Zeitgeist. Lyrics:

Send out a signal, fleeting and feeble,
Wanting reaction, comeback, confirmation.
Echolocation, articulations thrown
into the void to taste the void’s opinion.

Here we are, we know something’s off.
We’re looking for answers to a question we just don’t know.
All these maps saying different things,
Can you find your way when you don’t know just where you want/need to go? 

Offer a gesture, a small demonstration,
Some proof that you’re here, you’re here, will someone, someone notice?
Echolocation, a small indication,
Tell the whole world now what you’re doing, thinking.

It’s nothing much, your head’s just so full of
Dopamine-rush-driven entertainment

Here we are, what are we doing here?
We’re all broken, we’re all floating, hoping for a place to land.
Wondering, is there something more?
We’re all broken, damaged, lost, we’re all looking for a home.

Zeitgeist (Echolocation)

The Future

Life is this,
destined for this
endless falling into the abyss.
Wind beats hard,
hard against your ears
As you're plummeting through the days and years.

Feel your chest
tighten ’round your heart
as you sense gravity make a claim on you.
You may try,
try with all your might
to hold onto the clouds as they race past you.

What advice 
are we given here 
as we look at an end we can’t avoid?
We are told 
we are not enough, 
to store up our stuff, to accumulate ...

... More and more,
What a frightful lie. 
As we cling to life, it just slips away.
We’re not strong,
we’re not strong enough,
we will not be gods, we will not be gods.

So let go, 
So just let go of
Everything that you’ve tried to cling to.
You have all
the time in the world.
It’s enough, what you’re given is quite enough.

Let go

I can't even remember writing this. Just found it in my Voice Memo app while cleaning up my phone for space.

Wait Right Here

The Weight of Things: Reflections on global terrorism and various forms of political madness written in July of 2016

You tried to weigh your soul and found it featherlight
You weighed your thoughts and found them drenched in guilt and night
Frustrations fuelled a hope that everything would change and change and change again the weight of things, the weight of things

You said a god would come to lay the earth to waste
and twist its surface into desolation's face
You welcomed terror, you said, "Time for things to change. Let nothing stay the same ... the weight of things, the weight of things."

Whatever happened to the soul of doubt?
What did we do with working this life out?
It's love, not desperation, that we need, 
Not lies about the weight of things.

I call it tyranny, the thing that you call peace.
I call enslavement what you say will set you free
A drunken world weighed down by everything it's done
will not be won by knives and guns

You call it heaven but its kings are lords of hell
when there's no home for hearts, no place for them to dwell
Panic's no argument when everything's at stake
Nothing you can do can change the weight of things

The Weight of Things

The light behind the sun
by Duncan Reyburn, October 2016

You are the Light behind the sun,
The Infinite within the One,
The Breath that animates the dust
the Soul within our wanderlust

You are the Spirit in the text
That rolls back stones and upends death
You are the Ground that being trusts
You are Life within the blood.

And so we frame what can’t be framed
And try to tame what can’t be tamed
We are undone, we are unmade
By what we know but cannot name

We only see your afterglow
against a world of shadow shows
We look through eyes that fail to see,
Into your Grace, past gravity

And what we find we can’t explain
And what we hold we cannot claim
And what we doubt we still believe
The God beyond reality

Love beyond love, Hope beyond hope
God beyond God, Goodness Itself
Truth beyond truth, Light beyond light
A Dark Abyss, an Endless Night

And so we frame what can’t be framed
And try to tame what can’t be tamed
We are undone, we are unmade
By what we know but cannot name

Light behind the sun

Cave
©Duncan Reyburn, 2017.

Desire finds us in the dark, we busy monsters, troubled gods, 
Phenomenologists of death are given life and hope and breath.
What is this hunger we call soul—this homelessness that we call home?
Caught in a sacrament of lack, we hear lost hope calling us back.

Desire finds us in the cave that we have died in all our lives
and pulls us out into the day. We kick and scream against the Light,
Who blinds us more than did the night; Whose whispers beckon and invite.
We fail to understand His speech, nails through his hands and through his feet.

What is this cruciform event Who puts together what He shreds,
Who solves our tortured histories inside a unity unseen?
Inside His love we are made real, our bloody myths taught how to feel
As mind and being meet and wed, in love and life, death is killed dead.

And so we know for the first time the infinite within our lives.
The cosmos witnesses itself, through human touch and human eyes.
And in this body Christ is born, the uncontainable contained.
Compassion claims what has been lost, and the unnamed are given names.

Cave

Holy Ghost / Devil
© Duncan Reyburn 2018

I've seen you on the road, get lost, distracted,
Speak with your former self, be awed and bored and know
I've kept my eye on you, considered, waited,
Although I am dead I am alive as life itself.
And you can't hide, I will seek, I will always find you,
And if you run, I will run, I will run to catch you,
I will haunt, I will haunt your every move,
Until you know my love, my love.

Why shrink away from me behind your quibbles,
riddles and words, the flurry, exceptions to the rule?
Spirit will guide you home if you would let him,
If you would just fight or let go of what keeps him out.
I'm the Ghost of all that is and was and will be
I'm the Shade that no light could ever dispell
And I will tear your life apart and leave you broken
until you know my love, my love
I'm the Devil, better that you get to know me,
I'm the Shade that no light could ever dispel
And you'll know heaven there within, without, with God and that—
that will be my love, my love
I'm the Devil, better that you get to know me,
I'm the Shade that no light could ever dispel,
And you'll know heaven there within, without, with God and that—
that will be my love, my love.

Holy Ghost / Devil

Daybreak
by Duncan Reyburn

I see you standing on that shore,
concerned eyes watch the tide come in;
the devil, right behind you; ahead of you, a drowned world.
You stretch your hand out, say the word …

The Spirit hovers over hell—
a mob of formless nothings rage.
Turbulence, trouble, panic, yearning for sense and meaning
You stretch your hand out, say the word …

“Let there be light”—the waters part,
daybreak emerges from the dark.
“Let there be light”—a life is made
“Let there be light”—the dead are raised.

I see you standing in a crowd
that wants to tear you limb from limb.
A myriad Cains kill Abel;
you die and enter Sheol,
But in the shadows is a word ...

Two bodies, intimate, estranged,
banished from Eden, death-bound slaves,
having betrayed each other, fragile in their desires.
A new dawn breaks, there is a word …

“Let there be light”—a life is made
“Let there be light”—a dead man raised.
“Let there be light”—the waters part,
daybreak emerges from the dark.

I see you waiting for a sign.
The flood will come, that much is clear.
So stand against the custom and build an ark to wait in—
An ark, a womb, to hold the Word:

“Let there be light!”—And there is light ...