Original Title: the Haunting

I feel lost remembering looking at you in tears
heartache at the memory
Why do I torture myself by listening to the last song
that had you sobbing
and it broke my heart to see?
I can still picture the color of the walls dark orange
the hot humid night in Honduras
on the front patio of the orphanage

I remember the morning you were laying in bed
when you told me you had had enough
We had sold or given away everything
Returning home to the States with $1000 in my bank account
Thank God, for my stepdad..still had a place to stay

Tears stream down my face
Hard to see the notepad as I write

****.

I look up at the sky..first full moon night
Who, exactly up there decide I should be born human?
I thought you were supposed to be a Good God...
What curse did I deserve for you to let me feel this pain?

In the background:
Roette: "Yeah, it must have been love but it's over now.
It was all that I wanted, now I'm living without.
It must have been love but it's over now,
It's where the water flows, it's where the wind blows."

and yes the wind blows...well more like it *****!

Broken, did i break you?
Was I so cruel?
Never meant to hurt you but the road to hell is paved with good intentions

Was it my silence or..
the burning lust I could never quell
..which I wonder at times if it will not lead me to hell...
and worse to a hypocritical Christian..the judgement on those who know the truth
is much more severe than those who have not heard.

Martika sings in the background:
  "when you tear temptation call..
    it's your heart that takes the fall"

The irony of it is
it started as a dream for us
one to share for the rest of our lives
I cared about you...listened to you
You were there to hold me in my dark moments
wipe away the tears
We danced, we had fun...
Years later when you were telling me how much I had changed...
you reminded me that when we first met..I sang to you at the beach on a starry night
Trapped in the romance and I was so far gone
Funny how different we were then almost twenty years ago
You had such high hopes for me
I changed from telling you I would never darken the doorway of another church to a full-time missionary
--15 years later I realized who you needed was a man I could never be

The wolf tattoo I got after the divorce
was because I never wanted to be so nice
or vulnerable again

You were so beautiful in that wedding dress
the way your eye shone
at the moment we were happy and it all looked like a promise

It's hard lesson when heartache becomes real enough
that it is an burning ache in the center of your chest  

This is an open wound
It feels like the pen should be writing gangrenous vile dark grey/green ink
as it lets the poison out

**** it.
   Time for another **** and a sip of wine
   Enough of this romantic ****

J Geils Band...singing about how love stinks..
music to my ears

Does make me wonder why
I let this internal drama play out
or worse get the better of me

And the songs go on
Brett Michaels - Love *****
Lily Allen sings smile - along with a video of her paying some guys to beat up her boyfriend

Not entirely sure..and maybe it's because it's one of the first times I have done this
But listening to other peoples anger and misery damnably helps
--and it amuses me that she got the cheating *******'s *** kicked

Cheating is the one thing I never did
though my ex would argue the point and call **** my mistress

Strangely, I will always admire her for giving so much
and how truly she was committed
Though it stings when she said she did it for God and not me

I know how deeply I hurt her
Yet I don't know if she will ever undertand the sacrifices I made and just how hard I tried

Somehow at the moment
Getting ******* is more fun that whiny assed *******
...and there's something to be said for some good **** and two buck Chuck

Love for  a human (and yes there are times I wish I was an alien..god knows that is how I got treated all the way through high school)
Reminds me how you make a statue
Simply carve away all that is not the statue

So it is with us
   what we must learn about love is as much what it is not
   as it is what we think it is
or what we think it should be...

I so want to write something deep and profound to impress everyone
Which it is the best time the write the last line and to...
           STOP

For a moment
pretend you pulled aside
the GREY DARK CURTAIN

Look with me...

Carved into a timeless oak
is the night-wolf
Your Friend
Guardian as you cross

Unexpectedly
    He
        Passes
             to
                                     YOU
t h e w h i t e  T-O-R-C-H
   you hear his whisper:
       Do not fear

As you emerge beyond the curtain
    All of it is: Purpose
More than dream

We are all Born
naked
We all Die
naked

Our nakedness is not a mark of shame, but of a return to perfection

Smile
Breathe deep for me
Close your eyes
Look within

IT IS NOT EMPTY
for kindled there by angels is the flame of love


no, I don't know
yet I understand

All of us connected
--Each of us
     Spirit
                                 O - N - E
I give this gift of hope to you

Do not despair
Do not give up
  just
          touch

                             I    N
                       A               B
                 R                        O
        E                             ­          W
   H                                             ...                                      
T                                                      It's there for a reason - REMEMBER

The POWER is in your joy
Let it ILLUMINATE
YOUR HEART

Your strength is in your soul
The flow is
LOVE

Reach out and touch
The SOURCE

FLY

Whatever.

I thought that I:
lost the power
fell from grace
left behind the Presence

Yet it remains anchored
Steadfast

It cannot be stripped from me
by a church that has exiled me
I was never to a Sunday Christian anyway

The gifts and the call of God are irrevocable
...were not given to me by man,
only confirmed..
Man cannot take it away

The heart I was given
the spirit that defines me
the gifts I share
The most important lesson I have ever learned -
that: "To love is to give"
will not be blotted out of my notebook.

So what am I?
I don't know
All I know is that my purpose here
Is to guide
to reveal
to those whom I sent

"You are not mere clay...Breathed of God is your first breath...and the light of eternity will shine upon your last"

No river is crossed
No path untravelled
No passage unjourneyed
...to which the gateway is not found within.

Beyond the boundary of the accepted, tolerated, comformable
is where you will find this cleric

Preaching in bars
reaching out on the streets

My only prayer:
Let me continue to defy
Assumptions of what can, should be done.

And in the end...
we shall all be on the long road home

All that I write
the poetry of my soul
a warriors song
to the tune of a call to battle

shadow black lotus
grey dismal clouds of despair
numb and distant
sleep of emptiness

Ecstatic visions
luminescent glow
cloud halo surrounding the sun on a field of grey / blue
Ethereal angel voices
heralding the way to nowhere
journey into the unkown and the unknowable
yet ken it I must
to become a reason for the next day

Crimson dark I have bled
theft breath by breath from life
visions of a dark graveyard

Yet this is where the Redeemer chose to resurrect
giving hope of life eternal

You hide within a dream
Heart beating strong
Guarded by the steel
you bear at your side
you wield it to cut true

The shield of love prtoects you from
the fiery lies

A rose grows watered by your tears

Romance is an open would
yet scars that fromed who you are

forward you march again into the battle of love
braving the fear
clinging to the clarion call reminder:
There will be victory

Pain is an ugly thing
Wounds bleed dark
They stink if they get infected
Scars form

You would not think
Emotional pain is worse
But it lasts longer
And suffering unnoticed
Can be more humiliating
When you have no badge of honor
For others to see

It hurts me to see others suffer
Typical (or maybe not so common)
Guy that I am
I want to fix it and make it go away

So hard to listen
But that is often what you need

I can empathize with you
Not pretend I know the depths of your hurt

Tell me your story
If all I can do is listen...

I will be here for you

You may have to help me resist the temptation to give advice