you will find me
in places that we've never been
for reasons we don't understand.

I'm just a lost boy
not ready to be found.

and God gives me what I need
be it living, love, or dreams.

"We share the oceans. We share the sky."

caring about you makes my stomach hurt now
and if that isn't a sign of change, and change for the better
then I don't know what is.

2015 ends tomorrow
and with it, all the *******.

the truth runs wild like a tear down your cheek
the truth runs wild like the rain to the sea

But don't you wanna see the world, boy
All the countries and the stars, boy
Just don't look them in the eyes, boy
You just gotta take their lives, boy
Let me take you for a drive, boy
Oh I swear you'll feel alive, boy

All you gotta do is trust that I'm being true
And do it for the people who love you.

Things he can: fly.

I don't know who I am.

****.

sometimes I say to the Lord,
this is too much. You have given me too much
but then I remember what I asked him
and I remember how much more so many people have
been through- that Joseph had a woman he could never
have, a child that would never be his, and instructions
to go on a journey to a country that enslaved his people
because the authorities in his own country were out to ****
his family. And I dare look at the Lord and say,
"You have given me too much" when martyrs
have died, Daniel came out of the lion's den,
many men went into the flames saying, "if not,
He is still good", guns have been pressed to heads
with the question "are you a Christian" and the response
could mean death, and life; or life, and death.
How dare I look at the Lord and say,
"You have given me too much"?
I cannot. I daren't.

mortal body; timeless souls
cross your fingers, here we go

Sometimes things don't go, after all,
from bad to worse. Some years, muscadel
faces down frost; green thrives; the crops don't fail,
sometimes a man aims high, and all goes well.

A people sometimes will step back from war;
elect an honest man, decide they care
enough, that they can't leave some stranger poor.
Some men become what they were born for.

Sometimes our best efforts do not go
amiss, sometimes we do as we meant to.
The sun will sometimes melt a field of sorrow
that seemed hard frozen: may it happen for you.

If I could fly,
I'd be coming right back home to you.
I think I might give up everything, just ask me to.
You'll never feel like you're alone,
I'll make this feel like home.
Pay attention, I hope that you listen
I was stumbling, looking in the dark, with an empty heart,
I let my guard down, right now I'm completely defenseless
for your eyes only, I show you my heart
for when you're lonely and forget who you are
and it's alright, calling out for somebody to hold tonight
when you're lost I'll find a way and I'll be your light
I'm missing half of me when we're apart
now you know me, for your eyes only
I'll make this feel like home.

and **** everybody, I'm ready for a new start

everybody ******* knows

it's tomorrow and it's not a break
for anybody involved and I should go to bed
and it's not Christmas yet but it feels like it
my head hurts a bit but I can't change whatever
it is that is written on my skin, not yet
but in a years' time, I swear, but I only wish
I knew where I was going and that
this poem didn't end like this.

and the next time anyone tries to play chess with me
I'm throwing the ******* board away
because I'm not a piece and it's not a ******* game.

no matter how many smooth veneers
we polish over our faces, no matter what color
or type of mask it is, it's still a mask- smiling
or criticizing, it's still a mask. I'd rather wash
all the ******* and overused phrases off of my soul.
I'd rather grow a backbone than think the world is all sunny
because it isn't. I'd rather grow a backbone than think
the world is all indifferent and miserable
because it isn't. I'd rather be myself than force other people
to listen to me or try and make everybody like me.
I'd rather have a good time when times are good
and have a bad time when times are bad than fake it
one way or another. Optimism and pessimism both
dull our senses, they both hurt our perceptions of truth.
The mountains and the valleys exist; a plain, no matter
the average elevation, is still a plain.

"Don't overthink it. Accept it. It is a gift."
and thank you, God.

my mind can only contrive happy endings
and I've had to redefine what love means
I always knew I was trying to prove something
to someone, that I was interesting enough and worthy
of being loved, and someone told me I was
and then suddenly I wasn't, and then I searched about
for my own identity and I projected into the world
who I was, and my life became a letter addressed,
"Dear you," and I looked at someone elses' love
for proof that it existed and some kind of definition
to tell me what it was and that it wasn't all in vain
but I swear I didn't waste my time because I had found
that I was worth something but maybe not what I thought
I guess price is different depending on the buyer
and in the auction for my heart, some prices were too high
but it's alright, (and I have to keep telling myself it's alright)
and this is the first honest poem I've written in months
even though every other aspect of my life has been honest
or has it? As I carefully arranged my sayings and laughter
to be something I thought that was worth loving
I could not escape reality, the reality that I am who I am
and that no matter what happens to make me not want
to be me anymore, I am still me, and maybe I'm worth loving
right where I am and who I am. I'm not sure, though.
I guess that will come with time.

thank you, thank you, thank you God
because I know that no one is ever told
what might have happened- but You did
and it was blissful. Thank you for those moments.

my heart is my operating principle
and when it is broken, the rest of me doesn't work either.

And I won't say a thing
if you don't want.
And I will close my eyes
just this once.
And if you asked me to, I'd walk away
and you'll never hear me say
that I don't love you,
that's the way it's gonna stay.

I am fractional bits of unfinished lines
yet to see the finished poem
but looking back, with hope, at the
stanzas already completed.

You don't mean too much, just everything to me.

this would all be a whole lot easier if only...

I can't wait to be far away

I thought I was an answer but
I was not ready to be heard
and the question was not ready to be asked.

how can we not talk about family when family's all that we got?

everybody tells you that you shouldn't ever be guilty
and that there's nothing wrong with us all along
but then they say to themselves, "what's wrong with me" and
"why do I feel inadequate" and I think the problem
is that we all know, we all know there's something
deeply, deeply wrong with us- no matter how much
we try and tell ourselves that it's not there or it's alright
or that it's good because God made it that way.
It's still wrong, and we still know it, in our essence.
I don't think I'm at fault for looking at myself and saying
"there are my flaws" and "I am indeed broken"
because even though it looks and sounds the same
as "what's wrong with me" and "why do I feel inadequate"
the difference is that I have exposed the wounds on my own soul
rather than covering and letting them fester; the Christian Church
tells me "Here is where you are cut" and "Here is the burn-mark"
thank God, honestly, because where healing is concerned, without
knowing my own wounds, I wouldn't have a place to start.

My dad always told to be afraid of boys who
will leave me and break my heart but he never warned me
that my heartbreak wouldn't come from boys and sometimes
it wouldn't even mean love and sometimes it was so
much more than whatever they try to sell you about love,
it was so much more than "just love" and so much ******* less.
My dad never told me to be afraid of a God that
held my whole existence in His mind by His will.
My dad never told me that girls would break my heart
just as far, and that it was all for the best.
My dad never told me that I was going to break my own heart
when I laid down and didn't want to get up and realized
there wasn't much I wanted to wake up for.
My dad never told me that boys would be the least of
my problems and that silence wasn't dangerous or that
the world was confusing and difficult or that
he didn't know which way was up or down anymore
and I never told my dad, neither did I. Neither did I.

I don't unwrite words from my pen, my skin, or my heart
nor will I ever unsay something I once said
sometimes I think maybe I should, but I don't
partly because I can't and partly because
I am who I was and who I am now, together
and I will not unwrite poems that breathed
"I love you" out of my soul, I will also not unsay
all the "*******'s" that flew out of my lips
driving alone in my car. I will not take back
those words. They are mine as much as any words.
If anything, more. I have been thinking a lot about
privacy: when something is too special to write about
when a moment should be kept to myself. And I've
worked on keeping more things to myself. It doesn't
mean they don't exist. It doesn't mean they aren't real.
If anything, it means that now, I am more real.
I have more of me to myself now. Less of me has been
pirated, parodied, and talked about- I belong to God
who sees all and knows all, and to myself, who bears witness
to words I've spoken in folly and words I've concealed in folly.
I can't guarantee I'll be perfect or always happy
or never **** up again. I can't hardly promise anything.
All I know is that I'm growing up, and Friday night
means books and songs and baths and studying, and I feel
sadder, yes, and also happier, in deeper ways,
I don't quite know who I am and I feel rather lost but
as one grows lost, one finds themselves, and I hope that
it happens for me. After all, I'm turning seventeen soon.

I don't have a wordblock, nor am I speechless
nor am I dumbfounded, nor am I helpless
in fact, I have a whole lot of choice words on the tip of my tongue
but I'm choosing not to say them.

As I get closer and closer I feel the threshing knife
like a weight on my soul, waiting to divide and measure
waiting for me to tip over the edge of the blade, waiting
for me to decide, as each choice gains more gravity
I feel more heavily who God is and more lightly who I am
and I find the scales tipping, the writing on the wall
becoming more pronounced, and with every score and every
word I read, my soul gains either a heavier damnation or
a more blissful eternity- I cannot turn back. It means too much now.

**** lightning and **** bottles.

Black and white are easy to wash in paint
over the whole world- white shows through
and won't let you hide some ruddy lights
of blood. Black, however, covers the whole room
conceals the color underneath it.
Black and white are both fine and good,
as pieces of their individual art,
but to to kidnap life under a smooth hood
silencing its true heart,
is to commit violence against the colors of the rainbow
and you may not know who you are
but to make it even clearer which path we should
take: optimism and pessimism are both pointless fakes.
The world's not all bad and it's certainly not all ******* good
we can't wash over our guilt and say "My God is not a God of hate"
when love and hate are not opposites- the truth is this
My God is not a God of indifference, but as a preface
hate and love have a bit more in common than we'd think they'd
have- my God loves me and because of that He hates my sin
He hates everything that's kept my soul locked in
He hates my lies and He hates my indifference for Him
my God is a God of love, and because of that He most certainly hates
love is not acceptance. The sky painted white is not a happy sky
it is a white sky, a sky as it is not. It's not my fight
to say the sky should be blue. We should know that.
The sky should be blue and love should be right
and true, but not blind- love should see all colors and hate not what
is not white, but hate what conceals the true light
the light that shines on all colors and does not accept them
for what they are, but only brings them to face the truth
in the face of all my many, many sins, I know guilt,
and because of my shame I know what is good.
I know that close to the beginning of time and many days since this,
"Abashed, the devil stood
and felt how awful goodness is."
Because goodness can be awful. Goodness can cause pain.
Love isn't pretty flowery fields of chocolate and honey
or comforting, awe-inspiring refrains.
Love is a bloodied man on a bloodied cross,
and maybe we should take some time to figure out
the implications of what that means for us.
The Sacred Heart of Christ did not die for us to forget
that His blood ran red from from it.

or do you only believe in religious liberty for Christians?

Go ahead, sit and fire each other up about faceless, nameless enemies
that you don't know but hate anyway. Go ahead, but you fail to realize
that these enemies that you come closer and closer to damning
have faces and names. Mom, they are your students.
Dad, they are your doctors and your friends.
Go ahead. Sit there and learn
why you think that irrational hate is a rational option, why you think
irrational phrases are a rational choice, why you think irrational actions are
rational morality. I don't know why you think that. I don't know why
you think your personal rage will do anyone any good.
In fact, your personal rage is much better directed at
preserving the planet that your own ******* daughter has to live on,
or standing up for people here that are left poor and needy,
but no, you've denied that or said it will fix itself.
You only believe in enemies that you don't have to fight yourself.

I chose Joseph because while God called Mary to say "yes",
He asked Joseph to say "no". No to everyone around me,
no to the latest fashions and trends, no to my own fear
of what they all think, no to whatever it is within me that says no
no to those who tell me to ignore my heart,
no to those who tell me to listen to my heart at the cost of all else,
no to forgetting the meaning of truth,
no to "love", no to my own wants, no to selfishness,
no to everyone saying to "be myself",
no to giving up, no to saying yes.
God asked me to say no, and that will hurt a whole lot ******* more
than saying yes would ever have.

I couldn't give any less of a ****.

when they ask me, "Why would you want anything on your body forever?"
I can't help but think, "Don't you realize that it has already marked you?"
(forever and ever, always, big or small, no matter what way.)

"Am I the only one who feels anything anymore?"
"No."

we're all pretending to smell candles
loving people who don't love us
and wondering when it will end

Tell me do you ever cry while we waste away our lives?
Oh, I wish I could be more.
I could be more.
I could be more.

"It's like walking on a rope bridge next to the charred remains of the Golden Gate..."

Can you tell that I'm alive?
Let me prove it.

to follow Jesus you've gotta get up and go.

I love rain. I love the rain of my heart when it feels like
it's only going down, down, down; I love the rain
in the back of my throat that causes a fog in my eyes;
I love the rain in my chest that slows down and muddies up
my heartbeats; I love the rain of my fingers when they ache
from the moisture in the air; I love the rain of my eyelids
when they ease closed after a long day; I love the rain
around my feet that makes them cold; I love the rain
in my ankles that refreshes my step; I love the rain
of my quadriceps that seems to clog up my own will;
I love the rain in my elbows, sitting on them and looking
at the deepest friend of a friend I will ever have; I love the rain
in the bridge of my nose that reminds me to hold my head high;
I love the rain as it washes through my hair and chills,
warming my shoulders; I love the rain on my shoulders themselves
as they push and shove through it in order to wrap around
someone too small and cold; I love the rain around my hips
that are hiding, to be protected and concealed; I love the rain
in my brain as I forget what the sun looked like; I love the rain
in my bones that feel very deeply what the sun looked like;
I love the rain in my soul that knows that when the leaves rot and
the wood decays, that smell only means summer.