What is courage?

Is it a sharp breath before jumping off the edge?
Is it the tightness in your chest
That pulls you up when everyone else is sitting down?
Is it the burning heat in your eyes
That smolders and boils
As you gaze upon those who oppose you?
Is that courage?
Or is courage the defiant silence –
The silence that watches your nose bleed
In the foggy cracked mirror?
Is it the child who says, “I love you”
Between the sniffling and trembling?
Is courage allowing the tears to come
When there are people around to witness your suffering?
Is courage looking up?
Is courage focusing on the next step forward
Rather than the hundreds already taken?
Is courage doing what you believe is right
No matter how much your palms sweat
Or how much your knees shake
Or how much your stomach twists
Or how much your lips tremble
Or how much doubt you feel
That anything you do will change anything?
Is courage a lie?
Does Courage exist?
A dictionary says Courage is
“The quality of mind or spirit that enables a person to face difficulty, danger, pain, etc. without fear”
If that is truly what courage means,
Then there is no such thing.
Fear is not something that you can decide not to have.
Fear is deep.
Fear is psycological.
Fear is biological.
Fear is natural.
Fear is not a pebble in one’s brain that can be removed on a whim.
Fear can, however, be ignored.
Fear can be climbed over.
Fear can be conquered.
Facing a difficulty fully aware of the fear
Is what makes an action courageous.
Courage is speaking up
Acting out
Crying
Smiling
Holding back
Being silent
Knowing the punch is going to come
Knowing the insult is going to come
Knowing the tears are going to come
And the conflict
And the questions
And the darkness
And the thunder
And the criticism
And the judgement
And the violence
And the doubt,
Disbelief, and denial
And knowing that 3:30 AM comes around every single night
Regardless of whether or not you can sleep.
Courage is opening your eyes
Even when you don’t like what you see
Because you have to.
And you don’t have to just because somebody told you to
Or because you read it somewhere
Or heard it somewhere
Or saw it somewhere.
You have to because there’s substance in you.
There’s a third dimension to you.
You have to because that tightness in your chest
Isn’t something you control.
There is no Courage Switch.
You can’t cultivate courage.
Everyone has it but not everyone has seen it.
Not everyone has used it
But everyone can.

even though i try to play it off...
acting like im happy
when i cant even look at myself
without taking the mirror
and throwing it across the room
i dont know what to do anymore...
feeling like im only sinning, anymore
im doing whatever i can do, to do the right thing...
yet i feel like no matter what i do
im running from you.....
no matter where i turn
its never right....
like i cant get out of this pit of failure ive crawled into
God why!!!
....why now?

In love, nothing exists between heart and heart.
Speech is born out of longing,
True description from the real taste.
The one who tastes, knows;
the one who explains, lies.
How can you describe the true form of Something
In whose presence you are blotted out?
And in whose being you still exist?
And who lives as a sign for your journey?

Though my soft, floured heart were of beating bread
For each raven to peck crumbs in morning
Bleeding from wheaten wounds, I do, instead
Loose each door, pull back curtain adorning

First light, through open window, in you fly
A yellow songbird with speckled, pale breast
Though sweet your voice and innocent your eye
An empty plate now lies within my chest

For you thieve bread from hunger, like the rest

treat this as a warning label
stop, warning, harmful, toxic substance
this won't be a fruitful endeavor
turn around, and don't look back
running from a pillar of salt

It would be foolish to think
that i'm not selfish
people just don't understand
the difference between
nice and selfless
But I would swallow you whole
most comfortable when we
are not comfortable
when the ceiling is crumbling
I'm at my best

I will take you
and claim your humanity
for my own
using it greedily
turning it into words
packaging it
and shipping it off
to millions of fast thought
word joints

warning, explicit content
harmful if swallowed
too far regressed
a stubborn child
in need of saving
too proud to be saved
the Surgeon General recommends
not even taking the time
Just turn around
truly not worth it

Leaves of grass, my chest, is to your chest, as; gently soft and pressed of light. And though a thousand tiny green, one root only beats at their center. One root red. One root pushing of difficult life stuff, out, out. Pushing and pushing. To lip and finger equally difficult.

(I watch the streetlights as they pass over my hand while driving in the dark Bellingham feels beneath me big and sleeping in almost spring I put my fingers through its mouth and I cough a star)