I’ve put this off for a long time
Not knowing what words would come to form
Hoping I could say something new
But it all just feels the same

You let me fall and didn’t catch me
But like a shooting star I’ll gleam bright
Falling hard and burning beautiful
This fire inside will soon be gone
And our love over before the sun
breaches the mountains in the distance.

I’ve been told that I shine
But it feels so lonely and cold
because this dark room is without you
And I have to burn to see how bright I can be
I have to know it’ll be alright
without you

No longer paired but severed at the seams
We fought and tore all hope apart
But you walked away first
Regret never on your lips

The bus rolls away without turning back
But I wait in the cold hoping it will
Knowing it won’t

The comfort of God is on both sides
No one right, no one wrong,
But it had to be that way for you
Perfectly divided and clean cut
So that you could justify the hurt

“You deserve” is a stupid term
“I want” is more acceptable
But it’s not enough to sustain
and apparently neither am I

Fear not, because I have not forgotten
All the times I held you crying
All the times I heard you yelling
All the times you said you’re sorry
And all the times I never believed you.

Don’t worry, cause I know we are different
Just disappointed that differences make divisions
And we are joined by only one thing now.
Jesus stands with both of us you see?
He knows, He loves, and He heals both our hearts
But how should I feel when you only take?
How should I feel when you’re only right,
And I am only left, to tell you,
“This is what I know, and I don’t want to let go.”
With ears far away, carrying my heart in your hands
You forget to let me have it back,
And I search for the day when I can be free of that heart.

Oh Lord make me whole through You alone.
Don’t let these broken sins and forgotten promises
Tear me from your Love.
Words Words, that’s all they feel like.

But in the depths of my soul I cry for God.
I cry for justice and patience,
I cry for humility and grace,
And I cry out for answers.

God will not answer me.

He will show me,
With a new adventure I’ll embarque,
Enjoying the journey, but will happily hurry.
I’ll hurry to leave and gather new millage,
Go up and down the windy trail until slowly.
So painfully.
So eagerly.
I will find new treasures.
I will be regrown, and my heart will sing again
Like a tree after the fire.
Like a flower after the winter.

And you are distant, running with my rotted heart.
Trotting along in a separate direction,
With Jesus on your mind,
And God on your heart,
But only looking for what you need.
A different path, a different way.
Not wrong, just not the same.

I have thoughts of you
But I'm where I'm needed now
Memories bind me

This is for you.
The girl who was told that she is worth nothing.
The girl who was told that she doesn’t work hard enough.
The girl who has been used for her joy and left when it gets hard.
The girl who runs when she feels threatened.
Keep running.

Run into my arms where you can crash and burn.
Run into my head where I can absorb your worries and anxiety.
Run into my back and hop on because I will carry you.
Run into my feet and I’ll tell you to back off when you step on them.
Because I care about you.

These rays of sunshine aren’t just meant for me,
The warm breeze isn’t just meant for you.
We are built for each other.
We are meant to dance together,
We are meant to caress those who need warmth,
We are meant to refresh the heated faces of hot summer days.

You are more than a gentle breeze,
You are more than a reckless gust,
You are more than a destructive force.
You have power with in you,
To be just enough.

The wind blows where it wants to,
You cannot know where it comes from,
Or where it is going.
So is the Holy Spirit.
So is the Divine with in you.
You will never know what you are to others,
But the sun needs you.
The daisies need you.
The wind blows where it wants to,
But I pray that it always finds me in my time of need.

The wind blows where it wants to.
It brushes my cheeks and swoops up into the heavens. It glides through the buildings of the city, and tickles the trees with its sweet whispers and then reaches you. But do you realize it’s the same wind?
We are from the same place. We belong to the same family and same tribe.
We are the broken ones. We are the self loathing, questioning, angry, and hurt ones.
We are the rumbling of the stomach asking for food.
We are the tangled hair in the morning.
We are the trash perfectly full, and ready to be taken out.
We are life.
We are the rhythms of choosing to live today, or saying maybe tomorrow.

For goodness sakes, put a bigger smile on your face.
You look like you’re trying, and I’m not buying it.
I use to lament the miles that separate us, but now i rejoice in the distance.
Stay over there, and I’ll be here.
I’ll live in the light, and fight fight fight back the memories of your hands on my body.
I’ll push away all the butterflies, and sweep them into the corner where they can decompose and slowly fade away.
I’ll let my insides, layer by layer, forget your voice. Forget your laugh. Forget even the way you move.
Because now, it’s her turn.
Now she gets to discover, each flaw, each tear in your integrity and character.
You’ll play the part, and act like it’s not hard for you to be okay with yourself.
Will she know as much as I do? Will she explore the places I had been before, and came to love more and more?
Will she get to whisper words we once shared under the summer stars and grassy fields?
Will you sing her songs by the shores and sunsets, while she sings along, better than my voice could muster.
Because I wonder.
I wonder if this will really last. I wonder if it’s just a cover, because God knows I’m not over-
Alright, you got me. I almost said it.
But I have to remember that your way of believing is a way of deceiving those you love into thinking you accept them, when really they are less than.
I look at the faces we grew to know together, I listen to the hearts of the ones who differ.
I can’t, you said.
With a stern mouth and fake face plastered on the man I once loved is now a little boy running scared for the corn fields.
You hide behind home baked pies and lies of an American Dream, an archaic stream, slowly drying up in a drought of reality. Of God calling us to look forward. Let’s walk through the desert. Let’s stumble through nothingness until you find it’s there that God speaks.
God speaks not to gender, not to race, not to attraction. God speaks to our bodies, God speaks to our communities, God speaks through our hearts.
Do not shame yourself for loving yourself. Do not tell me that I’ll shine brighter on my own. Do not tell me how to be, because I thought we were a team.
Secret glances and awkward run ins left me in the cold while you’re warm in the frosted lands. Stuck in the middle of worlds moving forward, caught in the eye of the storm where everything is the norm.
But the storm is coming. It’s gunning you down. I pray it hits you hard and knocks the doe eyed look out of your sockets. I hope it stirs the fire that once burned brighter, and I hope you find all the answers. I hope you know that life isn’t in one place. It’s the wind, blowing through trees, making the leaves sing. It’s the endless rhythm of the ocean caressing shores, and checking on it’s lovers. It’s the sound of still waters on a sunday afternoon.
Pull the grace from your face, and see that others need your help. Pull your head out from behind your own ambition and ammunition, and see that what we hold is not a weapon, but an endless procession of hurt and misrepresentation.
You see, there’s a book we would read. We would read it together, and marvel and wonder. But soon it turned into poison. I ran away scared and you held it closer.
But that poison is the same kind that courses through veins of anger. It’s the same poison that courses through veins of pain.
So I’ll be careful. I’ll study the parts that seem too venomous, while you dive right in and let it take over.

Tall Towers above with gleaming lights
Beautiful hotels, and beautiful girls,
But what lay in the streets is from our fights.
Those innocent people with scars and limbs,
Helpless and homeless but hoping for rights.
They walk the streets, they give us tours,
But can we ever really rebuild what has been ruined?
They have such courage and such despair
But underneath the damage and the scars
They have something of a kind heart.
The wilderness muffles the battle cries,
She hides the dead and the broken,
But in the city there is no escape
From the terrible people who have been *****
Of their skins, of their limbs, of their lives.
Museums, Memorials, and Memories
Scatter this beautiful land,
But deep inside the heart of it all
Lays the millions who were doomed to fall.
Americans were here
Standing tall and strong, but weak in the knees
Not ready for war, not ready to be ****** so far
From Home, from safety, from the comforts we are
Deep in ourselves we are full of ourselves,
But these men want nothing less but to forget the hells,
They witnessed, they practiced, they created in the land
So they marched together arm and arm, United we stand,
But for how long until they return in boxes or worse,
People ready to quit the lives and cursed,
Thoughts that haunt and taunt pulling their brains,
Farther from their own to create a horror of images
Strewn through their vision, unable to get out
The picture of the women
Running away from the big metal monsters
Children, burned from their big bullet bombers.
This was a beautiful country I’ll say to others,
But I’ll know what lurks in those dark dark corners.

Dear Poetry,
Please be gentle.
I’ve admired you for years, and despite all of my tears, I’ll never forget the way you caressed my heart. Warming it and patching it word by word and verse by verse.
But this will be my first, and this is not very well rehearsed,
So
Dear Poetry,
be gentle.
Let me stumble and tumble through the first and second lines but don’t run towards the concubines just yet.
There’s hope for us right?
Dear poetry, don’t go so quickly.
Come sit with me by the window and tell me what way the wind blows.
Whisper to my soul all the things I need to know.
Lift my hair with your metaphors and beat a rhythm so deep I have to feel my heart beat to know I’m alive, because you -
you are the only thing that makes me unique. I can weave through words and sing the similes until I get too dizzy, and when I look up, there’s no eyes I can’t meet.
Dear Poetry,
be mine.
Let’s sit in the grass and laugh on our backs
Let’s wade through the creek bed and read thoughts in my head,
Let’s skip like my heart when he played his part.
Let’s drown scorned love with ciders in a pub.
Let’s be silly and really, really- -
Dear Poetry,
I’ll be at your door every day. Waiting for a hint, a taste, of what to say.
Line by line I’ll build you a castle, stanza by stanza add a rung to the ladder, and poem by poem I’ll make us stronger until I can no longer see the ground and all we have is bound-
Dear Poetry,
Let’s do this again sometime.