Once is fine enough for me
to clap and to laugh about it
but some things: never again.

I used to think the terminality of my life lent it a weight
now I realize that all the gravity is in the eternality.

life and love are not games.

And it's a shame that it ends this way with nothing left to say
So just sit on your hands, while I walk away
It's a shame, it's a shame, it's a shame
When my hands begin to shake, when bitterness is all I taste
And my car won't stop 'cause I cut the brakes
I hold on to a hope in my fate.

May you return to love one day.
Well, I hope and I pray
you get what you gave.

"If we burn, you burn with us."

Do you ever say things that make you cry?
Do you listen to music that changes your life?
Do you dive deep into the depths of thought?
For a second, have you had remorse?
Have you ever decided you were wrong?
Have you changed your mind?
Are you that scared of yourself that you have blanked your own mind,
numbed your own heart for fear of what it would tell you?
Have you ever sat alone and thought about your future?
Have you ever looked at someone and told them the truth?
Have you ever walked by yourself and felt horribly lonely?
Why don't you tell someone?
Have you ever sat on a roof and watched the stars, not just for the aesthetic?
Have you ever felt in your core who you really are?
Have you ever screamed for joy?
Have you ever cried for hardly any reason?
Do you have songs that make you feel small?
Who would you live for?
Who would you die for?
Have you ever thought about that?

everybody wants to be liked by people that don't like anybody
(because we want to be special and exceptions)
but what everybody doesn't realize is that
the people that don't like anybody
are not the kind of people you want to like you.

And here but for the grace of God am I.

And I know we'll be alright, child
just close your eyes and see
and I'll be by your side
anytime you need me.

You show your age
when you drown your rage
but I see past those laughter lines.

"Remember when"s are words I should not dip too far into
the well of the past because I don't know what else has fallen
down there in the mud. Broken glass will cut your hand
when see-through hearts have shattered into pieces of black
used water- not to be drunk again, even if they tell you it is clean
I am scared it is not clean now, and will never be. What about me?

"...I used to fear it, for your sake. I feared you would be left alone inside that wall. But now... something has changed. I do not know why. But I know that it is true."
"That what is true?"
"That the wall is coming down.”

christmas lights have a smell
as does freedom, hatred, and ugliness of heart
headaches have a smell, clarity has a smell
home smells like new wood and sand,
both growing up and childhood smell like smoke,
fear smells like my sister's old bathroom
sleep smells like my mom's perfume
love is warm and smells like sleep
anxiety smells like Pure Sport Old Spice deodorant,
work smells like a gym,
familiarity smells like the locker room when the trash
hasn't been taken out,
lost love smells like grass on the lakefront,
nostalgia smells like a cappucino,
comfort in isolation smells like the fur of a dog,
purpose smells like a church,
platitudes smell like mildew,
tears smell like rotten wood but joy smells like that too,
jubilation smells like a fire crackling,
discomfort smells like that attic smell
when the Halloween decorations are taken out,
new beginnings as well as things we leave behind
smell like airports and morning dew,
risk smells like a hot tub,
liberty smells like a public pool,
a broken heart smells like the mountains,
but a healed heart smells like them too.

All I am is the bones you made for me
so garishly clean
white as the horses that carry me away

I change the lock on the door,
learn how to take a little more.
I can outrun all the devils there
but never the doubt.

"Can you fly?"
"No, no... no."

I have been so, so wrong about most everything. And I still am.

Nice, kind, and cool doesn't make good.
Goodness, beauty and truth together
are the heart of all that is valuable
it might be cool one day to do this or that
but cool doesn't mean anything to your eternal soul.
You will exist long past here and now
you have existed before your birth and you will exist
when the stars have fallen and the Earth is merely dust
when your body dies, the world will not stop spinning
but your soul will stay long after orbit has ceased.
Do you not see how trivial "cool" is now,
when all of our actions carry eternal weight?
Therefore seek eternal truths to guide eternal souls-
not what feels good, not what looks good
not what other people tell you is good
but what is good. Find that. Then do it.

(how could you be fine)

the years will bring a bigger scheme of things and
make a pretty memory out of my disgrace.

everybody's searching for toxins, drugs, dopamine
to numb the pain and dull our minds
because we're afraid of what our thoughts are telling us
we're afraid of the voices we try to silence
with others' lips, but no matter how much I
focus on your heart, I can't escape my own
I don't know if I feel safe in the soul I call home.

I wish I could be indifferent.
Anything but this
(all of this
whatever it is
but it is a lot-

all the twitter and the group chats and the facebooking
the constant talking, the snapchat stories, the little reminders
tumblr feeds, news stations, netflix recommendations
they're just mindless noise, fillers, to distract us
from our chronic loneliness, our effervescent sadness
we can't bear to be alone so we ****** ourselves into rooms
of people talking loudly and too much, we ignore
the sad voices within us because maybe if the sounds
get loud enough, they'll drown out whatever it is
that's saying "you're alone, you're not worthy of love"
and most of the time it works. It leaves us numb
so much noise, in fact, that we can't hear much anything else
we lose sight of ourselves. I don't know who the ****
I am without all of that. I don't know who I am in the silence.
Please, don't leave me behind. I've gotten lost. A week
without twitter is like three years without rain for some of us
and we don't know how to survive the drought-
we don't know what it is we're running from, we're
just running, running's a thing we've always done, and
we're scared. Please, don't leave me behind. I'm scared too.
I'm scared of the dark and of isolation, I'm like a little kid
who needs her phone like her mother's hand
because I never learned to live on my own.
Life's a big ******* grocery store and some of us
sit down in the candy aisle, some of us cry,
some of us ask the people in charge to call our mother,
some of us latch onto someone's, anyone's leg.
Don't let me go. Please, don't leave me behind.
I don't know where I am. I don't know how to get home.

**** it all, I'm going to be happy.

My mama don't like you and she likes everyone.
And I never like to admit that I was wrong.
And I've been so caught up in my job, didn't see what's going on.
And now I know I'm better sleeping on my own.

'Cause if you like the way you look that much
oh baby, you should go and love yourself.
And if you think that I'm still holding on to something,
you should go and love yourself.

But when you told me that you hated my friends
the only problem was with you and not them.
And every time you told me my opinion was wrong,
and tried to make me forget where I came from,

And I didn't wanna write a song cause I didn't want anyone thinking I still care-
I don't- but, you still hit my phone up
And baby I be movin' on and I think you should be something
I don't wanna hold back. Maybe you should know that:
my mama don't like you and she likes everyone.
And I never like to admit that I was wrong.
And I've been so caught up in my job, didn't see what's going on.
And now I know I'm better sleeping on my own.

'Cause if you like the way you look that much
oh baby, you should go and love yourself.
And if you think that I'm still holdin' on to something,
you should go and love yourself.

For all the times that you've made me feel small:
I fell in love, now I feel nothing at all.
I'd never felt so low as when I was vulnerable.
Was I a fool to let you break down my walls?

I'm afraid that no one will ever see your soul again
but I'm more afraid that someone will.

You show your age,
when you drown your rage.
But I see past those laughter lines,
so baby, lets split tonight,
I got a tank full of gas till light.

Yeah we can drive for miles and miles
But you just said,
"Not for all the love in the world"
"Not for all the love in the world"

Cause she didn't realize, now that's a lot of love.

Pipe dreams fade,
and all the underdogs get laid.
Left your heart in the hands of a jugglin clown.
And so you crave recognition,
but the keys to the city went missing

People are all puzzles to be figured out
But you just said,
"Not for all the love in the world"
"Not for all the love in the world"

Cause she didnt realize, now that's a lot of love.
Oh Oh

I guess that everybody,
went to a better party, oh no
Not for all the love in the world
Not for all the love in the world
But she didnt realize, now that's a lot of love.

with no way out, and a long way down
everybody needs someone around.

When someone tells me they don't want me
I tend to believe them.

"I love you" while you see them hungry should mean you feed them
"I love you" while you see them thirsty should mean you give them to drink
"I love you" when you see them naked should mean you clothe them
"I love you" in the midst of all this need does not say,
"I love your hunger, I love your thirst, I love your nakedness."
It says, "I love you, and because of that,
"I hate your hunger, I hate your thirst, I hate your nakedness."
Love does not mean leaving as be, love does not mean acceptance.
Love means feeding and giving water and clothing, love means fixing.
Love means love of you and thusly a non-acceptance of their faults,
a non-acceptance of their problems and their needs,
Love means that you must give, to sit down like the Good Samaritan
and feed the destitute,
give water to the man lying down,
and offer him your coat.
Love does not mean that you wander by the homeless man and think
to yourself how wonderful that person must be and how much you appreciate
their existence and how we cannot judge others
and how each soul is worth something.
In fact, each of these truths are true but if you believe them, you have
to take them to action. If you think someone is wonderful, I do not believe you
until you help them and show them your love.
If you do not try to help and fix someone,
I do not believe you appreciate their existence.
If you do not try and help the homeless man,
I do not believe you think he is not at fault for his homelessness.
If you do not take the lost and poor and needy under your arms,
I do not believe that you believe every soul is worth something.
Love means action. Love is not words.
If love is only words, it means nothing. It is not love.
However, we know what love is- we were given a definition.
"For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me."
Love does not leave hungry, thirsty, stranger, naked, sick, and lonely.
Love is not acceptance. Love fixes. Love does.

I try to forgive you but I'm struggling 'cause I don't know how.
We built it up so high and now I'm falling
it's a long way down.

I can't take them on my own, my own
Oh, I'm not the one you know, you know
I have killed a man and all I know
is I am on the run and go.
Don't wanna call you in the nighttime
Don't wanna give you all my pieces
Don't wanna hand you all my trouble
Don't wanna give you all my demons
You'll have to watch me struggle
from several rooms away.

do you ever read a book that wakes you up inside

“Critics who treat 'adult' as a term of approval, instead of as a merely descriptive term, cannot be adult themselves. To be concerned about being grown up, to admire the grown up because it is grown up, to blush at the suspicion of being childish; these things are the marks of childhood and adolescence. And in childhood and adolescence they are, in moderation, healthy symptoms. Young things ought to want to grow. But to carry on into middle life or even into early manhood this concern about being adult is a mark of really arrested development. When I was ten, I read fairy tales in secret and would have been ashamed if I had been found doing so. Now that I am fifty I read them openly. When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up.”

Sometimes you have to give up and shut up.
Sometimes being free doesn't mean throwing your secrets into the world
if anything, it's more freeing when no one knows anything about you.
Sometimes you have to learn to sit down and stop dealing with it
stop rolling around in a constant whirl of emotion
stop acting like everything is life or death.
Some people just don't get it. Life keeps going on, until it doesn't.
It doesn't have to be a constant war. Sometimes
you don't have to chase love until you run yourself into the ground.
Sometimes you don't have to break your own heart
because someone else didn't care enough to try.
People aren't made from always or never, from completely
or lack thereof- people are made of compromises,
of yes then and no now, of maybe someday and that's enough.
Sometimes you have to give up and learn that letting go
is not the end. It doesn't ****. It's what happens when you grow up.

Some things don't really change.
Not for me. They don't.

"We can remain in a state of love when we recognize that everyone is doing the best they can to get their needs met."

I hear them calling for you
I hear them calling for you

I feel the waves getting started
It's a rush inside I can't control
Your eyes keep pulling me in
I know, I know, I know
Your friends all talking 'bout me
They say I got no chance at all
Your fire is burning deep
In my soul, my soul, my soul

I ain't up for debating
You ain't up for the taking
We got the whole shaking

In the middle of the night when the wolves come out
Headed straight for your heart like a bullet in the dark
One by one, I gotta take them down
Better run and hide, ain't goin' down without a fight
I hear them calling for you
I hear them calling
In the middle of the night when the wolves come out
Headed straight for your heart
They come straight for your heart
I hear them calling for you
I hear them calling for you

I keep on holding tight now
Cause your body's telling me don't let go
We are gonna be starting up trouble
I know, I know, I know
Just bringing my demons out
More than ever now
Your beauty could start a war
As you walk in the door

I ain't up for debating
You ain't up for the taking
We got the whole shaking

In the middle of the night when the wolves come out
Headed straight for your heart
Like a bullet in the dark
One by one, I gotta take them down
Better run and hide, ain't goin' down without a fight
I hear them calling for you
I hear them calling
In the middle of the night when the wolves come out
Headed straight for your heart
They come straight for your heart
I hear them calling for you
I hear them calling for you

I wish it wasn't true
But the whole world's tryna get a piece of you
And my heart keeps fighting in this battle of fools
Gotta make it through, gotta make it through

In the middle of the night when the wolves come out
Headed straight for your heart
Like a bullet in the dark
One by one, I gotta take them down
Better run and hide, ain't going down without a fight
I hear them calling for you
I hear them calling
In the middle of the night when the wolves come out
Headed straight for your heart
They come straight for your heart
I hear them calling for you
I hear them calling for you

I don't exactly know how to phrase it when we've been told
romantic love is the be-all, end-all of it all. I don't exactly know
how to say what I feel without sounding shallow and emotionless
but what I have learned, in my heart, is this:
that love isn't love that takes.
that me needing love to survive,
wanting it at the cost of all else,
and seeing it as the end goal of my life-
is setting me up to love for the sake of love by itself
and love for the sake of having it. By definition,
if romantic love is my life goal, any love I have
is taking. I have learned that
I don't need another person to fulfill my life
and it's foolish to act as though it's all pointless without love.
I have learned that to be poor and with the love of your life
is nice, and a beautiful happy life, but to be rich and single allows you
to give your riches to charity and spend your career changing the world
maybe at the cost of your own happiness, maybe not.
I have learned that even if it costs my own happiness, it is
better for me and anyone to sacrifice being with someone you love
for the sake of other people. I don't deserve that happiness
if it means it's going to forbid me from
changing the world in a positive way. I don't deserve that happiness
if it means I am alone with the one I love and have selfishly decided
my love is more important than anything else.
I have learned that there are many examples of people
who have lived their lives without love and have had wonderful lives.
I have learned that mere happiness is not the goal of the eternal soul.
I have learned that it's not boring or pointless or heartbreaking when one
doesn't end up with someone- I have learned that to sacrifice
my whole life for the sake of another person doesn't mean to give up
everything to be with them, either romantically or sexually.
I have learned that we must sacrifice ourselves, our wants, our needs
for the sake of God's kingdom- that whatever I want is nothing to His wants,
and that He does not want what I want. His ways are higher than mine.
I might want to be married, I might want to have kids
but what I've learned has told me that's not the point. That's not the end.
A man hath no greater love than this: to lay down his life for his friends.
Friends. I can, and will, give up everything for my friends,
everything for God. That's what love is. Self-sacrifice, not self-fulfillment
not "who I can be", but "who I can help you to be"-
not the light at the end of the tunnel, but the person willing to die.
I have been asking and looking for a perfect person
that understands me, is willing to be my partner and crime,
and loves me just as much or more as I love them. I found Him.
His name is Jesus Christ. And I know that I wouldn't give up Him
to be with anyone in the world. That's why. That's why. That's why.

All I know at the end of the day is you want what you want
and you say what you say, and you follow your heart
even though it'll break sometimes. All I know at the end of the day
is you love who you love, there ain't no other way.

is this what peace feels like?

Everybody wants to roll with the cool times and say
yes when everybody wants yes and
no when everybody wants no but
when it comes down to it, none of that ever made
a real person, none of that ever taught somebody
how to love somebody else. And I think you'll find
in the end, when you don't know who wants yes or no
and when asked what those mean, you don't know
I'll still be here. Saying yes. Saying no. Telling the truth.
In the end, I know how to love. And I love you.

We made a fire; went down in the flames.
We sailed the ocean, and drowned in the waves.
Built a cathedral, but we never prayed.
We had it all, yeah, and we walked away.

Point of no return and now it's just too late to turn around.
I try to forgive you but I struggle cause I don't know how.
We built it up so high and now I'm falling,
it's a long way down.
It's a long way down, from here.

We had a mountain, but took it for granted.
We had a spaceship, but we couldn't land it.
We found an island, but we got stranded.
We had it all. Who could've planned it?

Point of no return and now it's just too late to turn around.
I try to forgive you but I'm struggling cause I don't know how.
We built it up so high and now I'm falling,
it's a long way down, from here.
Such a long way down...
It's a long way down.
It's a long way down.
Such a long way down...
It's a long way down.
It's a long way down.

clear blue fabric lines the streets
before my eyes, it is punched through
and then repaired, by warm-colored fingers
of people, standing there, afraid to linger
but their eyes pierce the veil of silence.
I've turned my music down and taken
off my sunglasses to listen to the smell
of light, it's gnarled and frosty and soothing
breezing and ruffling, something a bit too tough
an athlete of a wind, not concerned with me
approaching a higher goal, playing rough
through my hair, content to let it be
but not- at the same time. We
change the world we live in, regardless
of intentions. Flow through my vents
or my windows, I don't care, I
will still breathe you in and inhale your scent
even though I try to drive so far as to leave you behind
the seasons pass, grow, and fade away
I forget the worlds in which we used to play
something in the careless whisper, I can hear the ocean
in your heartbeat. It's a word that you say.
It's you, shaking your hair down, in one particular way.
And it's me, driving and forgetting and learning to give you away.
Day by day. Day by day.

children play war in their ***** backyards
but when we grow up and start to drive cars
we learn that our lives are worth more than that
we stop playing games and stop fighting back
because we knew all along in the back of our minds
that the guns never worked and we shouldn't have tried.

I, for one, will not apologize for living my own ******* life
to its fullest and its best extent.

I've got to be able to tell the truth to somebody, sometime... right?

“Unfortunately, you never really hate anyone as much as someone you cared about once.”

I said, "Lord, what do You want from me?"
and You said, "Everything."

What a feeling to be a king beside you, somehow
I wish I could be there now.