Neighbors

I thought you all were better than you were
I had that rosy tint thing going it turns out
Not the summer lit reality I once thought I saw
When I walked along the streets
and saw you mowing your grass
Or dutifully stringing the lights at Christmas
Or picnicking in the park with the grandkids
In the late spring or early autumn when it’s not too hot or cold
And they can splash around in the lake
and entertain themselves

It turns out you guys are bullies after all
The kind I thought I’d left behind in grade school
Exclusive, fond of power, salt and pepper thugs
if truth be told
Congratulating yourselves as you preserve the status quo.
I thought we’d grown some roots at last.
Found a place to settle in for the long winter.
Instead we found another piece of plain old Earth
In a place that sorta looked like heaven once.

© 2006 by Tom King

All My Trials - My Version

I wrote some new lyrics to add to the old folk tune "All My Trials" for church service at Tyler SDA church.  The congregation provide backup vocals on the chorus. You can hear them back there adding body to the chorus.  I'm not a great singer, but the first special music I ever did in church was this song at the Weslaco SDA Church and I was terrified.  I kinda wanted to do a better job on this one at least once. 

The Letter of the Law

An Abecedarian by Tom King

(c) 2012

1. At the
2. Beginning
3. Cold fangs and teeth
4. Death the punishment
5. Every sin's consequence.
6. Fight or flight should you rebel
7. Gods of stone arose, whose priests claimed
8. Heavy-handed blood sacrifices
9. Incantations, homage to holy men
10. Jibber, mutter and perpetuate a fraud
11. Kings privilege upheld by crude ritual.
12. Laws of love, forgotten since creation could set free.
13. Men and women bound, with chains of stone and gold and silver.
14. None remembering the law each carries writ upon the soul.
15. On every heart formed in every womb that bore a son or daughter.
16. Proof enough, the signature of the Law Giver waiting love's waking
17. Quickened at the mountain, carved first in stone, then in blood and bone and sinew,
18. Risen again a living law, every man, woman and child the law breathing.
19. Still and small transforming from the inside out and not with brute force from outside in.
20. The law from which springs life and peace and hope was always there, waiting patiently for us
21. Until we found it, or it found us , transformed us, not into what it wanted us to be but
22. Verily into what we are without the baggage of the laws meant to oppress and enslave.
23. We are servants of a law that sets us free, that we may be beautiful, kind, patient, wise and good.
24. X-ing out the laws that bind us in the darkness, restoring the indwelling law we know already. 
25. Yet still we are creation's children, though for a time we had forgotten the blessings of the ancient law.
26. Ziggurats, temples, pyramids, blood altars, steles and graven stone, the corpses of old lies by love defeated.

* Author's note: Wrote this as part of a poetry class I taught online. We were studying abecedarian forms where you begin each line or stanza with a different letter of the alphabet - like an acrostic, but a bit harder thanks to the Q, X and Z. Try one, it's great poetical exercise.  - Tom

Press Conference

Press Conference

Alone, twisting in the wind
Silent, nothing left to say

I do not know this place

I cannot hear the music

Frustrated, I search for a chord

No longer playable.

Rejoicing, sounds of it drift this way

Celebration, at my downfall evidently.

I helped bring this about

I stood shoulder to shoulder

Gloating, they rob me of something

I freely gave them.

Impending, it hangs dark in the air.

Threatening, punishment for something I did not do.

I think my father's thoughts

"People are no damned……"

I push them away the thoughts

Which are not mine but his, but though

Depressing, I know they're sometimes true.

by Tom King (c) 2009

Wind

"Wind"

An Acrostic by Tom King

Will I with courage face the closing of the day?

In wrapping up my life will I be done?

No, I expect to leave unfinished business here

Don't grieve for I will have fought my war and won.

© 2012

Sheila, Laughing-Eyed

Sheila, laughing-eyed
sparkles about the room
tugging, pulling snapping
sliding silkily into her clothes
immensely pleased with us

Sheila, laughing-eyed,
sparkles up and down

the little world we live in

now patting her swollen tummy;
now stealing a kiss as she passes

Sheila, laughing eyed, full of love
bubbling over………..

© 1974, 2013 by Tom King