"I only want to tell you I love you"

Who the Hell is +SCL? Well... 

Finding Myself at Fifty



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



Copyright MMIV Silke LLC