Sometimes I feel that a dog without teeth

Has a better grip on life

Has a stronger bite

While I bark and bark and bark

Panting and wheezing I came into the world

And still I resound with my sounds

Inept and language-less

As all but I have gone amiss

I would scavenge for less than a pinecone

Apteral I fall

For just one word or phrase

To claim my will beyond the haze

Falling into the aether of the heavens

Up, up, and away

Beyond some crystal glade

Into the place where words first dawned

I long for days when I speak in echoes

In the reverence of reticence

In the reverberations of the divine

Waves awakening my vocal chords

And His word will come and dwell

It has come to dwell

And yet I could barely spell His name

Without a choke and swelling glands

 

My voice is a desecration on nights like these

My heart throbs with hard shards left in it

And squirming in my head I am a worm

In dirt I writhe and eat my own feces

But still do you call that I shall sing?

After so many years could I still be so undetermined

Not what some would call self-determinism

Not so prideful and philosophical

I am but indulgent to the whims of idols

Unwilling to be willed to be His glory

But is there some hope in which to rest with assurance

That some song will stir in me

That my determination will be seen

Though but a speck within my conscience, undefined

Could Your will in me finally be done

 

Come, wings of the dawn and take me skyward

Carry my voice upon the starlit horizons

Not that I speak but that Spirit sings in admonitions

And that I know the taste of fiery coals upon my lips

And that I feel the further shattering like potsherds in my heart

That soft, like pudding, my being would collapse into the wind

As blowing through me the Spirit sings in porous me

And I believe that glory glows for all to see

 

And then my voice moves not as I but as its cause

That within the image truth progresses through this vase

Unshattered and purpose-filled

Your song upon my lips again

Life given eternally

That I may be praise to Your glory

A name changed into Your story

A clay work glazed in Your fury

A vessel with a song to sing

A chorus with Your word to bring

A star with Your light to shine

A grape crushed to drip Your wine

A seed born into Your grain

A cloud breaking with Your rain

A ship cast about the sea

Still moves about governed by Thee

Till such safe harbors shine into the night

Though rocky coasts Your house for me is bright

As one who sees the marks of sin

I praise my Lord the place I begin

To know You are all sovereignty

To know I’m nothing without Thee

And though I bite toothless and lost

I surrender to grace with my Christ as cost