Your sins
- forgiven
Christ is
RISEN

One choice is all it takes...
to make or ruin our lives,
and apart from grace,
it's hard for one's soul to survive
theft, death, or ****,
or other reasons that make it hard to rationalize, or mediate -
many minds destroyed by disturbing disasters that devastate
us,
distorting truth, love, and hate,
sometimes they break our beings;
We can't contemplate these feelings.
Is this our fate?
For some, it unfortunately becomes fatal.
For others, there's a faith that saves,
making a way when we're unable,
to move.
Regardless of one's belief or views,
lets look back at what's being presented before you on the table:

One choice is all it takes...

As the suspect or victim,
we pick our choices and choose how to deal with our given circumstances,
to include the circumstances we didn't choose to be in, or begin with, in the first place.
Even when things happen outside of our control
We control our choices and responses,
as everything unfolds,
and for some choices, come consequence -
the thing we say someone's gotta own
up to, and rightfully so...
So may we have an awareness of ourselves
and arch attention or focus to
making better choices, because
One choice is all it takes...
[be intentional]

"You can't take back what you've already done or been through, but you can choose how to deal with it, and you can make choices for the betterment of the circumstance, of yourself, and of others... choose wisely, and know that we're created for good works..." - Desire R.

They say, you never really know what
someone else is going through,
and what we going through is real,
its the same for struggles too.
I know life is full of issues,
challenges, and obstacles,
but tell me, when you face to face with it,
what do you plan to do?

Are you gonna freeze up, or
do you plan to make a move?
If life is short, and time is money,
each second is valuable.
No time to waste, everyday,
choices I make are unthinkable.
They say tomorrow isn't promised, so
I'm blessed to have seen twenty-two.

My life is full of the ups and downs,
from a broken home,
I saw my mom abused
with bruises all around.
Her mental health dropped so low,
I cried out to God like "why" or "how"
Drugs did some damage to her brain.
It hurts to just look at her now
****...

That stuff showed me how not to be as a man.
I learned how not to treat a woman
or hurt her with my hands.
The look of fear in my sisters eyes
as they screamed and cried -
Our brains are semi-scarred,
It forever left us traumatized...

But I look at this man who caused us
so much pain and harm.
When he was 7, his mom was
stabbed to death; he held her in his arms.
His father wasn't around.
Jail became his childhood home.
I don't justify his actions, but
things happen that we'll never know...

They say, you never really know what
someone else is going through,
and what we going through is real,
its the same for struggles too.
I know life is full of issues,
challenges, and obstacles,
but tell me, when you face to face with it,
what do you plan to do?
[What's Your Move?]

XVII. Presently Pushing through the Pain

You don't love poetry.
You love being depressed.
Your writings are true and have influence,
but they're only depression expressed.

I respect how you feel,
and please continue to write,
but may we realize poetry's purpose
revealed, in its history, is to shine light,
on your entire story -
not just the ones that hurt.

Tell the world of who you are
and how you strive to shake off your dirt.
Highlight what helps bring healing,
because others are also depressed.
No one needs to be reminded of
their damaging stress that they've suppressed.

"Happiness is a choice"
I challenge you to loudly make that expression.
Poetry makes people happy;
Its an art collection of life-lessons.

Poetry is an art.
Its ideas, creativity, and feelings,
social and racial issues unveiled,
Poetry is revealing.
Its also reflection,
of past and present events.
Poetry instills future hope,
painting pictures,
It represents...
Its a praise report for the week.
Its the abstraction of ambiguous things.
Poetry can be figurative,
or an escape from our realities.
Poetry has history.
Poetry serves a purpose.
To single it in one direction
is a disrespectful disservice...
Do you really love poetry?
[Respect it]

Plot twist: You are poetry. Replace "poetry" with your name in the poem above and reread it.
[Respect yourself]

I'm just an average guy...
I've got normal problems and a normal life
I've also got a voice inside
silently speaking - sounds of my mind
I wonder, does it have a mind of its own?
Always flooding like a river formed by a hurricane,
if my head gets too cloudy,
there'll be a high chance of rain and scattered brainstorms

It might short-fuse my hippocampus
unable to remember how to see;
a blacked-out occipital lobe
I still don't see how the backs of our brains allow us to see
through the front our faces and out of our eyes,
where most of the water falls
despite the brain's overflowing, muddy river,
or the temporary lack of sight,
I still have a voice.

And with it, I will share all of the stories stored within this blackbox,
and only this light can find them and shine on them.
My voice, a wave riding my mind's ocean's surface
This voice, this wave, this sound,
a complicatedly, clear conscious,
called into focus...
[a sound of (my) mind]

We all got stories.
Stories are life's language;
language impacts perception - our
own, others, and nations.
"Stories dispossess, stories malign,
stories empower, stories humanize,
stories rob and break dignity,
stories repair whats broken..."
Single stories are scanty.
All stories, stitched together,
complete the composition of you.
Many stories matter - yours.
If your life were a book,
what would people read about?
We all got stories.
Share them. All of them.
[they MATTER]