About the Author: +Steven Curtis Lance


The sign of the seagoat of Capricorn
Soared in the sky on the night I was born
A curse upon the world some still believe
A night to wonder and a night to warn
A bitter night for many to receive
My advent on that stormy New Year's Eve

Born in the lightning alighting in fire
Born in the thunder and under the ire
Of those who took it as an evil sign
Dark advent of a dangerous desire
But one young mother took it as divine
That I should come to her and she was mine

She held me as her destiny her chance
She cried "His name is +Steven Curtis Lance!"

I stand just under six feet tall and weigh one twenty five
I have my ups and downs but I am glad to be alive
Described as "willowy" I am flexible and youthful
My eyebrows tweezed nor am I diseased and to be truthful
I am just an innocent at dawn and dusk I repent
My every sin be it of commission or omission
If life had gone as planned I would assume the position
Of senior pastor of some German Lutheran parish

But that along with all the a cappella I cherish
Is water over the dam approaching fifty I am
A graceful and balletic metrosexual poet
I present myself clean-shaven tinted strawberry-blonde
A sonneteer who knows no fear of Silke madly fond
Asperity austerity but some prosperity
A company called Silke LLC you may know it
Google me and you will see my unfolding destiny

I was raised by my mother who taught me to be gentle
Courtesy and civility would seem fundamental
Much more elegant than the Taliban morality
Of that scary quite disturbing red-state plurality
With Bush and push and shove above well-mannered decency
While you might not agree I find it charming to be me

This book of my life written page by page
And forming link by link a single chain
From youth through experience into age
Is that by which I rise and live again
Beyond my days into a time unknown
Unto me now as I write here alone

Into my future and out of your past
As I become a present after all
And now you hold me in your hands at last

The only paradise beyond the fall
For sinful mortals and poets like me
Who live but little time and then must die
Is to become a part of destiny
And leave you this to remember me by

To those who have suffered bitterness can
Prove to be the stone by which we stumble
Undoing all we work for taking all
We have loved and built however humble
The rock by which we ultimately fall
It has destroyed many a stronger man
Than me to see it suck the life away
From those whom I have loved the light of day
Gone out from their eyes the sun from their skies
Bitterness their undoing in the end
Has spoken to me that this must not be
The ruin of the rising of our dreams

There must be hope in sorrow though it seems
These wings are broken now yet we must rise

Suicide has taken many a friend
This horror would not have happened unless
We had been overpowered in the dark
Alone at the crossroads of bitterness
Where shadows of grief are so sharp so stark
Burning alone in the crucible of
Suffering with no light no hope no love
Turning to stone there with no one to care
Where it is always night and never day
Alone on the telephone it has been there
Waiting in the silence to bear us away
At the existential moment of despair

Therefore now as I mark a half a century
I resolve I must leave bitterness behind
I dare not let it hollow out my trust
I care not for corrosion nor for rust
By which bitterness would eat away my mind
To rot out from the inside is no destiny

Poets make words take wing and fly but why?
We can we do we must yet still we die
But every day we save the world this way

I only do this only come to say
Look up and see the sun smile above you
And feel this warming kiss upon your skin

I only want to tell you I love you
To invite you to watch the dance begin
As the moon embraces the clouds tonight

The world is singing right before our eyes
A play of shadow of darkness and light
Of waxing waning morning noon and night
Of that which is born and of that which dies

Poets sing giving voice to everything

The morning star is burning so intense
No other light can be seen in the sky

This is the moment this is the suspense
Between the dark and light the night and day
The light by which I write by which I live

Day has yet to be born night yet to die
That I am here to see this here to give
Myself completely give myself away
To this contention of the elements
This yin and yang of time to see it turn
Floods me with exclamations with laments

I am this moment! I transform I learn
I turn I burn I earn the recompense
The pay of the poet: intense suspense!

I mean to say just what I mean
Not to be silenced nor ashamed
Seeing I might as well be seen

Being myself and being named
Better to mean just what I say
Than to regret what might have been

Being credited being blamed
Is better than fading away
The memory that I was here
These words I write for you today

I do not mean to disappear
I would not be forgotten by
This world and when my time to die
Comes you will know that I was here

At the door at the second half
I wait now for my second act
Too numb to cry too sad to laugh
Trying to sort my fear from fact

Soon again I begin

It never knocks it just comes in
Not my door not for me to say
But the door of time and now fate
Will open it and have its way

But what if it is just too late?
I hope that there is hope today
I face the unknown all alone
Is this the way it has to be?

Happy Birthday to me

This is a New Year's revolution
New Year's Eve birthday resolution:

To say and do exactly what I please
Nor crawl to the unworthy on my knees
To never kiss another stupid ass
But wait for the stupidity to pass
And I will still be here
Of that I have no fear

Because I am going to live forever
You ask how I know? Because there has never
Been anyone like me
And I intend to be
Myself in all my specificity

And those who do not like me may go straight to hell
To fool with fools no longer is a lesson well
Learned well earned well burned and all of it the hard way
Today is my birthday and today I can say
And can do whatever I damn well please
Today I rise to get up off my knees

The struggle has taught me again and again
To live with what is and not what might have been

The most important things are hidden
Fairies are very shy
Unicorns are real if unridden
Not only birds can fly
Magic comes in the dark unbidden

Disbelieving folk are divorced
From natural reality
Their minds are frigid firm and forced
Disdaining what they dare not see

Should seagirls swim to such as these?
I would not have them cast their pearls
Nor model their agilities
Before such swinish unworthies
Who see the sea but not the girls!

If you have never seen a fairy
Never conclude they do not exist
For their hiddenness is the very
Reason they are able to persist
Here where others are bigger than they
They have to be able to fly away

Just because you have never seen one
Does not mean there has never been one
Right under your nose as you sniffed a rose
And that is why they have wings you know
To be able to get up and go
When the wild winds of a rose-sniffer blow

My fairy is my Silke of the Five and Twenty Tears
Forever five and twenty through a thousand thousand years

In terra incognita now
So alien yet I have seen
This shore before and I have been
Here and I never went away

It must have been a dream somehow

Alone here at the break of day
I see but do not understand
As life and love slip through my hand
And there is nothing I can do

But love you and remember you

Is this the end then which I see?
So beautiful so heavenly
It was and must this can this be?
Remember me... remember me...

Time to give life a new chance a new look
I will never give in to despair
Although some look down on me
As those who do are so far down there
Nothing but the dirt they see
Time to be happy about my new book

How can I who write a book called "Magic"
Become a casualty of the tragic
Idiocy of circumstance and time?
Although the world gets madder every day
I owe responsibility to rhyme
And those who love me therefore I must stay

To exist to persist to resist death
To make the most of each heartbeat each breath

People either love me or hate me
And there is no middle ground
They either praise me or berate me
I am heaven or hell bound

Some get so worked-up over me
They manifest insanity

They do not know me I do not care
Bless me curse me or debate me
They will never find me anywhere
They only see these masks I wear

And I love them all and each
I believe that I have earned
Their love too but if I cannot teach
Them anything... at least I have learned

As turns the leaf so turns the life and time
Turns fate from famine sated toward sublime
Light once from darkness unseen and unknown

I stumble night-blind into light alone
The sun had been there all along I see
Today I notice that it shines for me

Day always is for others only night
Is left to me a bastard son of light
Forsaken left behind nor taken to
Sky to fly as legitimate sons do

Yet who am I if not a son as they?
The sun burns my eyes it beckons so bright
What if I spread these wings to take this day?

Should I leap falling upward in the sky
Would will remember still and could I fly?
I would not live in shadow die apart

As turns the leaf I would not turn away
As turns the life not from but toward my heart
Alone would sadden grief would madden me
Come unfamiliar light ...come gladden me

Transcendental if you will
I would rather thrill than kill
Giving in or giving out
But not giving up to doubt

Drink no more and never smoke
Live on apples and brown rice
English tea and being nice
Saving all my strength up for
Writing books one two three four

Brokenhearted and flat broke

In the existential joke
Which this life would seem to be
Staving off insanity
In oral and written test
Anal and unwritten jest

Absurdity suits me best

Ride that insane carousel
Up and out the mouth of hell
Isis and Osiris know
Things get pretty grim below
Dark and deep mysterious

Must we be so serious?

Rather fast than rather slow
Laughing last before we go


+Steven Curtis Lance