How can I reach the unreachable..
teach the unteachable who's  comprehension is unbelieveable
But the fact  is unbelief is more than lack of knowledge..
Cause the truth is even Satan knows who God is..
Is it blindness...
truth on deaf ears..
the embracing of silence..
should there be surpises ..
when behind your eyelids enter a random act of violence..
A vision of darkness ..there's no light that why the pupils dilate the use of the iris..
But when use to darkness and the lights hits one close their eyelids..
I.e. Christ the truth the way the light..
Being unsaved is like living in the womb..
Darkness equivalent to that of a tomb..
Flashes of light is like labor contractions..
The unknown conviction hinting..
Considered a distraction..
Pushed out now watch the eyes reaction..
To the light cause from darkness there's a detachment..
If given a chance a adjustment happens..
An embracement of the light..
A rebirth Christ in action.
How can i reach the unreachable..teach the unteachable ..
With a script the director unknown Its more than the shout of action..
Living life like a movie unaware that the villains not acting..
Now could u imagine..
A movie set full of madness..
All the cast dead like really dead from a stabbing..
No equalizer the villain the only one left standing..
You may say excuse me..
Life is not a movie.
Truly
But a witness not performing there duty..is bystander..
No innocence exist...
No bliss in ignorance...
.Cause we all birth into sin.
So many questions with wrong answers given like the truth don't exist....
How can I reach the unreachable
teach the unteachable
who I tell to this body of Christ they should enlist
But  when a pass is given and the shot is missed..
It negates the assist..
A reason for the lost of the game..
The thought of a lost soul has me pissed..
I'm the point guard I help the scorer sustain..
Chris Paul with rock which is the gospel..
Passing the truth like Paul the apostle ..
Too many people out for a win like Christ didn't settle the score...
Adam severed the relationship but Christ rebuilt the rapport...
I am trying to reach and teach but there's no trust any more...
Pointing u in the direction of excepting the Lord..,
Embrace the word of God that double edge sword..
Them cuts is conviction..
The sword swinging is What it means to be a witness..
Led by the spirit A Christian
Yes we are made in Gods image..
Trying to reach every soul because the wins and losses count..
Life is not a scrimmage..
How can one soul have a  blemish..
Only dirt that can touch the soul is the dirty hands of sinning..
How can I reach the unreachable teach the unteachable..Who mistakes knowledge for ignorance...
And reject truth because arrogance..

quiet minds lightly preoccupied
unspoken words that don’t need to be said
a white house in a white room
where all the light is green
pushed through an old bottle
just the three of us, like it used to be
    -minus one
naivety lost
it’s shadow still hangs in the dustiest corners of the room
i leap through velvet mountains
and dive through smokey books
no sounds can penetrate the walls of our silence
i can see the smile in your eyes
twisting your face for the first time in forever
giggles and remnants of the past
as we delve into years back
of white afternoons

In between   (a poem)
.
my mind struggles against its own illusion
nightmare tumbles out into still morning
light is heavy,
a fog of echoes...
and I am caught
.
day dreams the sunlight
dreams light the day
and I am caught in between
mourning echoes...
like a stillborn ghost
who can't take a breath in the present

….
  
I live on a tropical island and just want to go surfing with my husband, but the nausea in the early morning as I try to eat  breakfast and drive with him to the beach is so uncomfortable.  Day after day it makes even surfing a chore, and I consider not going anymore.  Background anxiety and unreasonable irritation interferes with our marriage, frustrates him enough to want me out.  

For me, a trip to the grocery store or meeting a group of people awakens the same dreadful fear as rockclimbing a cliff. Perspective has been lost in the extremes.  I try to gain some control over this hindering nuisance, seeking situations that bring the same surges of adrenaline so I can learn to master it.  If I can just push past the avoidance that would keep me inside doing nothing, if I can just ignore the feeling I want to throw up, if I can just get out there, I am rewarded with life’s potential beauty eventually.  Many days I do enjoy the thrill of mountain biking or connection with nature when surfing, but there are too many days of internal struggle that reduce what should be enjoyable to a relentless chore of wrestling inner demons.

The VA offers a few sessions of marriage counseling, and the doctor begins to explain PTSD.  WTF, I’ve learned to cope with an unreliable brain, but now there’s this?  From what I understand (and that’s just me, an amateur philosopher) Sometimes the brain is so traumatized, that the memory is literally sealed off, encapsulated, protecting it from changing.  If later something happens that is similar, the brain triggers avoidance responses as a take-no-chances survival mechanism.  Literally the brain is protecting one’s self from one’s self.  This all-or-nothing strategy works fending off potential dinosaur attacks, but in our complex society, these automatic avoidance behaviors complicate functioning and well being.  Life becomes an attitude of constant reaction instead of motivated intention.

The website for the National center for PTSD says.  “After a trauma or life-threatening event, it is common to have reactions such as upsetting memories of the event, increased jumpiness, or trouble sleeping. If these reactions do not go away or if they get worse, you may have Posttraumatic Stress Disorder.”  

“Common reactions to trauma are:
• Fear or anxiety: In moments of danger, our bodies prepare to fight our enemy, flee the situation, or freeze in the hope that the danger will move past us. But those feelings of alertness may stay even after the danger has passed. You may:feel tense or afraid, be agitated and jumpy, feel on alert.  
• Sadness or depression: Sadness after a trauma may come from a sense of loss---of a loved one, of trust in the world, faith, or a previous way of life. You may:have crying spells, lose interest in things you used to enjoy, want to be alone all the time, feel tired, empty, and numb.  
• Guilt and shame: You may feel guilty that you did not do more to prevent the trauma. You may feel ashamed because during the trauma you acted in ways that you would not otherwise have done. You may:feel responsible for what happened, feel guilty because others were injured or killed and you survived.  
• Anger and irritability: Anger may result from feeling you have been unfairly treated. Anger can make you feel irritated and cause you to be easily set off. You may:lash out at your partner or spouse, have less patience with your children, overreact to small misunderstandings.  
• Behavior changes: You may act in unhealthy ways. You may:drink, use drugs, or smoke too much, drive aggressively, neglect your health, avoid certain people or situations.”   It lists four main symptoms: reliving the event, avoiding situations that remind of the event, feeling numb, and feeling keyed up (also called hyperarousal)”

Four words strung together: Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome.  They’ve become a tired cliché, exhausted from the endless threat of random cruelty camouflaged in banality, weary of the weight shouldering back the wall that separates death and gore from the living.  Living was a reflex beyond willpower and devoid of choice. Control was self-deception.  The mind was so preoccupied with A: survival, B: sanity, in that order.  Rest was a cruel illusion.  The tank was drained, no room for emotions ditched.  Empathy took too much effort, fear was greedy.  Hopefully they can be remembered and found on the other side, if there is one.  Sleep deprived cells were left hyper-alert from the imminent, shot up and addicted to adrenaline.  Living was Fate and Chance, and meant leaving that time and place sealed in forgetfulness.  

Now PTSD is a worn out acronym, a cold shadow of what it feels like.  I try to think of something more personal that can describe the way it randomly visits me, now resigned to its familiar unwelcome influence.  It steals through my brain, flying ahead of me with its own agenda of protecting sabotage.  Its like the Guardian Trickster of Native American legend.  Its an archetype but real enough to make mistakes: Chulyen, the black raven.

A decade after the ER, contentment is found in a garden of slow tranquility as a butterfly interrupts a sunbeam.  My heart fills with bittersweet as I’ve finally found something I love and want to keep.  Just then Chulyen’s grasping black claws clamp my heart with painful arrhythmia and it fills to burst, tripping in panic trying to recover its pace.  The sudden pain drops me to my knees, in the dirt between fragrant lavender and cherry tomatoes.  Pain stops breath and time and makes me remember the ER, when my heart rebelled its ordained purpose for a week.  I had tried to throw my bitter life back in God’s face but He didn’t take it.  Now that I have peace and a life that I treasure, He’s taking it now.  The price for my mistake is due.  It was all just borrowed time and I’m still so young, my children just babies.  God with a flick of cruelty reminds me not to put faith in the tangible, especially when its treasured.  The sharp claws finally relent and I can breathe, looking up with a gasp and the Raven takes flight overhead leaving a shadow.  Bright noon warmth, unusually heavy and foreboding, seems to say ‘there will come a time when you will not welcome the sun.’   Doctors run an EKG and diagnose ‘stress’.

The bird perches on my shoulder two more decades later, always seeing death just over there.  So I sit on the porch just a little longer and check my list again, delaying the unavoidable racing heart and rush of tension when I fix the motorcycle helmet strap under my chin.  I know all those stupid drivers have my life in their cell-phone distracted hands and hope my husband knows how much I love him, and my daughters too.  

Chulyen wakes me at 3:00 am when autumn’s wind aggravates the trees.  His rustle of black feathers outside unsettles summer’s calm night.  He brings an end-of-the-world portent that hints this peace is just temporary, borrowed.  Tribulation will return.

Ravens are attracted to bright shiny things.  Chulyen steals off with treasures like intention, and contentment.  I don’t realize they are missing until occasionally I find myself truly living in the moment.  I guess that is another reason why I crave adventure, for those instants and epiphanies that snap me out of that long term modis operandi of reacting, instead of being.  The daily list of ‘I must, or I should’ can for a brief while become ‘I want’  and I am free.

My companion the black bird perches relaxed in the desert on the gatepost of a memory.  A bullet-scarred paint-faded sign dangles by one corner from rusty barbed wire:
    No Trespassing    
    That Means You
I have a haunted idea what's behind the fence.  Chulyen implies the memory with a simple mistaken sound:
a Harley in the distance is for a second the agitating echo of a helicopter...
or those were the very same words they said when...
or I hear a few jangling clinks of forks in our warm kitchen...
hinting a cold cafeteria at 5:00 am smelling of fake eggs and industrial maple flavored corn syrup,
and everything else that happened that day...
My cells recollect, brace with the addictive rush of adrenaline.  But the raven denies access to the memory, distracting with discomfort.  I trip and I fall hard into the gritty dirt of irritation at the person who unknowingly reminded me.  Anxiety floods in along with fatigue of the helplessness of it all, back then and still now.  I can't go further.  Chulyen’s tricking deception says Leave This Memory, you never wanted to come back.
But I already knew from just recognizing the bird patiently sitting there a sentinal,
recalling every other time he tricked me with nausea and depression.
I tried to tell myself again that behind that gate,
the past has dried up from neglect.
Disintegrated into dust,
Blown away,
doesn't
exist.
…


After everything else, how to work through this?  The VA gave me a manual, a crudely printed set of worksheets with a government-looking blue cover page:  Cognitive Processing Therapy.
“In normal recovery from PTSD symptioms, intrusion, thoughts, and emotions decrease over time and no longer trigger each other.  However, in those who don’t recover, the vivid images, negative thoughts, and strong emotions lead to escape and avoidance.  Avoidance prevents the processing of the trauma that is needed for recovery and works only temporarily.  The ultimate goal is acceptance.  
There may be “stuck points”, conflicting beliefs or strong negative beliefs that create additional unpleasant emotions and unhealthy behavior.  For example, a prior belief may have been “ I am able to protect myself in dangerous situations.”  But after being harmed during military service, a conflicting belief surfaces, “I was harmed during service, and I am to blame.”  If one is ‘stuck’ here, it may take some time until one is able to get feelings out about the trauma, because one is processing a number of rationales.  “I deserved it because…” , or “I misinterpreted what happened, I acted inappropriately, I must be crazy…”  The goal is to change the prior belief to one that does not hinder acceptance.  For example, “I may not be able to protect myself in all situations.”

(chapter continues with recovery methods)

I've washed up on desert island sand
with only a few things in a satchel, and this game to keep me busy.
"the one most valuable thing, what would it be?"

Intelligence is handy, no doubt, just like a Swiss Army Knife.
But put to the test it's usually insufficient in the real world.
Too small, too dull, falls from fumbling hands in a pinch.
A false security, Guaranteed to be lost when really needed.

Health? Tenuous at best.
Doctors' throwing educated guesses at me in little pills like a game of darts.
Besides, my Every Single Cell is re-made by every 7th year, a brand new me.
Just a reflection of DNA, choices, and environment,
health's appearance is up to daily fate.

Faith? in what, exactly, this book? I know I'm lost.
My Creator feeds me or breaks me whether I will or not.
by definition Greater than me, whatever name or persona that would be.
How can I constrain Him or Her to a pronoun, into my own limits, to keep
a tiny symbol stamped in metal, an impossible shield.
In other words, faith in my Savior comes with breath.

Memory? small fading pictures, receipts of illusions cluttering the present.
And anyway, friends to share them hopped a different boat, swam to other islands.
Perhaps a set of footprints will lead to Saturday, but for now its just me.

Anything left?
Looking in the empty satchel,
then fingers checking the corners,
I find a little gem:

Whimsy
Not big enough for confounding hubris,
too small to burden seriousness,
it's bright enough to light hope's path,
and light enough for awe.
Creative thinking in a pickle,
like wishing for three more wishes;
Whimsy is a smile or even a laugh,
compassion hand-in-hand with gratitude
and acceptance comes along too.

I'll keep this.


(chapters in the book:)

Part 1- Match Girl
1.  Disabled Veteran, Traumatic Brain Injury
2.  the Best of Them
3.  Incriminating Proof

Part 2- Assembling the Pieces
4.  Presence of Mind, Awareness
5.  the Facade
6.  Presence of Mind, Knowledge and Coping Skills
7.  The Art
8.  Two Wheels
9.  the Value of Scrap Mettle
10.  Brain Injury Still Feels Like

Part 3-  Taming the Sun
11.  Presence of Mind, Acceptance
12.  Finding my Soulmate
13.  Finding Home
14.  WTF, PTSD
15.  Between Horizon and the Sky

If you'll be my star
I'll be your sky
You can hide underneath me and come out at night
When I turn jet black
And you show off your light
I live to let you shine
I live to let you shine

But you can skyrocket away from me
And never come back if you find another galaxy
Far from here with more room to fly
Just leave me your stardust to remember you by

If you'll be my boat
I'll be your sea
A depth of pure blue just to probe curiosity
Ebbing and flowing
And pushed by a breeze
I live to make you free
I live to make you free

But you can set sail to the west if you want to
And pass the horizon, 'til I can't even see you
Far from here
Where the beaches are wide
Just leave me your wake to remember you by

If you'll be my star
I'll be your sky
You can hide underneath me and come out at night
When I turn jet black
And you show off your light
I live to let you shine
I live to let you shine

But you can skyrocket away from me
And never come back if you find another galaxy
Far from here with more room to fly
Just leave me your stardust to remember you by

Stardust to remember you by

We are absolutely infinitely miniscule
Incredible at making insignificant changes
We are great thoughts grazing the tips of greatness
Horribly brilliant, not labeled for taking
We are so secretive and sensitive
Sly secrets mixed with fatal feelings
We are superficial, skin-deep, shallow, sketchy scars
Stories of struggle and sadness and adventure
We are tissue and tears and thoughts
Made up of toughness and heavy-duty human
We are the little light whispers of lovers
Grinning when greeted from special people
We are muscles and cells and logistics in biology books
All rolled up into one beautiful ball of humanity.

She grimaces in
painful delight
As the crimson ribbons
trickle
Down the length of her arm.

Drip.

Light reflects off
the smooth 'stainless steel'
surface
stained with
blotches of crimson
dust.

The blade
slides across her
tainted ashen canvas
slicing through it
ever so smoothly

Cutting through
ever so thinly
with the grace
of an adept ballerina

She grimaces in
painful delight
as she feels the
delightful pain

Her only escape
from the
harsh predicaments of
society.

We are of supernova
Out of blinding
Wicked light
Starstuff filtered
By dreams of Jehovah
Was evolution
Evolved us the fight
From constructs
Of a periodic table
To the beast
That is modern Mann
Monkeys cursed with reason
And the need
To take all ya can
Don't  you ever wonder
Why you feel the way
You feel,
Calling down the thunder
When  one,
Fucks up behind the wheel
All of us feed the darkness
Ah, the voices in the head
Painting reality in madness
Makes us the walking dead.            Hy

Fresh air hitting newborn lungs
lodged in a memory
made of mealworms.

Chalking dirt between
serrated incisors.

The day I asked a new girl to be my girlfriend
you left a note at my house signed "love,"
telling me you were infinitely sorry.

Some things just don't have an explanation.

There is a knife in my throat
chalking chords between scratched teeth,
words ground down to chunks of flesh,
they never last,
taste like the last
of something we had.

When I kissed your face
in my bedroom
there was no golden crust of light
you gave me head
and I didn't cum,
over the next year I fell in love
it tasted
like blood in my mouth
there is a knife
in my throat,
you placed it delicately
as if you'd be back
to pull it out
with hands still warm
from
spreading another's pulse
and stroking down the center
with one finger.

I said all the words I knew
hoping you'd hear some you liked,
I made a collage of spittle
and stringy voice box
from my insides you didn't come back
so your note
is noted but there is no "us" curled up
in grand central station,
no eyes glowing,
and there is nothing left to say, but

it hurt in a way I was not ready to know
and came
from a direction
I had never believed in.

Thanks for the golden days,
most of them were,
i'm sorry I crumpled so easily
I don't think i'll ever be the same,
that's a good thing
but you had to know you had to know
what I didn't
and someday you'll grow up,
it'll hurt,
it's worth it.

But goodbye meant goodbye.

I die a thousand deaths every night
and am reborn after the dawn of each morning light.
I roam vast plains of an unlimited kind
that are neither of the waking eye nor the sleeping mind.

In my domain the world ends at the start of each day
and temples burn casting half-light every way.
We are all clothed in robes, euphoric and without age,
Understanding the unexplainable; philosophers at a rave.

In it's infinite depths, meaning has become irrelevant.
Context has not.