A Song For The Morning

Now, Barb is not a morning person. At. All.

So, recently I woke her with this song...and she smiled.

Wakey, wakey, Jesus Time,
Doo dah, Doo dah,

He will tell you, "You are mine!",

that's what He's gonna say.

He'll guard you all the night,

and walk with you all day.

  is your bestest friend

in each and every way.

One of the most miraculous things I have learned from cancer is this:

If you can't be happy with multiple malignancies, you just can't be happy, period.

The Five Minute Friday prompt this week is NEED, so here goes...

People say I need a healing,

that I don't deserve to die,

but I have a funny feeling

that no one's asking Why,

because it's an important question,

goes right back to Calvary,

and if I give Ol' God suggestion,

He might turn it back to me,

and say, "You want to be reborn?

A simulacrum of My Son?

If you're sincere, you will be torn,

and in this you'll have just begun

to know the price My dear Lamb paid

when on the rough Cross He was laid."

And that sonnet did take five minutes...on a phone.

 

The Rainbow At The End Of Time

You realize, ere the end, that good and bad in life are merely acts in a play, and that they have no weight, not measured against God's love.

We are truly His children, and the role you play in a game of Cops And Robbers gives Him naught but amusement.

 

In facing down the worst of days,

I know now that the honour’s mine

to greet the good and bad with praise,

the rainbow at the end of time.

Dreadful things? They did betide,

side by side with beauty bare,

and now I find no need to hide

from truth’s clean and bracing air

that sweeps around my hilltop place

to clear emotion’s clouds away

and show, at last, with smiling grace

that we’ve been actors in a play

that ends now as the curtain falls,

leaving only foot-light calls.

The Five Minute Friday prompt this week is 'care', so...

Oh, dear God, please have a care;

I'm asking this because

I feel as though I'm made of air,

and not the man I was

when you set me to this task

(time passed has been so long!).

All you had to do was ask,

and I thought I was strong.

But cancer's road to Calvary,

is rocky, and uphill,

and, dear Lord, it frightens me

that even with the firmest will

exhaustion now cannot be stayed,

and on my knees, I ask your aid.

OK, six minutes, but on a phone...give me a pass?

Still on the phone and can't directly post a video, but I can give you the YouTube link to the Alan Parsons Project's lovely 'Closer To Heaven'. I hope you'll listen, and enjoy.

And,  as always, a couple of pictures of Sylvia, my blog's public face, on an ice-cream run.

 

Importance Of The Five Food Groups

In my alcohol-and-testesterone-fueled youth, I was fond of saying that the Five Basic Food Groups were beer, pizza, beer, pizza, and...wait for it...beer.

Fast forward to now, and that's about all I can tolerate (alcohol and pancreatic cancer don't mix, but light beer is the only thing that stops the dry heaves, and lets me eat).

I suppose the moral of all this is that God is listening, and enjoys a good laugh.

But I have not tired of pizza, nor of beer.

I mean, who could?

God has thrown me for a loop,

and has, smiling, made it clear

that for me the five food groups:

beer, pizza, beer, pizza and beer.

Such a joke which I had told

when I was strong and I was young,

proud within the rugger-fold

where defiant songs are doing.

I guess the Lord had listened in,

and rubbed His hands in holy glee,

deciding humour was a win

for the clownish likes of me.

I did not put up a fight,

for, by Jove, the Godhead's right!

And since the Five Minute Friday writing prompt this week is 'purpose'...

Sometimes I feel so hopeless,

and it is then I wish

for a senseless porpoise,

a really dumbass fish,

but there is practicality

(for I am no fool),

and in my yard would have to be

a real big swimming pool

where the witless beast could swim,

then offer me advice

on how to turn each loss to win

(now wouldn't that be nice!),

just like thay book I gave my wife,

Rick Warren's "Porpoise-Driven Life".

It took five minutes to write, and I sure figure it shows.

In the absence of music (Blogger won't let me link a video on my phone), here are a couple of things pictures of Sylvia, my blog's public face, on an ice-cream run.

 

You Get Discouraged

It's been a rough week, and not to admit to being sometimes discouraged is to give that discouragement a hidden power.

 

There's so much I still want to do,

to hear and feel and see,

but now the worst is coming true,

and there's no escape for me.

There's too much puke and too much. pain,

and I see what now betides;

growths in limbs and lungs and brain,

and my left foot only slides.

Somewhere there was a place for me,

a future and bright shining hope

but faded now's the victory

and above me swings the rope,

noose fashioned by the devil's hand

through years I did not understand.

Now, dear fortunate (?) reader, you get a SECOND sonnet, based upon Five Minute Friday's word prompt for the week, 'rescue'.

It seems to me the movie biz,

if it wants profits big and bold,

should recognize that rescue is

the greatest story ever told.

Gandhi saved a nation;

Maria saved the Captain's heart

from lonely self-immolation

(and tipped the Nazis' apple cart!).

Luke saved that far-off Galaxy

even as Darth Vader's son,

and it really seems to me

John Wayne saved almost everyone.

Wide-eyed surprise this shouldn't bring

for we're rescued by a murdered King.

The 'rescue' poem took ten minutes to write, but since I'm waiting on a phone with Mongo-sized fingers at 3AM, I hope you'll give me a pass on the 'five minute' bit. Also, the phone's fond of quietly changing my words when I'm not looking. Glories of the Modern Age, yeah?

In the absence of music (Blogger won't let me link a video on my phone), here are a couple of things pictures of Sylvia, my blog's public face, on an ice-cream run.

 

Of Frying Pans And Fires

So I had a miraculous healing from a wild sudden illness, with a sustained fever of 107...but the cancer is still here.

Wassup with THAT?

I am tempted to irritation (to put it mildly), but unfortunately I'm a Christian, and there is Scriptural precedent to which I must pay heed...

Lord, I know that I've been graced

with healing, but I can hardly understand

why it seems I have been placed

from fire back to frying pan.

You saved me from that raging fever,

107 should have done me in,

and have no doubt, I'm a believer,

but confidence is getting thin.

And then You say You are my Simon,

the Cyrene to help bear my cross,

the strong and proud Judean lion,

broke to burden, bear my loss

and help me with the fatal load

on the Dolorosa Road.

In the absence of music (Blogger won't let me link a video on my phone), here are a couple of things pictures of Sylvia, my blog's public face, on an ice-cream run.