For Sale

My head’s a garage sale, I’m selling these thoughts.

They’ve kept me awake pacing floors long enough.

I’ve culled them with haste, pulled every last one

from the mire of my brain— at last it is done!

Like unwanted guests who have long overstayed,

I’m kicking them out, there are none to be saved.

I need to be free of these hindering thoughts –

so I’ve lowered the price, I’ve now slashed the cost.

You can have them for cheap or even for free,

just take what you will and then leave me be.

Quickly I’ll run them through the washing machine

to lighten the stains of the slightly obscene,

and to cleanse all the rest of their acid and fury,

of their wandering restlessness, pulsing with worry.

Purified now, and smelling so sweet,

these thoughts you can have – where can we meet?

I’m desperate to get them out of my head—

say that you’ll help me? Please, be a friend?

Take them away, write your own little book –

dig through the fodder, go ahead, take a look.

Take all the fretting, the wringing of hands,

work it into your story of faraway lands,

where worry's productive, helps things move along;

because here it does nothing but add weight to what’s wrong.

With my thoughts in your hands, my brain can be free!

My head unencumbered, my heart free to dream.

I wave as you leave with my junk in your trunk,

with a loud Hallelujah, my worries have shrunk!

Finally clear-headed, I’m lighter than air!

I’m able to gather and willing to share

only pure thoughts now, no room for deceit;

no pass for obsessions, no space for conceit.

Whatever is noble, whatever is true,

whatever is praiseworthy is all that will do.

I will filter my thoughts now through Truth, by God’s light,

and I’ll rest in His presence in the quiet of night.

Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—

think about such things.

Philippians 4:8

We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.

2 Corinthians 10:5