God’s fierce furies prevail ever while I moan?
 This my soul remains muddled in morbid angor!
 Solitude holds sway; say in Christ I’m not alone.
 
Turned against me! A view of thy face as it shone
 Is what’s needed to pierce this hellish clangor!
 Being beset this saint has much struggle to bemoan;
 Solitude holds sway; say in Christ I’m not alone.


Of Malign Extrasensory Perceptions Quasi Stanzaic Poem: #1 First Draft 7/3/12- 8/7/2012
 

Shadows perch out of holy heed to espy
Discourses of which only His Omnipresence
Should be set to illumine; it is a mockery!
Blood bonds utter, being void of divine acquiescence;
What is gathered may yet come back to haunt thee,
It persists in seemingly ceaseless cycles of misery.


Meditations meander through the milieu
With malign meanings, manifested in multifarious
Peculiar particulars and slippery patterns askew,
Veering through perceptual passages via viperous
Tactics to unsettle with mental sickliness,
Fused with forceful fears and paranoia passion,
Televisions tuned to thoughts, taut through tenuousness,
Computers conjure concepts, driven lacking dispassion;
Is no thought safe from the schizophrenic sense?
Scoffed! Christ was mocked worse in his experience.


Seeing is disbelieving, sights sometimes sours
The eyes from actualized sensory perception,
 Vision vies to supervise, it scours
At mutual moments in stupefaction,
Baleful coincidence is to be thy courier
While speckled looking glasses mar what’s to be seen,
Bands abound to accost as helpers of Lucifer,
Serpents disguised snake and sway a schizophrenic unseen.
There’s no need to scan significantly to spot
The aptitude of awestricken audacity
Prowling in predatory intrigue and plot;
None should mistrust its malign capacity.
No scenes are safe from the schizophrenic sense
Yet Christ bore even this noisome pestilence.

Bewilderment binds borders about one’s brain,
Lodging souls inside its bound walls, access escapes
Through paranoia lens; crippled conception is plain,
Sound mind’s not attained by way of irrational rapes
As mental mayhem’s dominion extends over all;
To muse, to meditate is fraught with perplex
Signs showing themselves potent in potential pitfall,
Lurking in the strength of unreality to vex
 And vouchsafe ways of watching the world with
Fevered fancies and lunatic distinctions;
 Mania marches besides wielding a schizoid scythe,
 Summoning mounting cascades of queer conditions
 Which serve to overawe awareness already
Stricken and smitten, drowning true interpretations,
Rushing headlong past shores of a madness missionary,
Crawling near coastlines in chaotic concentrations!
Say suspicions can be cured from schizophrenic sense!
Christ in Sovereign Grace might yet untangle this suspense.

To be so beset! God strings his saints down curious
 Tunnels of providence, myriad puzzle pieces sprinkled
Along narrow walkways which if we but focus,
Cannot solve; certain sentiments chosen, sin channeled
Under duress through blighted streams of iniquity,
Gulping down select drops proven to be poisonous,
A guide to others in the midst of hypocrisy!
Sin’s not the cause, but it’s markedly more harmful an illness,
Plunging into boundless depths of a schism whirlwind;
Under universal malady it’s malignly matured:
Rest under saintly bowers? Not so, this one’s disciplined.
To be so stained! Walking on blessed paths to be lured
Into deceitful wanderings, and the Righteous Judge,
He will enact judgment on his own! Wilt thou partake
In another’s grime? Do not disdain Holy Parentage
When under Godly strokes; seems awfully harsh now; to remake
And refashion in the image of Christ is the Father’s
Divine design; crushing blows yet descend from highest heights,
Saints on sorrow’s isle, reactions regarding sisters, brothers,
They’d not consider these written paths possible plights!
Sin further smears and spoils fallen schizophrenic sense,
Yet Christ at Calvary died in perfect recompense.

Decelerate dread is but welcome!
Ill foe, crowning head of Anti-Grace;
It enfeebles victims in fearsome
Might, to devour courage, confound face
Amidst the throngs; spewing foreshadowed
Stiffening songs; knowing that to die
To fear is to be overshadowed
Of God’s rapturous love from on high!
Traces of terrors yet tease themselves
(He’ll erase errors; allay concepts),
They summon frightful stings from crazed shelves,
Fictions not as fantastic; precepts
Divine are binding; His Grace enough,
Saints need reminding for psyches sore
Plagued; phobias perch nigh persons! Snuff
Sharp panic, O Lord; stir Grace and pour!
Shaken is one’s share of schism’s sense,
Christ can calm the storm, suppress the tense.




“Come, drift near deathless life abounding!
Wander in aimless barrens no more;
Thy mistuned antennas resounding
Hath unveiled to thee true narrow’s door!
To defer decrees of god’s mercy
Meant for the seas of the human race
Would be far beneath and unworthy
Of one so shrewd; come, be not so base!”
One’s first name hints at apostasy:
Devils dupe like that, rebranded and tagged;
One’s inner name sings orthodoxy;
 Having been avowed; out and out dragged.
Ensnaring spirits strain schism’s sense,
Christ warned afore, the Word’s a defense.
 
Sovereign Lord God, I beseech you now!
A benign nod at this sorrowed shell
Would amend the wrinkles in my brow,
My heart gasps for ethereal dispel
That can only come from Grace supplied
 Bounteous in Eternal Chambers;
I plead more, hide thy harsh hand; heal and not chide:
Now by Grace, slay and allay schism’s members!
Compact can’t be crafted with cruel schism’s sense;
Christ is capable of cleansing commonsense.

However prolonged this providential will’s to be:
(So scarred and strained with sickness mysterious!),
A tottering gait will flow in gushes freely
While I trust He’ll soothe with hands afore furious,
Now pouring from heaven gracious balmy elixirs,
Sealing off psyche and renewing mental receptors.


A Moonlit Peek through Feathered Windows: Ballad #2 First Draft 5/24/12-6/2/12


Cross Carrier’s clock cries out, “The occasion has come,”
Toil has slipped, and Cross Carrier, he too slips,
Yet failing lights brings fights with feathered windows, and those
Shades yield not while Dreamer’s Bane foils and outstrips.

The Bearer wrests with Bane this dusk, a chronic echo
And cyclical malady; days, weeks, months, years lapse,
Dreamer’s Bane siphons still of Bearer’s nightly sequence,
Constant recalls ere Cross Bearer can collapse.

Now Cross Carrier’s plague causes sought sanctuary.
Cross Bearer’s windows will not be weighted down.
Encouraging prophetic signals stream through the screen
Reminding Cross Carrier Christ comes at sundown.

Watching, Cross Carrier contemplates: “What want I most?
Being edgeless from evil’s expansive embrace;
Ways to walk wakeless while this wakeful world yet worsens;
Faith fixed from falling, faultless before His face.”

Cross Carrier sailed a secluded craft on stormy seas
Shipwrecked self in clouds of charmed iniquity
Grasped he’s goaded Holy God with self-righteous conceit,
Sees Seeking Savior salvages sovereignly.

Whispered wantonness cause an unworldly wondering
While the Bearer resumes wrestling windows;
 Cross Carrier’s scarce of cognizance of cessation,
He races to outlast Bane on Narrows Road.
 
Light dances through shaded windows; fancies flash upon
Cross Carrier’s palsied form and stained psyche;
A mockery, not of Dreamers Bane’s tormenting ruse,
Schemes flow from one that’s Devious and Deadly.

A cyclical complaint! Yet Cross Carrier’s dreaming
Of being threatened no longer by Dreamer’s Bane.
There remains therefore a rest to the people of God.
Onward, Cross Carrier! Christ will keep you sane.

 
Of Saintly Empathy Heroic Couplet #2 First Draft 6/15/12-6/26/12

If saints could but through the holding of hands
 Impart visions of woeful wonderlands
Walk with him or her amidst sorrows sands;
 Unload unto others wellsprings of pangs
 Perfectly perceptive, nor panned by gangs;
 Suppose lurching through Narrow Lanes of Life
 We might bond in means meant for Afterlife,
 Shared vistas stretching beyond thought and time
 Pilgrims traversing mighty hills to climb;
 Seeing through saint’s sight what’s seriously sore
Sovereign Deity deigned for us to bore;
 Hearts affectedly would move in outpour,
Fathoming fountains of fears, shedding tears,
To grasp (not doubt!) spiritual atmospheres
 And sit with brother or sister to calm
Conditions; cover wounds with a wondrous Psalm
Of succor, survey stated stations and
 Be belied no more; nor motives to brand
 Heretic concerning canonical contrasts,
 Grace lodges with many ecclesiasts
 Mingled and mixed with providential pasts.
 In the immeasurable depths of the divine
Counsels, the Sovereign Lord God would decline
 Such a hall of release. Yet disagree?
A saint must be open to forgive thee.

Alone With My Sin Pantoum #2 First draft 3/30/2012-4/24/12

O the scourge for dipping my foot in a sea of sin
Canker and caterpillar have consumed me utterly!
God will not be mocked needs no repeating again,
This barren road lies before me most bewailingly.

Canker and caterpillar have consumed me utterly
 Which show stark signs of His strokes of stern discipline.
 This barren road lies before me most bewailingly;
 I’m stricken in psyche with misdeeds as within a tailspin.

Showing stark signs of His strokes of stern discipline
 I lay on a cold hard floor of a righteous dungeon,
 I’m stricken in psyche with misdeeds as within a tailspin
If I drift as in a daze He swings a rod to bludgeon.

I lay on a cold hard floor of a righteous dungeon
 As if spellbound in separation for past hypocrisy
If I drift as in a daze He swings a rod to bludgeon,
 And I find myself in a mire of manifold misery.
 
As if spellbound in separation for past hypocrisy
 Satan summons forth servants to sink my sunken spirit
 And I find myself in a mire of manifold misery:
 Wanting to take refuge in my Heavenly Advocate.
 
Satan summons forth servants to sink my sunken spirit,
 Devils hurl accusations at this broken, sin-stained man.
Wanting to take refuge in my Heavenly Advocate
 Consoled embrace is curbed, for falling fright is God’s plan.

Devils hurl accusations at this broken, sin-stained man
 While my fleshly shadow pounces on a soul imperiled.
 Consoled embrace is curbed, for falling fright is God’s plan;
 I’m alone with my sin, alive yet not so, bound and bedeviled.

While my fleshly shadow pounces on a soul imperiled
 I swim against the current to espy one who could fathom;
 I’m alone with my sin, alive yet not so, bound and bedeviled
 Beyond the belief of those who belong to Christendom.
 
I swim against the current to espy one who could fathom
 Amidst a raging and abiding tempest sapping of strength;
 Beyond the belief of those who belong to Christendom,
 Infecting the cosmos of one’s life and long lasting in length.

Amidst a raging and abiding tempest sapping of strength;
 A wearisome weight that won’t be off-loaded with any ease,
Infecting the cosmos of one’s life and long lasting in length,
 Resembling a spiritual malaise; socially weak with disease.
 
A wearisome weight that won’t be off-loaded with any ease,
It’s spreading night akin to the sun not shining in many morns;
Resembling a spiritual malaise; socially weak with disease,
 Pricked in plenty places with these pesky fleshly thorns.
 
The Word says that in the world ye shall have tribulation
 Though God will not be mocked needs no repeating again!
 Chastened ever-long as I have in crushing isolation;
 O the scourge for dipping my foot in a sea of sin!


When Heaven is Silent and Hell is Raging Sestina #2 First Draft 2/28/2012-3/5/12
 
Often it appears in the midst of travail—God
 Is silent while the devil is raging; fear!—
 It grips and will not relent its hold. “Forsake right!”
It says—as if Christ is not active securing rescue.
Yet seducing spirits strive to sway your sorrowed soul,
 And anguish of the mind abounds with confusion of face.
 
These are tests and trials and tribulations to face,
I cannot cast away my confidence in God.
 Sin seeks out and isolates a suffering soul
 While past phantoms and pretending peoples instill fear.
 The Lord Christ will arrive in a mighty rescue
 I must not grow weary in doing that which is right.
 
Abandon insight; take solace in Christ’s righteousness.
 All things will be known when we see Him face to face.
 Serpents are sent to stay my redemptive rescue
 Yet they are restrained by the hand of a loving God.
 Enigmatic events wherein I’m enmeshed in fear,
 I cry out for release from the depths of my soul!
 
Seeing salvation given to an unworthy soul
Will keep one on course and practicing rightly.
 Yet one asks: Why is He absent in spells of fear?
 Not true! Christ will never leave alone his own; I’ll face
 All he puts before me and glorify the Lord God
 Until He deems fit to come to my aid in rescue.
 
Devils dissuade from depending on His rescuing
 Arm; as shaken and in parts is my tattered soul!
 Trust should never waver nor falter in my God.
 Take refuge in his Providence until things are made right.
 If he would but give a glimpse of his glorious face
 I’d be enveloped in love while forsaking fleeing fear.
 
The Lord God will beat back fear
 Righting fortunes in a glorious rescue,
My soul at last liberated with a view of His face.


To Be Married in the Christian Tradition 6/11/12-6/13/12 First Draft Blank Verse #2
 
Yet roaming about ever longingly
 Go those wandering eyes of lovelorn saints,
 Pining for pious partners to pass with,
 To be unveiled in inimitable
Time, when sanctioned love and blessed union comes;
It issues from a heavenly storehouse
Of holy sacraments; to at long last
Cast aside potent stings of loneliness
 Peeks not even on life’s vast horizon,
 Possessed with numerous milestones before
 Courtship begins, as streams of Providence
 Take the saint through adverse, rigid rapids,
God’s work of purity’s in progression,
 Placed on private paths of perseverance,
 Saints stagger along in bleak wilderness.
To hold a hand and sing a hallowed song
 With one ordained from cosmic heights above,
 To love as Christ the Savior loved the Church
 Willing to lay down life upon the call,
 Braiding our being and becoming one flesh
A semblance of empyreal quintessence,
 Wonder no more if it was meant to be,
 Purely preserved proved His purposeful plan,
Shading younglings from world of sin and spoils,
 Weaned on fear and reverence for Holy God
 A small army reserved for righteous acts;
 “We march to the beat of the Savior’s drum!”
 If He would but just align life’s own stars
 Then finding my mate would fill me with praise;
 Pondering how His best’s worth waiting for.

 
















      
      
      

 

 

Copyright © 2012 Michael Harris
Published on the World Wide Web by "www.storymania.com"