On Replacing the Images and Shadows

On Replacing the Images and Shadows
(“Are your ears awake? Listen. Listen to the Wind Words, the Spirit blowing through the churches. Christ-conquerors are safe from Devil-death.” Revelation 2:11 [The Message])

The metaphor looms behind me, rising over my future,
casting its shadow into years one or two, multiplied ahead.
The analogy was not pretty that pretended my language,
nor the simile like anything that would dress up an unshaven day.

Days went without new words to replace the ancillary version,
secondary visions pretended the whole. (Weaklings cry and
you cannot trust anyone) and I refused to cry around anyone
who could not cover my losses.

The shadows follow, they are what mothers muttered and fathers
replayed
until we knew nothing of the mountain breeze, and drank only
of mirages.

But You, Metaphor and Meaning, replace my images, the
gray men and women who populate my ethic,
and literally, one soldier at a time, they are dying,
replaced, line by line, by the paradigm of a Word
fleshed out, hungry like me, and bruising just as easily.

I cannot ignore the poetry, the verses unrehearsed perfection;
the humanity, the divine unrefined connection
between a hill in time to my present unrhymed attempts
at following something better

Than a previous shade; death remade (ha! Unmasked
pretender) breath unfrayed (HoSanna
uplifted) life arrayed (He’s undone
our afraid)