Wet

I want you to
penetrate me
with your cold
and soft shafts
of light.

I want to feel
you wet
and reaching
out to me
from beneath.

I’ll let your
waters lap
at me
until I am
open, and
charmed.

Extended,
and arched,
my heated limbs
are cradled
by your
gentle arms.

Waking,
I shiver
off your cold
and find
my hair
drizzled with
your dew.

God,
let me feel
your warmth
again.

Trepidation

each moment
i have
you fill

alone. when
the world
dims,
somehow,
you meet me
still.

for you are
the question
i have when
it's dark,

i whisper
your name
in fear
and
trembling

with tired hands
i can feel you
still
and hear your
soft breath
whimper
my name.

Beneath Your Waves

It was my summer at sea,
the sun hiding under my blanket.
You were seven miles deep,
beneath me,
and now all I can taste
are salted meats.

Sometimes at sunrise I sleep
till you peer through me hard,
starboard side.
But I am cold,
and vibrating.

I feel like a boy against his
Father’s empty horizon -
two shades of blue, one line,
and no one dancing.

At night the crowd mingles,
their feet are flashlights against
the dark deep of all they fear,

like children, we are not safe anymore.

Phoenix

Wrapped in your cocoon I am
safe until midnight when your
streetlamp gas fills the city
with orange haze, and violent
youth picket locks of young girls,
and the howls of desert dogs
are muffled inside garage door
fortresses laced with blue cocaine.

Outside I hear
your faint voice in alleyways, your face
in the dust of a 45 drive-by.
I am surrounded. Overhead,
the sky dims, and the moonlight
is stagelight for riot and revolution.

But since your hands are old,
I will rise and perch as the Phoenix,
jumping rooftops until I burst
in bloom over your city.

Dearly Departed Sun

from Friday, March 6, 2009

I told you I would follow you
until the path to your heart
became an open womb,
for me to enter, and rest.

You are not near to me
anymore. So I wait,
listen, and together
with the silence, weep.

Overhead, the moon lifts
her skirt, And dances
just like you did, before
our first summer storm.

In Spring, You Too Will Bloom

from Wednesday, March 4, 2009

My love
in the morning light,
lingered above my burning bed.

At dawn, the doves fly,
and a rose bush stirs
outside my window,
you still belong to me.

I reach my hand
to your neck
and mingle
my tears with yours.

I beg you not to leave
me alone
as twilight is coming
and
shadows of strangers
seek me in the night.

I have no candle left
for you to find me,
my love, please
follow this whisper
of orange blossoms
from my open window

You kissed me once
and now you have me
unravished, and pure.

Sometimes when your scent
Crosses my path, I am
charmed by your breath.
My feet sit in water dark,
and deep, I am bare,
and still, with just
a little light.

Part 8 of 23: Song of the Sunday Ghost

from Monday, January 12, 2009

I told you this house was upside down,
its hard-wood ceilings and spackled
stucco floors still stain my soft feet
with blood blisters, white with dust.

We could make love on holy ground.
You tease me with your blouse instead.

Part 4 of 23: What My Mother Whispered to the Whaler

from: Saturday, January 10, 2009

"Drink me,
before
I am sweetened by my sorrows."

A Story to Tell

from Thursday, January 8, 2009

A short film created for Central Christian Church in Mesa, Arizona. The goal was to create a modern version of an aspect of the Christmas story. Hence, the backpacker-shepherds. A little cheesy, but hey, it's in HD! :D

HD Version HERE: http://vimeo.com/2754811

Credits:

Tim Allen - Camera, After Effects
Mark Miller - Production Manager, Additional After Effects
Jonathan Roberts - Writer
Directed by Jonathan Roberts and Tim Allen
Shot on location at South Mountain Park.

Script:

Tonight we watch the Western star in the wild sky
And we tread a broke-down path beaten by massive-
monsoon-winds and the clouded desert sun.

We pant, we trod, we take six thousand bold steps
and brace our strength for this last and great ascent.

We are shepherds and we have come to touch this wild sky
With our hands raised high and our knees bent low.
On this peak we stand as the guards and wide-eyed prayer-
warriors of the heavy-hearted, hemmed-in people we love.

We lay down sweat-soaked shoulder packs and walking sticks
And we bend our knees to keep our people at peace and rest.

We feel the slingshot rocks of this barren face tremble and
vibrate like a swollen beehive under our bare-skinned knees.

“Hush! Wait! Don’t speak!
Rise! Run! And tell this Joy”

Hemmed-in by mountains of sin, we can see the glory
Of our Lord fall like the light of seven thousand dancing stars
Filling the sunken valley below with hope in the distance.

The sky erupts in torrent and fury of sound and silence
And the chorus of high angels lights up the city in color,
With kited small circled-spheres of night and half-light,
rising and spinning through refracted red heat storm hazes.

Our faces are all alight with good news and great joy,
We rush and stumble back down the desert mountain
Like little kids on an early Christmas morning because
We are the swift and blessed ones…
and we have a story to tell.

Desert Children

A flicker in those bold, wild eyes

And the bright morning star ignites

The perennial flames of the youthful sun;

They dance along the grey, muted skies

Dawn whispers, 

And a hushed red glow 

Emerges, brooding amidst 

the brightening horizon,

Spilling and casting soft, dreamy hues

upon the wakening world.

The Eastern wind roams and whistles

Across ageless sands and sleeping deserts,

“Baérohsh aer zoé kånahk!”

Abba flings open the floodgates of time, 

Unleashing the ripened store of 

Vital light and roaring heat,

Chasing yesterday’s shadows 

through the hidden wilds of eternity.

A Voice, riding on the wings of light,

Roars for the children of the West,

His conquering sons and dancing daughters, 

to bind their wounds,

To gather their naked hearts,

And clothe them with Heaven’s garb.

The old beauty breaks down to dust

under the beat-down sun.

New waters burst o’er the Sonoran lands

And the desert children begin to dance,

“Awake! Awake!

Put on strength”

The Children rise in blazing glory of the Son,

“Rahshaht ao ner tzishet!

Båarraoke attah Yeshuah a Meschiach…”

~*~

And I woke to the whispers of angels.

“They shall go after the Lord; 

he will roar like a lion;

when he roars,

his children shall come trembling from the west;

they shall come trembling like birds from Egypt

and like doves from the land of Assyria,

and I will return them to their homes, declares the Lord.”

-Micah 11:10-11

For the Days We Wish to Cry

Just let me spill over,

Fall with the dripping rain,

Spinning till we crash and split

Into seven drops of serenity.

But I am still falling, love.

Brightly Violent

She thinks in colors too,

looking forward to the prolonged nights

of utilizing firehoses to extinguish

the inner rage and frivolity

suppressed by family and discordant relationships.

My, how she dreams, and smiles,

and without even knowing 

pulls me in

gently

to her warmth

of both subdued and 

brightly violent colors.

Appreciate love?

I’m so happy to have existed

were I to have known only her.

I am a being of higher value,

above the animals that haunt and stalk

the memories of the Egyptian ghosts.

In her painted eyes

I beheld man,

clinging to a rose of beauty,

rising out of chaos and into light,

but his roots pulled him back down…

it’s all in the upper body, I s’pose.

I saw myself then.

And now it's cold outside,

but thanks to you

the imagination's warm again. 

Far Forever

The history is in your eyes,
New moments spilling over wells of memory
Carving new paths for each tear to take.

They will find their way home,
Here in my hands, in your hands
let my fingers start the healing,
Not even the ancient father will avert the end,
The sweet consonance to come.

It seems Never soon enough.
Never is a naughty word.


Don’t be far forever.
Sometimes a man must take the path less traveled by
His needles and lovers must stand by.
Sometimes I think I’ll never turn back
Or will be overtaken by lovers less thrilling.

My heart has its home, though these feet roam
Wounds will rise, battles wage in the skies
The Wanderer will have his way and then
Come hell and heaven, I will have you,

Again.

I won’t be far forever.

The Sea Wolf

"...down I fell to dwelling upon the romance of the fog. And romantic it certainly was - the fog, like the gray shadow of infinite mystery, brooding over the whirling speck of earth; and men, mere motes of light and sparkle, cursed with an insane relish for work, riding their steeds of wood and steel through the heart of the mystery, groping their way blindly through the unseen, and clamoring and clanging in confident speech the while their hearts are heavy with incertitude and fear."

Jack London in The Sea Wolf

Light Up the Darkness

Dirty Second Hands

A [second-hander] is one who regards the consciousness of other men as superior to his own and to the facts of reality. It is to a [second-hander] that the moral appraisal of himself by others is a primary concern which supersedes truth, facts, reason, logic. The disapproval of others is so shatteringly terrifying to him that nothing can withstand its impact within his consciousness; thus he would deny the evidence of his own eyes and invalidate his own consciousness for the sake of any stray charlatan's moral sanction. It is only a [second-hander] who could conceive of such absurdity as hoping to win an intellectual argument by hinting: "But people won't like you!" (Ayn Rand, The Virtue of Selfishness, 141)

Shoot. It’s happening again – half my mind is suffering amid the strong swirl of ideas and memories formed over the past two weeks, the other consumed with a task even more grievous. You. I get into these spouts of inspiration where I can literally form another world in my head and dwell there all night, tasting the colors and feeling the sounds. Whilst this new Technicolor film runs through my head, spinning and sputtering ink onto the canvas, I am at mercy. I am distracted. With you. You plural. Meaning more than one you. Ok, I know, you (plural, again) get it.

Sorry doc, I think I’ve caught the disease. I’ve got a strain of second-handedness in me. I can’t even take the cookie out of the jar without gazing wide-eyed round the room, waiting and watching for the old mother to painfully swat my hand away.

What I’m getting at is this: it’s really really really hard sometimes to have sincere motivations, to not be defined by anybody but your Maker. “Wait, why am I doing this again?” The phrase is like a re-run every five seconds. Can’t focus, can’t concentrate, desire keeps running…

I want to ride to the ridge where the west commences
I can’t look at hobbles and I can’t stand fences
Don’t fence me in.

I just can’t seem to remove the endless torrent of thoughts about what other people will think of what I’m doing or planning or living. It’s almost a form of despair. I can’t even worship.

I’ve come to understand that if you ever wish to accomplish anything significant on your lifelong trek around this complex sphere of existence, you must firmly hold to a personal and practical idea of pleasure. Whom do you please? Who do you WANT to please? Who do you HAVE to please? And why? These are the very motivations that will drive every person to their knees. It is the reason why some men challenge dragons and others cast themselves into the sea. After all, we are all a slave of something, or someone… the apostle Paul reminded us in Romans 6 that you are a slave to whomever you obey.

People don’t make sense. Their ideas and advice is often like car exhaust – a necessary fuel to get us places. But it’s gone so fast, it grudgingly ascends to the purgatory of consciousness, ready to be tried and tested and maybe purged? It needs sifting. What, then, is the standard? How do I truly become myself? How can I get to the point where I have to confidence to do almost anything the Lord puts on my heart? Not recklessly, of course; relationships are fragile; bridges really shouldn’t be burned without due cause.

Purity. Purity of heart is to will one thing, says a great mind. One thing. No more duplicity. A double-minded man is unstable in all his ways, the brother of Jesus was quick to remind the seeker.

You wanna know the most convicting statement I’ve ever heard? It came from a girl; a beautiful young girl, like the one who arrested the apostle Peter’s conscience before the rooster crowed. She said:

“Have you ever set out to do something that you knew would require Divine strength? Something so heavenly, some giant so towering, some abyss so frightening that it would empty your strength completely… that you would be brought to the point of weeping and swinging fists and sweating blood in the first battle? And your absolute only hope would the Man on the white horse. Do you long to taste the victory that is ours in Christ? Do you trust Him? Can he really do anything… like you so often sing?”

Ok, maybe it wasn’t that dramatic. But that’s how my mind interpreted it. Conviction. I could be so much more than this. The mere man on two legs is not enough. I need Divinity.

The Lord my God lights up the darkness;
by my God I can crush an army
and in His strength I can scale any wall.
He enables me to go up on the heights,
And I am not afraid.” –Psalm 18

Worship. This is how I can avoid the pitfall of people-pleasing, the dirty second-handedness. My God is my King and my lover, whom have I in heaven but Him? And on earth there is nothing I desire but Him. My heart and my flesh may fail, but the Lord is the strength of my heart and my inheritance forever.

Light up the Darkness.

Never Let Go

Encounter Worship Intro from Jonathan David Roberts on Vimeo.

Video montage used as an introduction for praise at worship at College View Baptist Church in Mesa, Arizona.

Original footage and editing by Jonathan Roberts

The Visage

Painting the streets with my fingers gold,

The kingdom is coming, or so we’re told.

Yet the aches of kingdom’s past,

Like a broken mirror, the shattered glass,

Reflects the story in every shard,

love Divine; my soul sets no guard.

Into My Own

I memorized this today:

Into My Own (1915)

ONE of my wishes is that those dark trees,

So old and firm they scarcely show the breeze,

Were not, as ’twere, the merest mask of gloom,

But stretched away unto the edge of doom.

I should not be withheld but that some day

Into their vastness I should steal away,

Fearless of ever finding open land,

Or highway where the slow wheel pours the sand.

I do not see why I should e’er turn back,

Or those should not set forth upon my track

To overtake me, who should miss me here

And long to know if still I held them dear.

They would not find me changed from him they knew—

Only more sure of all I thought was true.

Poem: Robert Frost from A Boy's Will

Picture: Jonathan Roberts from a hike to Mt. Humpheys

Faces

This black and white world
Makes middle-gray the foe.

Is it all pretend?
Why not, why not?
I’ll see the blurs as tragedy
And start over.

Flip the canvas.

I am turning.
Running through the fields
again.
The sun is in my eyes,
every shadow behind
The only place I want to be,
I feel.
Jealously.
Do I have to leave?

I am turning.
And there you are again,
The colours of your skin
Spin a collage into the wind,
Our memories break
and fall
In mosaic.
Like your spring dress,
Bright threads
spun from your mother’s heart.
Let’s dance like lovers,
Fingers skip across each other’s lips
My hands are heavy,
They’re throbbing machines
Ready for
Hide and seek.

I am turning.
Don’t ever let go
the dark clouds sweep down to carry
Your heart away from mine.
Don’t let the war take your soul
Don’t the let the sand weigh you down
or
Blind your eyes,
Like back in the burning desert
of your Father’s land
I’ve had enough of His gasoline breath.
We’re never going back.
The dust is owned,
The flame is lit.

I am turning.
Quick!
Cover your face with a smile,
steal every affection
Pin every fickle heart
Fill your cup, let it spill
Over and over,
And over and over.

Father, please?