It is amazing
The difference between hate
And love
Both like fire
One rampant and destructive
Scarring everything it touches, turning everything it touches into ashes
The other-soft and warm like sun kissing your skin
Safe as an evening inside by a hearth on cold snowy night

Love
Nurturing everything it touches
Healing wounds that cannot be seen or touched
Only felt

Hate
Not caring for anyone or anything
Wounding everything and everyone it touches
But mostly
Hurting those who hate most

If only they could see the burden they carry
If only they could see their hearts turning to ashes
But they are blind and the fire is strong and hard to put out
Even if they wanted to

And they keep feeding and feeding and feeding the inferno

If only they turned to a different kind of flame
If only they could let their heart be turned to an everlasting flame
One that lets them see beyond what meets the eye into the reality of shared humanity
If only
They could see beyond their blindness and see the light and colour of our shared existence
And see
That thing that makes life mean something

Meaning
        Do we even know
                       What that is?

We look for it
        Search for it
                    But was it?
                            Will we know when find it?

Will we ever get there? Or will we

Constantly

             Find
                              ourselves

                                                        being

Pulled back.
Halted.
Before we find
Whatever "it" is
That we are looking for.



                                                             ­        Wait



                                                     ­     What if meaning
                                                         ­               Has little to do with what it is
                                                              ­                                        And more to do
                                                                ­                                              With the journey
                                                                ­                                                             Of searching for it
                                                              ­                                                                 ­               And if it is. . .
So what?

We will never attain it?

If so, is there any point to looking in the first place?



                                                       ­              What if



                                                         ­                                            The journey itself

                                                         ­                                                                Is the meaning?

I am a genuine person.

At least, I'd like to think I am.

I don't pretend to be someone I'm not.

At least, I try not to.

What I show people is real, my true self.

Well, parts of it.

For every part of me I show, there's another side I don't.

There's a part of me that's strong, that can stare down demons from the depths of hell and win

And there's a part of me that is weak and cries myself to sleep at night-because a boy didn't smile back at me.

There's a part of me that thinks I'm beautiful, most days

But some days, I look in the mirror, and I don't feel beautiful at all

There's a part of me that knows I'm loved

But sometimes, I don't believe I deserve it

And I'm afraid

Terrified

That when people see the side I don't show, they'll walk away

But every time I let that side of me show, I let the veil slip so they can see my whole face, not just what I want them to see, and they catch a glimpse of the entire real me

People don't walk. They don't run. They stay.

At least, the people who really love me stay.

And maybe, one day, I'll sit down, take off my veil so they can see, not just glimpse, but really see, all of me.

Maybe one day.

Last night, I went to a poetry slam
I think I've written ten poems since than
All of them read like spoken words

They no longer sound like the poems I'd once write
I no longer read my poems
As words on a page
But as sounds to be spoken
Spoken on stage
I've breathed in new ways
Of breathing you see
And my writing
I don't think
Will ever be the same now

And I breath
As I write as I would when I speak
These spoken words are in my lungs
In my heart so to speak
Pumping this new air
This new form of oxygen into my lungs
And mmmmmmm. . . . .

I'll never be the same again.

Oh four letter word, little four letter word

Why are you so much trouble?

You get inside us

Into the air we breathe

You are more infectious than the common cold

And as un-treatable as an addiction to oxygen

You are the easiest thing and most basic thing we look for,

and yet you are the hardest to find

Or are you?

Are you hard to find,

Or we blind?

Are you a disease, an addiction

Or are you the cure?

Are you inside us,

Or are we inside you?

Are you trouble,

Or are we?

Are you a feeling

Or the space between where we do things not because they are good for us

But because they are good for them

Him

Her

A feeling, or the space between

Or are you the thing that made us

That formed us

That made the world broken

Because we cannot experience love if we are not broken, not really

Love

Are you God?

The rule of three

Three is the number of holiness
Of wholeness

One plus one is two
And some say that two is magic
And perhaps it is

One plus one is roses and candle light and sunsets on beaches

But

When one plus one becomes three
Roses turn to baby's smiles and candle light turns to night lights and sunsets turn to sunrises after sleepless nights

A blazing fire turns to hot coals and wonder is no longer found in the fireworks
But in the quiet beauty of the everyday miracles around us

Some which inspire as much as the exasperate
Some who are as likely to make art with crayons as with **** from their diaper

The creation of three is messy and it is so ordinary as to seem mundane

But with the third comes the eyes to see beyond the mundane to see the ordinary miracles who, if you let them, will show you a glimpse of the face of God