I have tried it all
To get the monsters in my soul
Smoking them out
Drowning them in alcohol
Poisoning them with pills
Putting them to sleep with green happiness
Bleeding them out
And yet every night they whisper
I am here
I will always be here
As long as you are here

Rarely had my vision been focused in the past
and maybe for this reason the passage of time
felt as if it was little more than a forgotten dream.
I often found my eyes on an icy reflection
of a naked man standing before a fogged mirror,
fresh with the haze of a hot shower.
I would gaze upon him and he back into me,
pondering to myself "who are you stranger?"
I could only assume he thought the same of me.
I would wonder when he walked away
from that tooth paste stained portrait
if he ventured into the world with that familiar vigor,
that naive sensibility to battle
the demons,
the contradictors
and the liars.
If he too would laugh at these same fallacies in himself
with a certain kind of madness that could only touch
the ears of the few free men among us.
Those tragic spirits who dared to dance,
to transcend ancient genetics and modern culture
in hopes of touching a god they had long forsaken.
We may have given it a different name
but we were no better then the theologians before us,
we clung to our most primal desire.
It weighed upon us with such force
that hunger,
thirst
or even lust
felt like a pestering annoyance in the shadow of its glory.
Our appetite for connection far surpassed our need
to facilitate our biological deficiencies
and in those moments of understanding we reveled in the irony
of being minds trapped in fleshy bodies.
A smile crept across my face and one grew upon him.
I knew this man who stand before me,
unafraid,
bare in body
with a dastardly grin.
He was my oldest friend,
the ghost who spoke to me
in my most vulnerable moments
when no others did.
He cried for me when I could not,
would not cry for myself.
He had always been there
for me and for the first time
when I turned away from his reflection
I felt him follow too.

Love, the real kind, is never simple.
It is the one thing that makes life worth it in the end,
and something that wonderful and sought-after is never going to be easy to get.
You have to work for it.
Blood, sweat, and tears.
So if it’s easy, yeah maybe you won’t get broken.
But you won’t be truly happy, either.
You’ll be settling.
Don’t get me wrong,
There are lots of things in life that are totally acceptable to settle on.
Sure, Harvard was your dream school.
But you know what?
Going to your state school because its more affordable
Will still get you where you want to be in life.
And I know the hairdresser couldn't match the color you showed her,
But you are beautiful and can rock it anyway, so don’t worry.
But love?
Settling in love is like buying a pair of shoes that are a size too small,
Just because you thought they were pretty.
They may look nice,
But you are dying on the inside. I
f you had just held out a bit longer,
You would have found a pair just as beautiful that fit well, too.
Maybe that nice guy looks good on paper,
But if he doesn’t give you butterflies whenever he looks at you,
Don’t be with him.
You want someone who makes you fall for them every day,
Not just once.

Choices

This ever blotting simple thing that makes up things

as small as a mouse but also as deadly as sin itself

A simple formula of cause and effect

An effect

A result

A consequence

No pretences

Or fences that guard our decisions

Keeps it safe for being just a choice

For it is no longer just a choice

It is not that simple, see there is a formula to remember

An economic study to this choice where c=e

because

For every cause there is an effect

For every cause there is an effect

For every cause there is an effect

Let it dwell in your mind and affect you

Because that is where it all begins

Let us open up your mind and there we will find that

Alongside that implanted thought are a plethora

Of more thoughts that are placed beside your dreams

Nestled in between your hopes, skilfully intertwined with your visions

There they all lay

Our mind is our drive that takes us down

A road that is long and winding

A highway down to our hands

Which eventually become steered by, picked up with strings ever so delicately like a puppet

Held by that one thought

Your actions are birthed from your thoughts

We see these to be choices

To study these choices would be economics, to understand them would be sympathy

To take a leader who steals from his country

Or a mom who abandons her child to keep herself alive

And view this as sad, as a cry for help?

How and why?

Oh no! We do not stop at just those two ghastly choices

For this is a study of many

Choices

Of things that have happened to determine what will and to save us from what has been

Let us open up this book

And flip each page to see what decrees and laws

Revolutions and words put down on paper

Have anything to do with where we stand today

For the choices of the past still linger here

Mixed in with the choices of the present

Creating this air that we breathe in and out every single day

We would be infuriated with rage as we scan through the pages of this book of choices

A chapter of injustice

A paragraph of cruelty

A statement of selfishness

A line of adultery

But, wait! Oh, let us stop on this

One

story

For this I do not even understand

See I have studied choices, and put them into many formulas

To see the effects and the causes of each

but this story is different

For it is not just one chapter

One statement

One line

It is the whole story and each is intricately woven within it

In fact, the book is titled for this one story

And to begin it would be to start off with a choice

By a God

To send his son

To die for men

Men whose choices we see throughout the whole book

Men whose choices are vile and selfish and ruthless

Sinful men

*****

And yet a God so Holy and pure still sends down his son in His likeness for these grimy men??

See, if we picture it. It is a white cloth, pure and clean not just dipped but completely submerged in dirt

Now that is not a choice that I would make

But it was made

A man so untainted and holy

Came down

To die for the sinner

Who stole from the helpless woman in the ally

Who murdered an innocent child in the womb

Who told a tiny white lie to his mom and dad and gave himself away to drugs and peer pressure

Who lusted after the world and what seemed good but really was death covered in make up whispering

in the promises lie after lie

To die for the sinner who is you

You

Jesus chose to die for you

On that cross, with his hands bound by nails and his feet the same

And with every last breath, last drop of blood and whip of the chain

he thought of you

and that is a choice that no study, no analyzation could ever make sense of

but it was done

it is done

is what he said for you as his arms were spread out wide

and all your choices

he negated the effects, and ultimately the effect of death

and formulated a solution of eternal life instead

for this one choice

changed all the rest

Now, think, think it through

Every choice you make

and every choice that was made is made brand new, infused with grace

Remember this for when there is a test the formula of cause and effect

Still stand true

but also remember Jesus who did what you had to do

for you may make many more flawed choices without a thought

Therefore go down on bended knees gaze at the cross

where stood the Father’s son

never a doubt that this choice for you was a wrong one

that any effect wouldn’t be worth it

you are worth any effect

you are an effect

of that one choice made on the hills of calvary

look up at the cross when your lewd effects force out the mistakes of your personal choices

then resurface that one choice made 2000 years before

bring it up amongst all the confusion and chaos

study it’s economic worth

hold it dear

smile at it even for

that senseless,

unexplainable,

brilliant,

grand,

intricate,

lovel­y,

merciful,

gracious,

holy,

divine,

choice

is all for you

Like multiple personalities
Creatures inhabit me
I know each persona as she lives
Sweepingly amalgamated
Feminine and Feline
Paradoxal archetype
In woman’s intuition
I am free!
And I would be nothing less

A mirror is never just your reflection,
My mother once said
The mind has this devilish way of
Twisting
Things around
Making then a lot more or a lot less
That what stands before me
Suddenly
My face isn't my face anymore
Instead
I stare blankly at a blueprint
Society itself has hand-sketched
For me.
Post-it's on where things had gone wrong
Scribbles on things I needed less of
Highlighters on places I needed
Brighter brights
Thinner thins
And I just stood there
Watching
As these self-proclaimed architects
Unraveled
The plans they had for a body that wasn't theirs.
Accepting
The new rooms they had drawn next to the ones that already existed,
The ones that were always there
The ones I made a home out of,
The mole on my ear
That never seemed out of place
Until,
The impact of a critical post it told me so.
The place where my thighs met
I've always ignored,
Assuming I was normal
But the scribbles that
Begged
For less of me,
Proved otherwise.
The marks of stretched skin
I considered battle scars over a few calories at a buffet table
Nullified
By society's architects
Disapproved
As if it were up to them
Invalid
Like human came in the form of overruns
But I stare at this blueprint that suggests to change me from
Floor to floor
Head to toe
And wonder
If the one who owns the lot in which I am
Wonder
If He wanted to change me anymore than them
If He liked the original rooms
More than the ones carved to fit the trends
If He wanted me to ignore the architects
And the drafts of copies
And copies
And copies
Of different versions of me

Didn't He want me to accept the mirror for who I am?