couches in alleys

Hey Jack it's me,
I don't mean to bother you but somethings been on my mind.
At the end of this road that climbs the horizon will be reached in a matter of miles.
And when the wheels cease to spin the walls and the fences will grow higher than redwood trees.
And I know your demise.
And I fear what will happen when the road fails to flow under me.
Oh Jack you see, I felt like your mirror with the wind whipping through my hair.
When the wheels ceased to spin and I cased my surroundings, I realized I hadn't gone anywhere.
When the problems I'd left with couches in alleys, where no one would ever claim.
And the hardest part was sifting through the pieces of the rain soaked and rotten remains when I got home.

-styrofoam ft. ben gibbard

it's my favorite time of evening, when sun is setting and the sky is soft and warm, making blue and orange reflections on the cars. the dusk is setting in and the lights around the city have just come on, competing with the sunset for the brightest light. the purple neon from lupis is reflecting in the newly rain-washed windows of the cars parked outside and the sky is turning from orange to pink with a hint of violet where the pink fades into the blue. i wish i had my camera...i have color film in it right now.

im feeling like i want to say something
something...
a jumbled up mud of colors
wanting to be letters, sounds, words
music notes perhaps
lots of blue
choking on a few forgotten phrases
and memories
pulling the long string of thought
from my mouth
eyes are green
but hands are red
for the first time
heart is strong
strength is heart
raw
burned from the leaving
and lingering.

ive been absolutely fascinated by light for the past few months. i stop dead, staring at the way light is hitting something. studying every nuance of the source, shadow, and how it falls softly, like a fine powder sometimes...other times like a piece of broken slate. even lights in a river, making their rainbow colors wait for your attention, theyre just a little shy. nineteen lights reflect in two picture frames. streetlights line up, each one reaching a ray out to touch the middle of the windshield; holding on, stretching until the bright line snaps back to wait for another passing car. the curved edge of light from recessed spotlights, the two distorted ovals from a lamp. beams caught and cut by the sharp edges of glass. im fascinated, absolutely in love. weird isnt it?

1 Corinthians 3

1Brothers, I could not address you as spiritual but as worldly—mere infants in Christ. 2I gave you milk, not solid food, for you were not yet ready for it. Indeed, you are still not ready. 3You are still worldly. For since there is jealousy and quarreling among you, are you not worldly? Are you not acting like mere men? 4For when one says, "I follow Paul," and another, "I follow Apollos," are you not mere men?
5What, after all, is Apollos? And what is Paul? Only servants, through whom you came to believe—as the Lord has assigned to each his task. 6I planted the seed, Apollos watered it, but God made it grow. 7So neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God, who makes things grow. 8The man who plants and the man who waters have one purpose, and each will be rewarded according to his own labor. 9For we are God's fellow workers; you are God's field, God's building.

10By the grace God has given me, I laid a foundation as an expert builder, and someone else is building on it. But each one should be careful how he builds. 11For no one can lay any foundation other than the one already laid, which is Jesus Christ. 12If any man builds on this foundation using gold, silver, costly stones, wood, hay or straw, 13his work will be shown for what it is, because the Day will bring it to light. It will be revealed with fire, and the fire will test the quality of each man's work. 14If what he has built survives, he will receive his reward. 15If it is burned up, he will suffer loss; he himself will be saved, but only as one escaping through the flames.

16Don't you know that you yourselves are God's temple and that God's Spirit lives in you? 17If anyone destroys God's temple, God will destroy him; for God's temple is sacred, and you are that temple.

18Do not deceive yourselves. If any one of you thinks he is wise by the standards of this age, he should become a "fool" so that he may become wise. 19For the wisdom of this world is foolishness in God's sight. As it is written: "He catches the wise in their craftiness"[a]; 20and again, "The Lord knows that the thoughts of the wise are futile."[b] 21So then, no more boasting about men! All things are yours, 22whether Paul or Apollos or Cephas[c] or the world or life or death or the present or the future—all are yours, 23and you are of Christ, and Christ is of God.

terza rima

Stepping gently across the floor
it creaks, a dry and splintered sound
reflecting the dusty-smelling, silver boards
broken and opened, windows to the ground.
The walls are thinning like their yellow-painted planes,
and I know that, without feeling, no surface can be found.
Sunlight casting silhouettes through rippled window panes
onto foreign furniture I know to be my own,
bleaching out the color from the faded wooden frame
and thinning quilt, hand-pieced and ancient, sewn
by mother’s love. The scene in stillness lingered
in between, while outside, time had flown
softly by the window, as a kindly whispered word.

what's written on my arm

Let me hear in the morning of your steadfast love,
for in you i trust.
Make me know the way I should go,
for to you I lift up my soul.

a severe case of humanity

couldnt sleep last night to save my life. it doesnt help that my cough is getting worse. getting up at 7am isnt fun (thats why i wait until 7:40). anyway, ive been completely and thoroughly confused. but nevermind that. this is my prayer:

7Where shall I go from your Spirit?
Or where shall I flee from your presence?
8If I ascend to heaven, you are there!
If I make my bed in Sheol, you are there!
9If I take the wings of the morning
and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea,
10even there your hand shall lead me,
and your right hand shall hold me.
11If I say, "Surely the darkness shall cover me,
and the light about me be night,"
12even the darkness is not dark to you;
the night is bright as the day,
for darkness is as light with you.
(psalm 139)

8Let me hear in the morning of your steadfast love,
for in you I trust.
Make me know the way I should go,
for to you I lift up my soul.
(psalm 143)

i pray for wisdom and guidance. Lord, dont let the eyes of my heart falter from you.

old friends with an ex-con

today i got a facebook msg from one of my friends. he's a boy i played with when we were both nine or ten. i was overjoyed to find him, we used to have so much fun together. i asked him what he had been up to...guess what his answer was.

jail.

yes thats right. jail. he was incarcerated for six months for something (i dont want to know, my poor little tyler) but let out a bit early...probably for good behavior. he says he's trying to get his life back on track. thats wonderful and i wish him all the luck in the world.

why do i not feel safe now? i have an ex-con for a facebook friend...hell, more than that, i'd love to get in touch with him and really find out what kind of person he's turned out to be. but i just wouldnt feel safe. this is really killing me. i care about him a lot, he's one of the two reasons i got facebook. i cared enough to look him up. i would love to get to know him and maybe even become real good friends again...but then, people change a lot from when they were nine.

he's twenty years old and he already went to jail. probably stole something, hit a guy, something like that. it's just that my stomach turns every time i think about it. i care about this guy, but i'm torn because now i'm also scared of him.

a summary of nights

I have to confront my demons. My demons are wicked, and I am afraid.

I need to talk to my mother, and perhaps my uncle.

I don’t know who I am. I really don’t. It’s starting to scare me. I'm losing grip of something I should be holding onto for dear life. It’s slipping. Slowly and surely it’s slipping through my fingers. I don’t know if I ever had it…but I’m quickly losing it. Sometimes I have to just sit down and shake myself. Shake clear my head and figure out what’s good and right in the world again…and realize that it feels good and that it’s the direction that I need to be heading. But when I'm in the midst of it all, I can't see a thing.
I was in tears last night. I've been in tears the past few nights. The conversation tonight was hard because it made me realize how much I don’t have. There are aspects to my singleness that I value, but none of them are valued over that wonderful feeling of knowing you’re loved…or at least thinking it. perhaps what I am saying here is that I would almost prefer the deception of loving to living without it. I think many fall into that. It feels close enough and it will do, so we go ahead and do it. Sort of like replacing love with sex I suppose. You replace the actual feelings with the actions and you get something that feels close enough and helps alleviate that horrible feeling of being unloved. That’s what I feel right now.
I’m sad. I'm sad and hurting and feeling as unloved as a person can feel. I feel alone and unwanted. I want more than anything to crawl into my mother’s arms and have her hold me and sing to me and tell me that I am worth loving. I won’t believe it, but it helps me to fall asleep, and then I can forget everything.
_______________________________________________

Morning light sheds clarity on blind, nightly struggles. I’m struggling with the same demons that I’ve always had trouble with. They’re just so hard to recognize at night. In the morning I can see how the grasses were trampled with the struggles and I follow them back to the path they pulled me from. First of all and above everything I need to trust God. I am feeling unloved because I am allowing everyone around me to define me. I need to look to the Lord for my worth, my value. I need to be content in who He is and not in who others think I am, or whether or not others are loving towards me. I need to ask Him for strength to get through the outward struggles I am facing. I need to step back and gain perspective, and not the perspective that says “this is all useless and such a short span of time that nothing matters and everything you do is worthless,” but the perspective that says “God is so much bigger than any of this, and He’s on my side and loves me no matter what happens. It will be for the best even if I cannot see it now.” I need to let go. I need to give Him the control I am so jealously guarding.

Seeing this struggle for what it really is helps…and then it doesn’t. Seeing it makes me realize that it is the same struggle I’ve been fighting forever and I still haven’t won. Does this bring me any closer to winning? Will I win? Ever? Will I ever be settled and content and stable in this path I am seeking? If I am, will I know? Hopefully…

Abba, help me to feel like your child.

it came up again. and they all started to say how their mothers and fathers were taught here. they lived in the same buildings, on the same halls, studied in the same classrooms. yet i am first generation. i have always been first generation. none of my family lived in my house before me. other families left their roots behind and i came in. ive never lived in one place longer than seven years. never. i never had the deep sense of history and stability that some have had. that feeling of roots and tendrils reaching deep into the soil. i never grew up and watched my house shrink around me. never ran my hands along the same wall i drew on as a child. all of my roots were left behind, buried deep under the new roots of new families.

one time i went to my father's old house. he grew up in upstate new york, on a little farm. and there he told me how his roots were strong here, they were dying, yes, but they had been strong. the area was still known as king's settlement. the road that ran through it was still called by that name, though none of the maps will tell you anything other than the route number. he showed me the creek he grew up playing in, and i wished that i had also grown up playing in it. i wished to feel the weight of my own history, built up, thick and heavy around me. it was thicker there than its ever been. im too used to the lightness of a few years, for i have scattered my years throughout the south. there is little weight when one leaves pieces of oneself under trees and in the corners of forgotten rooms. the nomadic life is one of lightness, and having been trained to this lightness, the nomad often feels out of place when the weight of their past falls upon them. so they move, leaving roots behind.

the cracks

'well,' he said
as he was leaving,
'blood
tells.'

but you remembered quickly
other times, other faces,
and i slipped between the good
intentions, breathlessly.

-robert creeley

not quite so bitter now
but quite irritable.
im sorry.
i dont feel like i have a reason to be stressed out right now
though i did just start studying for that exam tomorrow morning...
and i did go to the hospital
and im not going to see my family for a while
might have to have surgery
and right now all i want is my daddy to hold me
and my mother to talk to me
but its 3am and i cant call
no one's awake
and im not sleeping
i need someone with big, strong hands to gently work out these knots in my back
not tiny, pinching hands, though it helped a bit.
i dont think ive ever relaxed my back
ever.
why do i always feel like my hands are tied?
what is it thats tying them?
i just want to stretch and let go of the control
drop reins
and get pulled into the strength of the storm
and thunder
i am weary
let me rest
theres so much i need to do
so much
im hungry for God
and i havent made the time
like bending down to pick up a ball
and kicking out of your own reach again.
im frustrated
with myself...always with myself
i dont like myself
in fact i quite hate myself at the moment
and i hate everything that ive done or thought
and i dont know why you read this
to just listen to me rant
about how i hate things
or my pessimistic view of everything
or how horrible of a person i can be
look at me look at me
this is imperfection perfected.

a new perspective.

I don’t know if I like you. I thought I did. Your description as a hopeless romantic and your wonderfully obsessive book collection mingled in with the low notes of your voice and your strikingly dark hair. Your sense of humor was entertaining and your romanticism overwhelming. And I thought, here is a lover.

But you are bitter. So bitter. And I’m not saying it’s unjustified, I cannot judge its justification. But just being around that hurts me. Viciously self-centered and painfully unloving at times. Your scales are heavily weighted and set high and that pedestal even higher. I pity the poor child you will place up there. Perhaps its just something I don’t understand about you, but I could feel you sacrificing people for purity, for an exaggerated sense of honor…if that really makes sense so out of context.

I like to think I get along well with many and judge few…but your words rub the wrong way, and I’m getting raw. I suppose what I’m saying is that once I loved to be around you…and now I have to force myself to be civil.

Lord, I pray for Your love overflowing through me. I pray for patience, acceptance and understanding towards others. Please don't allow me to become embittered. Please.

sometimes i wonder...
i often console myself with the thought that many things that bother me are really very childish. and that it will all heal eventually, and that when i grow up ill look back at these things and smile and shake my head for how seriously i felt them. just painless marks of remembrance on skin.

then i get really scared...
and im afraid these things wont heal. im afraid it will always be a struggle to not think of things, to not remember. sometimes im afraid this is it and that its just all going downhill from here. im afraid itll still hurt while i watch my children's children make these mistakes. im afraid ill still have regrets.

sometimes im afraid i dont have much growing up left. grown up has always been painted as this time when things like this dont bother you, where you dont struggle with these childish things anymore. grown up is this time when the slate get wiped clean...nothing from your past hurts you anymore because youre grown up...and things like that dont hurt grown ups.

i also have a problem extracting good motives from bad. they get so tangled up sometimes.

sudden stripes of realism in a world of idealism
race across my mind like a line
from an indie film
and this is the soundtrack to my day (or are they nightmares?)
i miss it again and i wish i could stay
gleaming chrome in the bathroom sink
or the bleached sky on a winter day,
crossing the bridge to somewhere
i dont care
as long as im going away.
away from here.
this place i made
i meant to stay
but you pushed me too far
today
i wont look back again
but then again
you never did?
i'll never say
forever again.

still awake...

im lonely again

and i really dont deserve this break...i havent been working very hard.

im confused.
lonely.
sad.
scared.
worried.
apprehensive.

im watching a jealous God rip everthing that has ever meant anything to me away. it hurts. and im tired. i dont want to wake up tomorrow...that means i have to remember. remember what you ask? remember how lonely and confused and sad and scared and worried and apprehensive i am. remember how many voices are demanding i be perfect (and dont even bother to write that i neednt be...they wont listen, they never have). hell, not perfect...decent, serviceable, working. but thats just the problem...im not working. im broken. my heart is broken, and not in the romantic way.

im a wimp

ive been working steady for a little under two hours and i had to take a break. im hungry, but at the moment i think ive managed to get myself locked in mills. this is good because it means i can just keep working until im done w/o worrying about mr. security guard (and its one i havent seen AGAIN!). on the upside, ive finished 3 of 5 journal reviews! fuzzah! (as simon would say) i think i want to sneak over to founders and get some food...oh, and pick up my keys, i forgot that getting locked in mills means im locked out of founders..heh heh.

these are secrets i dont want to tell you

i want to sing with someone...in front of no one.
i want someone to hold me when i tell them not to.
i asked God for a miracle tonight, ive never done that.
i dont know if He said yes.
i want someone to see past me.
past my hands held up.
and past my threats.
past what society tells them.
past what covenant tells them
i want someone to see past what they think im saying.
hello elevator
do you bring comfort?
or a distant stare?
or an empty ride?
do you bring a miracle?
or a sin?
or do you just pass by...pistons and gears pushing away, doing only what we told you to. scraping by the doors, going up and away from me?
or do you sit with me on this third floor, waiting...still and silent but for the wind echoing in your emptiness.

when is manipulation not manipulation? when is it just a cry out for someone to love me?

hello
i am hurt.
i am broken.
i have run away from what i cannot understand
i know God.
and thats all i know

dont pity me.
dont come to me with warm words.
i wont believe them.
i wont hear them.
i wont hear you.

when is it not manipulation? when am i just coming up to a friend and asking them to love me? if i ask you honestly, if my words to you are: "i need you to love me" i am not hiding anything. if i say something and really mean it, it's not manipulation. if i ask you for something and thats what i want, it's not manipulation.

im tired and i dont want to sleep.

thunderstorms are good for long talks...and patching things up with people. lightning is good for watching. im glad things happen the way they do because i know there's always something im missing in my perspective...and God sees it. and i know that He sees all of it. and that makes me content.

am i more of an idealist? or less? are my standards lower or higher? i dont think that the story was ruined. a written story is not easily ruined. i dont think poe could ever be truly ruined on a night like this. i can choose to block certain things out of my memory...if i so choose.

...what security guard?