There is a time in your life
When love isnt enough
or you never feel enough
When the love is right but feels so wrong
when feelings get confused
when all doors are shut
and theres nothing but silence
when you can't fight no more
when you put down your weapon
of choice
Right at that moment
"did you find peace with yourself"
you were'nt scared to lose
but to win just to walk away
When the battle is over
only then you question yourself
was it worth the fight?
could it be fixed
are you being stupid if you just give in
are you seeing only your side
do you question to much
Do you lose the battle if you go back
are you the stronger one
just sometimes
you know its time to let go
its not easy being strong
because your scared of what could make you weak.....

Maybe it was my ADHD or my Bipolar or both, but as a child I would put in my headphones and just pretend I’m living… this is what I did for fun, I would put my headphones on over my ears and wear a beanie to keep them from falling off.  I would put on something with sickk drums and a kick *** guitar, grab my skateboard and push wood.  Synchronized with the music of course, this was more convincing to me that I was not in my life, but that I was in this fictional reality.  This reality didn’t even need to be better, it just needed to be not my life; but it always was, better that is.  If I didn’t have my skateboard I would interpret the song and either skip to it, walk rhythmically to it, or rock out somewhere; it depended on the song really.  This was my first drug and I could not understand why nobody else wanted to live the way I was living… the only thing I wished different is for the music to play out loud and not only in my head as this tended to make me feel self-conscious or awkward in the supermarket or at public places in general.  
I needed spectacular lenses nearing my middle school days due to my incessantly close music video watching.  I needed to feel as if I were there with them so I would sit right in front of the TV set.  I even went as far as to grow my hair out and part it evenly to both sides so as to black out my peripheral vision.  I consumed music and art that went along with it as if I were a ******.  I truly believed the singers in the videos were where I wanted to be, they understood me, their words taught me the truth, their music lifted my spirits, their presence kept me company, kept me sane.  They taught me everything my parents should have.  They were my angels, my saviors.  They taught me about freedom and expression.  I began writing, singing, acting, dancing, philosophizing, creating art, creating art through life.  
Life became a music video, and I became the voice, my emotions the music, my brain the lyrics, my character a poet, personifying sacrifice.  I couldn’t understand why everyone else was so BORING! Why they didn’t see me there skipping down the street and run to catch up with me and say, “hey, what are you doing?” … or something along those lines. I didn’t understand why I was alone still in this new world.  
Nowadays I find myself in front of a computer screen, playing guitar stationary.  Waiting.  Working.  Waiting... and Working… And I will be there one day… I will join them all… I will be there with them GOD ******* ******.  I just need to get to that stage.   I will break through that ******* SCREEN and I will be that guy in the ******* TV that will make that little kid somewhere jealous of him and the world he is living in.  AND I WILL ******* INSPIRE.  UNTIL ONE DAY ONE LUCKY GENERATION WILL GET TO LIVE IN A WORLD WHERE YOU CAN GO OUTSIDE AND EXPRESS YOURSELF TO THE MUSIC YOU ARE LISTENING TO AND NOT BE CALLED CRAZY AND NOT BE JUDGED AND NOT BE RIDICULED AND CASTED OUT OF SOCIETY.  AND NOT THIS, AND NOT THAT, AND NOT THIS BUT WORSE, AND NOT THAT BUT TRAGIC.  I WILL ******* BREAK THROUGH THAT ******* SCREEN YOU BETTER BELIEVE IT AND I WILL KEEP THOSE LOST CHILDREN COMPANY AND I WILL MAKE THEM FEEL LOVED AND I WILL MAKE THEM FEEL ALIVE AND I WILL SAVE THEM FROM WANTING TO ******* DO IT SO ******* BADLY BECAUSE NO ONE WAS EVER THERE, BECAUSE NO ONE GAVE A ****, BECAUSE THEY DON’T HAVE ENOUGH MONEY, BECAUSE THEY DON’T HAVE ENOUGH ANYTHING… but I can’t put food in their stomachs and I can’t keep them warm.. BUT ******* IT THEY WILL NOT FEEL NEGLECTED.

I'm speaking to you,
My hero,
Won't you answer my questions?
Why must I keep
A silent voice
And do as the world pleases?
I do not have it in me
To hear another preach
Or another speech.

Why am I caught in between
The good and evil
in me?
Is it because
you were never a hero to me
From the start?
Or maybe I never needed
You in my heart.

A mass delusion
Is all I see
While I'm fighting the demons
I have hiding inside me.
The savior I need
Has drowned in an epic sea.
- A&G

My parents always gave me enough rope
To hang myself
And that alone kept me
From crafting a noose
But you
Gave me enough rope to hang
The both of us
And that, my dear
Is all the more enticing

“I know you're tired but come, this is the way...

In your light, I learn how to love.
In your beauty, how to make poems.
You dance inside my chest where no-one sees you,
but sometimes I do, and that sight becomes this art.”*        ― Rumi


1.
“You and I have spoken all these words, but for the way we have to go, words are no preparation. I have one small drop of knowing in my soul.
Let it dissolve in your ocean.

A mountain keeps an echo deep inside. That's how I hold your voice.”
― Rumi


2.
“Do not feel lonely, the entire universe is inside you.
Stop acting so small. You are the universe in ecstatic motion.

Set your life on fire. Seek those who fan your flames.”   ― Rumi


3.
“The way of love is not
a subtle argument.

The door there
is devastation.

Birds make great sky-circles
of their freedom.
How do they learn it?

They fall, and falling,
they're given wings.”                          ― Rumi


4.
“The morning wind spreads its fresh smell. We must get up and take that in, that wind that lets us live. Breathe before it's gone.

Sorrow prepares you for joy.
It violently sweeps everything out of your house, so that new joy can find space to enter. It shakes the yellow leaves from the bough of your heart, so that fresh, green leaves can grow in their place. It pulls up the rotten roots, so that new roots hidden beneath have room to grow.
Whatever sorrow shakes from your heart, far better things will take their
place.”                                     ― Rumi


5.
“You are so weak. Give up to grace.
The ocean takes care of each wave till it gets to shore.
You need more help than you know.

Be a lamp, or a lifeboat, or a ladder. Help someone's soul heal.
Walk out of your house like a shepherd.”
― Rumi, The Essential Rumi


6.
“You think you are alive
because you breathe air?
Shame on you,
that you are alive in such a limited way.
Don't be without Love,
so you won't feel dead.
Die in Love
and stay alive forever.

I want to see you.
Know your voice.

Recognise you when you
first come 'round the corner.

Sense your scent when I come
into a room you've just left.

Know the lift of your heel,
the glide of your foot.

Become familiar with the way
you purse your lips
then let them part,
just the slightest bit,
when I lean in to your space
and kiss you.

I want to know the joy
of how you whisper
“more”...                                                       ­     ― Rumi


7.
“When you go through a hard period,
When everything seems to oppose you,
... When you feel you cannot even bear one more minute,
NEVER GIVE UP!
Because it is the time and place that the course will divert!

The cure for pain is in the pain.
In Silence, there is eloquence. Stop weaving and see how the pattern improves.

The truth was a mirror in the hands of God. It fell, and broke into pieces. Everybody took a piece of it, and they looked at it and thought they had the truth.”                                       ― Rumi


8.
“Study me as much as you like, you will not know me, for I differ in a hundred ways from what you see me to be. Put yourself behind my eyes and see me as I see myself, for I have chosen to dwell in a place you cannot see.

Moonlight floods the whole sky from horizon to horizon;
How much it can fill your room depends on its windows.”
― Rumi, The Essential Rumi


9.
“Keep walking, though there's no place to get to.
Don't try to see through the distances.
That's not for human beings. Move within,
But don't move the way fear makes you move.

If you are irritated by every rub, how will your mirror be polished?

Start a huge, foolish project, like Noah…it makes absolutely no difference what people think of you.”   ― Rumi


10.
“Do you know what you are?
You are a manuscript oƒ a divine letter.
You are a mirror reflecting a noble face.
This universe is not outside of you.
Look inside yourself;
everything that you want,
you are already that.”
― Rumi, Hush, Don't Say Anything to God: Passionate Poems of Rumi



11.
“Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing
and rightdoing, there is a field.
I'll meet you there.

When the soul lies down in that grass
the world is too full to talk about.

What you seek, is seeking you.”                             ― Rumi


12.
“The lion is most handsome when looking for food.

Pain is a treasure, for it contains mercies.
Love comes with a knife, not some shy question, and not with fears for its reputation!

I am your moon and your moonlight too
I am your flower garden and your water too
I have come all this way, eager for you
Without shoes or shawl
I want you to laugh
To **** all your worries
To love you
To nourish you.”                                          ― Rumi


13.
“I was dead, then alive.
Weeping, then laughing.

The power of love came into me,
and I became fierce like a lion,
then tender like the evening star.”                        ― Rumi


14.
“Suffering is a gift. In it is hidden mercy.

Come, come, whoever you are. Wanderer, worshiper, lover of leaving.
It doesn't matter. Ours is not a caravan of despair.. come, even if you have broken your vows a thousand times. Come, yet again, come, come.

But listen to me. For one moment - quit being sad. Hear blessings
dropping their blossoms
around you.

I closed my mouth and spoke to you in a hundred silent ways.”
― Rumi


15.
“The breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you. Don't go back to sleep!
You must ask for what you really want.
Don't go back to sleep!
People are going back and forth
across the doorsill where the two worlds touch,
The door is round and open
Don't go back to sleep!

These pains you feel are messengers. Listen to them.”
― Rumi, The Essential Rumi



16.
“Like a sculptor, if necessary,
carve a friend out of stone.
Realise that your inner sight is blind
and try to see a treasure in everyone.”                    ― Rumi


17.
“Let the lover be disgraceful, crazy, absent-minded. Someone sober will worry about things going badly. Let the lover be.

There are lovers content with longing.
I’m not one of them.”    ― Rumi, The Essential Rumi


18.
“There is a secret medicine given only to those who hurt so hard they can't hope.
The hopers would feel slighted if they knew.

You were born with potential.
You were born with goodness and trust. You were born with ideals and dreams. You were born with greatness.
You were born with wings.
You are not meant for crawling, so don't.
You have wings.
Learn to use them and fly.”          ― Rumi


19.
“Forget safety.
Live where you fear to live.
Destroy your reputation.
Be notorious.

Inside you, there’s an artist you don’t know about… say yes quickly, if you know, if you’ve known it from before the beginning of the universe.”
― Rumi


20.
“Let yourself be silently drawn by the stronger pull of what you really love. It will not lead you astray.”     ― Rumi





"On a day
when the wind is perfect,
the sail just needs to open and the world is full of beauty.
Today is such a day.”                                               ― Rumi






S T – 25 feb 14

No, I've never touched you in the ways of lovers
Or in the ways that awe stricken girls might
Yearn to be pressed against your hands
But if it makes them let you next to me
I will say that your fingers dug into my rib cage
And rolled around my aortas until I was screaming
Softly as if someone had tested the noises
I could make in that moment when my adrenaline
Pulses through my veins and you pinch
My blood until it would clot under your nails.
I will happily say that my legs wrapped
Around your waist and my lips held yours
I will tell them about your hands behind your head
And mine gripping at your wrists.
If it would mean I could have you again,
I would lie and say that my fingers
Grasped at your core until you smiled like
I imagine you would and your eyes would
Close under my soul that you would have
Tugged out by threads found in my folds
Regarding my mind, I mean,
But if they would be okay with that lie
I would not mean the folds of my mind,
Rather the folds of my being.
They said I was lying to someone and that
They hoped it was you, but the lies I say would
Happily be for them if you got to touch me
In a lovers way years from now when
It wouldn't even matter, because you have
Touched my soul in a way a lover never could
And my heart is waiting to be warmed by
Your soft and inviting hands.

J. C.

I tied your hands behind your back
In so many different ways.

One day, as I laced them together
At the small of your back,

You smirked and asked,
"What is this all about, exactly?"

The coy smile on your face
Didn't transfer to mine.

You felt this was a game,
Maybe a new "thing" I wanted to try.

Very seriously,
I prompted you and said,

"Touch me."

You looked across the room, dumbfounded,
As if I had asked you to fly or walk on water.

You looked down,
Fingered the rope around your wrists,

Looked back up into my eyes
And responded with,

"But how?
You tied my hands up."

I saw the puzzlement in your eyes,
As you tried to comprehend why I'd ask you

To try and touch me
With your hands behind your back.

I said it once more-
"Touch me."

You then looked at me like I was stupid,
Like I was out of my mind.

"Look, you tied my hands up.
Can't you see there is no way for me to touch you?",

You stated, matter-of-factly, to the point
Where I knew you would never understand.

I slowly backed away,
And began to turn,

But not before I looked over my shoulder
And said,

*"You don't always need your hands to touch someone,
And if that's the only way you know how to touch a person,
Then I'd rather you not touch me at all."