Praying

The night I Disobeyed the Demon

by ZacharyWGilbert

Pressing the button to silence the radio, I drove on in the thick darkness.  The road like a frozen river of stone.  Lights like lost souls drifting, steady towards home.  I asked my Creator to sit with me, I felt as if he was listening to me in the empty passenger seat.  With tires howling and wind lashing at my car I asked for his help.  I said I was sorry for telling him last, for fighting on my own, for saturating in evil for so long.  I drank a tall cold glass of water that night as I went to bed.  As I slept, a swirling and glowing microscopic lightning danced peacefully in my brain.   Glowing threads, like little fingers, clean my mind.  They are pulling a sticky putrid sludge loose from my memory.  An angry storm of black clouds and red lightning falls out of my ear as I sleep.  Scales covered in oil.  A screaming angry invader writing in protest.  Rendered powerless in its eviction, it falls.  Shadows rule minds that choose to stand with backs turned toward the light.   A yellow warm listening light, when called upon, when unblocked, burns demon flesh to ruin.

…

Copyright © 2017 Zachary W. Gilbert

Grip of Darkness

by ZacharyWGilbert

I found myself being fitted for a 500 dollar suit.   My sister in-laws wedding would be including my son as the ring bearer. At the time he was only a year old.  The sleeves of the gray of the suit were about 8 inches (20 centimeters) too short.  The salesman laughed and said, “It’s ok, just never put your arms up.”

…

The tentacles of evil, are strong and painful.  They wrap around hearts and wring painful emotions out.  If their hold persists, then the heart turns dark, and becomes lost within its pain.  Evil will always say, “After assessing myself, I have discovered that I am not that bad.  I am a good.  If you feel discomfort, then you are just too sensitive.  This is just the way things are.”  I am sure this word track is as old as humanity.  The abuser will self asses, then blame the victim.  Their laughter shakes the tentacles, amplifies the hurt and breaks the heart.

Why is God, the last one to know?  I ask myself this many times.  I gripe alone in my car.  I tell the tale to any willing ear I can find.  Evil’s conquest of my heart, my moral, and my life.  Yet, I don’t tell my creator.  My friend.  I wonder how he feels when I try to steal his job.  When I say with my actions that I am better equipped to dislodge the tentacles than the expert.  Evil laughs at my efforts and tightens its grip.  It hopes that I will never call upon God.  Alone, I am defeated.  I begin to believe the lies.  I become evil myself.

Then I make a choice.  My wife, my sweet angel, tells me to call upon God.  “Let go of this junk!” she yells at me.  She yells, because she so passionately loves me.  The solution to all of my problems is so simple, and she knows it.  What a stubborn fool I am.  I wrestle with my pride, as my heart grows tentacles of its own.  The dosage of pain, hurt, and evil is saturated.  It leaks out of my mind, my words, and my life.

Alone in the car, my soul covered in putrid rot, I ask God if he will ride with me.  I fight the tears.  My eyes are hot.  I am so ashamed I can only whisper.  I clear my textbooks and coffee shop napkins off of the passenger seat.  “I need to talk to you,” I say.  I turn off the radio.  I power down my phone.  I am alone with my creator.  I roll up the tinted windows, “I don’t know what to do.  I have been poisoned for so long.  I offer up a punch list of my own failures and sorrow.  I ask for forgiveness.  I reluctantly ask him to forgive others.”  I cry in silence.  I tell him about a crossroads, about difficult decisions.  I feel like he listens.  The tentacles become brittle in a moment.  I feel like evil is purged out of my body, locked in my tears that fall on my shirt.  The pain becomes blurry.  I hear answers to my direct and specific questions, I uttered alone Answers light yellow light, shine within the smiling commentary of the people I meet for the rest of the day.  The feeling of relief and protection is like a warm blanket wrapped around me after I have drifted in a cold dark ocean for days.  I look up to the sky, the tug of my heart being pulled into the heavens is almost magnetic.

…

Copyright 2017 © Zachary W. Gilbert

 

Ears in Heaven

by ZacharyWGilbert

The great controversy,

of how to deal with woe,

is challenged

by the whispered wake

of my dancing pen…

…

Solids Management Program

for the soul.

Emotions, can not be extracted,

diluted, purged, or burned.

Orange fire cannot lick away,

a charred brain.

…

How then, does one,

unburden, a soul buried

beneath, hot sticky tar?

…

Talk to God,

as if you were,

talking on your cell phone,

going for a ride in the car with a friend,

on a long walk, sharing your woes,

to a sacred friend,

under the moonlight.

…

Ask to be forgiven,

ask for the strength to forgive.

Ask to feel forgiveness,

under the deep marrow of soul,

where hurt lodges deep.

Ask for answers,

Ask for humility to accept them.

…

God is listening…

Are you willing,

to talk?

Green smoke, whispers

by ZacharyWGilbert

Behold the black lion.  His teeth red, his chin wet, with blood.  Glowing embers from the depths of hell, fix on his prey, fix on you.  “Your safe.  Your ok.  Don’t worry,” a rumbling murmuration, rumbles from his throat.  His words, that are his unleashed children, are all lies.  In an empty field, cold air bites your skin.  You have no weapons, and the black lion approaches.  In your hand you remember, you have a one way radio.  On the other side of it, He is listening.  You need not format your words, or regurgitate some ancient chant, just talk.

“Put down the radio,” hisses the black lion, showing the snake tatoo on his silver tongue, “He is not listening!  Why would he help a wretched blight like you…  Surrender!  Surrender to me!”

Your thumb finds the button, waking a red glow.  The line is open, as the black lion lunges for your throat…

Copyright © 2017 Zachary W Gilbert

 

Sorrow’s Hideout

by ZacharyWGilbert

Dirty water dripped on my head from a moldy wooden basement beam.  Light spilled into the room from the cracks in the ceiling.  I was trapped in a deep stone hole.  My wrist was clasped with a 10 centimeter iron cuff, it rubbed the skin underneath into a blistery rot.  I pulled against in, a 3 meter rusty chain that was bolted into solid rock.  Every time I woke up, in the hideout a man sat across from me.  He looked angry, he wore ratty clothes, and smell like clean water and soap had not hit his body for months.  I waved my hands at him, he would mock my gestures.  I asked when he would let me out of this prison.  He never answered.

I found a loose stone in the floor.  I pushed away the gray dust that shrouded it.  I cracked and broke my fingernails clawing at the buried stone.  When I finally uprooted the rock, warm red blood fell from my fingers into the dry dust.  There was a note, handwritten in ink.  It was on a cut piece of soft tan leather.  It simply read…

Confess to me, all of your wrongs…

Call upon my ear, I want to hear from you…

You can’t see me, buy I am watching you,

I am upstairs.

If you speak, I will hear you.

I will heal you, if you would but simply,

ask

I sat in silence, in my own pile of deification and filth.  I was too proud, and too embarrassed, to try.  I was hungry, and ashamed.  I saw the filthy man return.  He sat there in silence looking at me.  I hated him.  I finally broke.  I looked up to the ceiling, I said, “I don’t know who you are, but I found your note, would you be willing to help me?”

A basement light came on.  I saw the stone room had a large archway, with a giant mirror beside it.  The keys to my chains hung from a rusted nail on the wall.

Copyright © 2017 Zachary W Gilbert