"All the towering materialism which dominates the modern mind rests ultimately upon one assumption; a false assumption. It is supposed that if a thing goes on repeating itself it is probably dead; a piece of clockwork. People feel that if the universe was personal it would vary; if the sun were alive it would dance. This is a fallacy even in relation to known fact. For the variation in human affairs is generally brought into them, not by life, but by death; by the dying down or breaking off of their strength or desire. A man varies his movements because of some slight element of failure or fatigue. He gets into an omnibus because he is tired of walking; or he walks because he is tired of sitting still. But if his life and joy were so gigantic that he never tired of going to Islington, he might go to Islington as regularly as the Thames goes to Sheerness. The very speed and ecstacy of his life would have the stillness of death. The sun rises every morning. I do not rise every morning; but the variation is due not to my activity, but to my inaction. Now, to put the matter in a popular phrase, it might be true that the sun rises regularly because he never gets tired of rising. His routine might be due, not to a lifelessness, but to a rush of life. The thing I mean can be seen, for instance, in children, when they find some game or joke that they specially enjoy. A child kicks his legs rhythmically through excess, not absence, of life. Because children have abounding vitality, because they are in spirit fierce and free, therefore they want things repeated and unchanged. They always say, “Do it again”; and the grown-up person does it again until he is nearly dead. For grown-up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony. But perhaps God is strong enough to exult in monotony. It is possible that God says every morning, “Do it again” to the sun; and every evening, “Do it again” to the moon. It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike; it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never got tired of making them. It may be that He has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we. The repetition in Nature may not be a mere recurrence; it may be a theatrical ENCORE. Heaven may ENCORE the bird who laid an egg. If the human being conceives and brings forth a human child instead of bringing forth a fish, or a bat, or a griffin, the reason may not be that we are fixed in an animal fate without life or purpose. It may be that our little tragedy has touched the gods, that they admire it from their starry galleries, and that at the end of every human drama man is called again and again before the curtain. Repetition may go on for millions of years, by mere choice, and at any instant it may stop. Man may stand on the earth generation after generation, and yet each birth be his positively last appearance.”

"Get a little rock and roll on the radio and go toward all the life there is with all the courage you can find and all the belief you can muster. Be true, be brave, stand. All the rest is darkness."

“Some stupid people started the idea that because women obviously back up their own people through everything, therefore women are blind and do not see anything. They can hardly have known any women. The same women who are ready to defend their men through thick and thin are (in their personal ******* with the man) almost morbidly lucid about the thinness of his excuses or the thickness of his head. A man's friend likes him but leaves him as he is: his wife loves him and is always trying to turn him into somebody else. Women who are utter mystics in their creed are utter cynics in their criticism. Thackeray expressed this well when he made Pendennis' mother, who worshipped her son as a god, yet assume that he would go wrong as a man. She underrated his virtue, though she overrated his value. The devotee is entirely free to criticise; the fanatic can safely be a sceptic. Love is not blind; that is the last thing that it is. Love is bound; and the more it is bound the less it is blind.”

“The mass of men have been forced to be gay about the little things, but sad about the big ones. Nevertheless (I offer my last dogma defiantly) it is not native to man to be so. Man is more himself, man is more manlike, when joy is the fundamental thing in him, and grief the superficial. Melancholy should be an innocent interlude, a tender and fugitive frame of mind; praise should be the permanent pulsation of the soul. Pessimism is at best an emotional half-holiday; joy is the uproarious labour by which all things live. Yet, according to the apparent estate of man as seen by the pagan or the agnostic, this primary need of human nature can never be fulfilled. Joy ought to be expansive; but for the agnostic it must be contracted, it must cling to one corner of the world. Grief ought to be a concentration; but for the agnostic its desolation is spread through an unthinkable eternity. This is what I call being born upside down. The sceptic may truly be said to be topsy-turvy; for his feet are dancing upwards in idle ecstasies, while his brain is in the abyss. To the modern man the heavens are actually below the earth. The explanation is simple; he is standing on his head; which is a very weak pedestal to stand on. But when he has found his feet again he knows it. Christianity satisfies suddenly and perfectly man's ancestral instinct for being the right way up; satisfies it supremely in this; that by its creed joy becomes something gigantic and sadness something special and small. The vault above us is not deaf because the universe is an idiot; the silence is not the heartless silence of an endless and aimless world. Rather the silence around us is a small and pitiful stillness like the prompt stillness in a sick room. We are perhaps permitted tragedy as a sort of merciful comedy: because the frantic energy of divine things would knock us down like a drunken farce. We can take our own tears more lightly than we could take the tremendous levities of the angels. So we sit perhaps in a starry chamber of silence, while the laughter of the heavens is too loud for us to hear. And as I close this chaotic volume I open again the strange small book from which all Christianity came; and I am again haunted by a kind of confirmation. The tremendous figure which fills the Gospels towers in this respect, as in every other, above all the thinkers who ever thought themselves tall. His pathos was natural, almost casual. The Stoics, ancient and modern, were proud of concealing their tears. He never concealed His tears; He showed them plainly on His open face at any daily sight, such as the far sight of His native city. Yet He concealed something. Solemn supermen and imperial diplomatists are proud of restraining their anger. He never restrained His anger. He flung furniture down the front steps of the Temple, and asked men how they expected to escape the damnation of Hell. Yet He restrained something. I say it with reverence; there was in that shattering personality a thread that must be called shyness. There was something that He hid from all men when He went up a mountain to pray. There was something that He covered constantly by abrupt silence or impetuous isolation. There was some one thing that was too great for God to show us when He walked upon our earth; and I have sometimes fancied that it was His mirth.”

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

"Expose yourself to your deepest fear; after that, fear has no power, and the fear of freedom shrinks and vanishes. You are free."

"There are things known and things unknown and in between are the doors."

and it rains- through my nose
out my mouth, trickling down my mind
leaving my knees weak, on my toes
it rains over my hips, crumpling my thighs
it leeches the strength of my shoulders, it leaks
between my fingers- it rains from my eyes
and it rains into my ears, it rains all over here
it rains over my face and under my chin,
and it rains in heaven and in sin, it rains
on good and bad and warm and cold
it rains leaving both the young and the old
it rains through happy and lost and pain
it rains on you and on me just the same.

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.

High rise, veins of the avenue
Bright eyes and subtle variations of blue
Everywhere is balanced there like a rainbow above you
Street lights glisten on the boulevard
And cold nights make staying alert so hard
For heaven's sake, keep me awake so I won't be caught off guard
Clearly I am a passerby but I'll find a place to stay
Dear pacific day, won't you take me away?
Small town hearts of the New Year
Brought down by gravity, crystal clear
City fog and brave dialogue converge on the frontier
Make haste, I feel your heartbeat
With new taste for speed, out on the street
Find a road to a humble abode where both of our routes meet
The silver sound is all around and the colors fall like snow
The feeling of letting go, I guess we'll never know

Cheer up and dry your damp eyes and tell me when it rains
And I'll blend up that rainbow above you and shoot it through your veins
'Cause your heart has a lack of colour and we should've known
That we'd grow up sooner or later 'Cause we wasted all our free time alone

Your nerves gather with the altitude
Exhale the stress so you don't come unglued
Somewhere there is a happy affair, a ghost of a good mood
Wide eyed, panic on the getaway
The high tide could take me so far away
VCR's and motorcars unite on the Seventh Day
A popular gauge will measure the rage of the new Post-Modern Age
'Cause somewhere along the line all the decades align.

We were the crashing whitecaps
On the ocean
And what lovely sea-side holiday, away
A palm tree in Christmas lights
My emotion
Struck a sparkling tone like a xylophone
As we spent the day alone

Cheer up and dry your damp eyes and tell me when it rains
And I'll blend up that rainbow above you and shoot it through your veins
'Cause your heart has a lack of color and we should've known
That we'd grow up sooner or later 'cause we wasted all our free time alone.

High rise, veins of the avenue, bright eyes and subtle variations of blue
everywhere is balanced, there, like a rainbow above you
street lights glisten on the boulevard and cold nights make staying alert so hard
for heaven's sake, keep me awake so I won't be caught off guard
clearly I am a passerby but I'll find a place to stay
Dear Pacific day, won't you take me away?
small town hearts of the New Year
brought down by gravity, crystal clear
City fog and brave dialogue converge on the frontier
make haste, I feel your heartbeat
with new taste for speed, out on the street
find a road to a humble abode where both of our routes meet
The silver sound is all around and the colors fall like snow
The feeling of letting go, I guess we'll never know

Cheer up and dry your damp eyes and tell me when it rains-
I'll blend up that rainbow above you and shoot it through your veins
your heart has a lack of color
and we should have known
that we'd grow up sooner or later
cause we wasted all of our free time alone

listen and feel, don't see
it's like I'm there again on that bus,
screaming and looking into the eyes
of people who shoot my veins with electricity,
we told each other that at that moment we would be happy to die
banging on the seats, bare hands and bare feet
crying and laughing and bursting through windows in tiny sprays
I never knew I could be loved in so many different ways.

the stone and steel walls that I won't climb
can only take so much pressure
before they shatter

sleep it off, we're broken people
and I keep breaking people, don't I,
it was not your fault but mine, and it was your heart
on the line, I really ****** it up this time
didn't I my dear? I keep ******* myself up,
but I know I can't keep entertaining shattered dreams
and the idea of shattering them
the age of romanticizing pain is over,
no one wants someone who is tragically broken
everyone wants everyone else to be whole
so they can help themselves be whole
so all I can do is stop feeling sorry for myself
it's time for me to glue my **** back together
and move on with my life
so eventually I can help other people
glue their **** back together too
I can't care about you until I am whole and glued
my cup runneth over but only once it's full,
and it's about time to collect my own **** rainwater.

I've never known how to apologize
not even to myself- much less to God.

power is the mountain- the breeze thinks the mountain is listening and has moved
or the rivers think, once they have departed, that the mountain is lonely
the sheep ridicule the mountain when the snow falls and the snow
thinks it has mastered the mountain when it kills the sheep
but the mountain is unchanged. It is always there. It always will be.

I pass back and read late at night
write poetry,
eat yogurt, things I had sworn off and return to with ever more vigor
I am caught in an orbit,
the gravitation is just enough to keep me spinning and too much
to let me go free, I fight it,
I fight it with stolen cigarettes and late nights
and tumbling over and over on a golf course
I fight it with drinks by myself and the purchase of ridiculous items
song lyrics composed on the spot and bold winks across the room
smiley faces and pickup lines to people I should not dare
a fantasy of LSD and the hope I'll see a dragon
so I can finally stop dreaming of them.

I pass back and read late at night
write poetry,
eat yogurt, things I had sworn off and return to with ever more vigor
I am caught in an orbit,
the gravitation is just enough to keep me spinning and too much
to let me go free, I fight it,
I fight it with stolen cigarettes and late nights
and tumbling over and over on a golf course
I fight it with drinks by myself and the purchase of ridiculous items
song lyrics composed on the spot and bold winks across the room
smiley faces and pickup lines to people I should not dare
a fantasy of LSD and the hope I'll see a dragon
so I can finally stop dreaming of them.

maybe we don't compliment each other as much
as I'd like to think.
we've always had problems, aggravated each other
too much- I'm so sentimental and can't quite
get across what I want to say perfectly,
and you are picky when it comes to a lot of things
so when, not if, I ******* my wording up, you'd
take it the wrong way,
and it hurt me I couldn't let you understand
but we've had brilliant moments, remember those?
we've gotten closer to the ideal wavelength,
we've been utterly in sync,
with just a few mistakes,
and we danced,
or that time when we figured out why
it hadn't worked before
and when I stopped telling you to sit down
and when you read the poem I wrote you without telling me
(the expression on your face was worth the anxiety giving it to you)
do you remember when we fell asleep on the couch together?
all those times I held your hand?
do you remember the look in our eyes when
we decided to let each other fly?
and though we'll never be perfect,
for you, I'm willing to try.

I can avoid you, sure,
as long as my presence makes you unhappy-
I can run from you and avoid eye contact-
and because you don't particularly care about me,
I can force myself to not care too and to logically
process the situation
but how long until I stop wanting to kiss you?

You're someone who doesn't see the point
in unclothing the universe
or in thinking too hard about examining things
or in crying or in poetry or in love.
You're someone who doesn't love me
and doesn't work well with me
and has a beautiful voice but doesn't use it.
You're someone who doesn't value the same
things as me- you're unlike anyone I've ever met,
and I'm fighting my feelings every day
and trying to give up and lay down my heart,
but no matter how hard I look away,
every single face looks like you.

people who use their religion to work 'miracles'
on the bodies
and end up dying
do not understand the reason why we have science.
science is for the body, the world, building and medicating
religion should not be applied to any of those things
religion is the medication of the mind and heart
it is the cure for the soul,
the formula for mental stability
the chemical balance of self-control
it is not a treatment for cancer, polio, or ***
it is a treatment for sadness, hatred, and confusion
both religion and science are:
correct when used correctly
lethal when used inappropriately
violent when misconstrued.
science can damage the soul like nothing else
and religion can destroy the body
they are both useful and good in their own right,
but terribly, terribly dangerous
and should be treated as such.

my body fails, I'm on my knees

It is not that I am broken
I am not broken
I just keep telling myself I am-
I lose myself and forget my whole and beautiful soul
and it is so easy to get lost in these fantasies of shattered dreams
until you wake me up and remind me of me.

He asked me why I didn't 'dig' him
and I said, 'you're not my type'
but what I meant is,
I don't even like boys
and he said, 'who's better than me'
and I said 'a lot of people'
but what I meant is,
'have you seen Emma Watson?'
and adolfo wants me to be exactly who I am,
with a gut reaction,
every time
but for someone who has spent their whole life
hiding and lying and creating machinations
for someone whose every motion is watched and
analyzed so as not to give anything away
for someone who developed social skills because
she needed to conceal who she was
that is hard, it is hard, it is nearly impossible
because no matter how many times you tell me to 'say whatever I feel'
I cannot. I cannot. I cannot.
there are some things that must remain hidden.

some poems, like music, come into play exactly when they are supposed to.

I want everything to feel good and beautiful and healthy again
and I want to refrain from anything that makes me sick
to my stomach
I want to spend time alone and learn how to be alone
to be my own best friend
to love fully but not to throw my heart into someone's arms
because my heart's place is inside my chest
the only place where it can pump, keeping me alive
I want to cast off all the things that make me feel sick
and all the people that make me feel like
the walls are closing in on me
I don't want to go down any paths I shouldn't
I just want to go down a clear and visible path
alone, walking in love, with the wind on my wings
covering the earth with the songs I sing
and I want the miles to fly by.

"You are already enough."
"Oh, my child, you already are."
"It's time."
"Come here."
"Follow me."

Eliminating all ritual because "nothing can be good enough for God"
is like not buying your mom a birthday present because you can't express your love in a present.
**** it up and buy your mom a present.
Destroying all connections to God because He is indescribable
is atheistic and nihilistic in nature because it's saying we should not even
try because we're doomed to fail; it's saying that we are nothing.
And we know we are something because He told us.
Saying God wants us to just "do our own thing as long as it gets us to Him"
is forgetting every time God gave us specific and exact instructions about how to reach Him
and is forgetting that God told us to deny ourselves, to lose our lives
so that we may take them up again.
God didn't say to follow our hearts. He said to follow His heart.

if I don't know half of you
and you don't know half of me
then how the hell can we be half a heart
without each other?

"I'd die for you," that's easy to say
We have a list of people that we would take
A bullet for them, a bullet for you
A bullet for everybody in this room
But I don't seem to see many bullets coming through
See many bullets coming through
Metaphorically, I'm the man
But literally, I don't know what I'd do
"I'd live for you, " and that's hard to do
Even harder to say when you know it's not true
Even harder to write when you know that tonight
There were people back home who tried talking to you
But then you ignored them still
All these questions they're for real like
Who would you live for?
Who would you die for?
And would you ever ****?

everybody wants to be right absolutely
but I, I am always wrong
and always right
so are you.
liberating, isn't it?
now all that's left is for us to understand each other.

Yes, I want you to look at me and think you can't do without
I'm selfish, I know, but I've felt like this for so long
I know how powerful I can be, yes, I want to tear someone apart
yes, I know it's wrong, but I want to rip out your heart.

the riptide drags me under
but I have a life boat, and not only that-
I can swim, and the man who holds my arms
as I cut away from pulls that I am not meant for
sick tides that bounce and roll, his name is-
well, His name is God.

for a moment, the waters clear, and the mud
stops swirling, and the dust settles on the rocks
I can see up from the riverbed and no longer
what I see is just a reflection of you
when I look to my right, you aren't lying next to me
like I thought- the light is streaming through my
bleary eyes, a cold-water shock and I'm awake,
but still drowning.

(if I could make you giggle like that all the time then I would but I can't so I have to stay away from you)

once upon a midnight dreary I woke with something in my head
I couldn't escape the memory of a phone call and of what you said
like a game-show contestant with a parting gift
I could not believe my eyes
when I saw through the voice of a trusted friend
who needs to humor me and tell me lies. Yeah, humor me and tell me lies.

counted all my mistakes and there's only one
standing out from the list of the things I've done.

there's a little part of me that always has to lie.
like that girl I asked to marry me in kindergarten
or that boy who told me he loved me
but then I threw up because the idea was so gross.
or even the real reason
seventh grade wasn't my favorite year.
I've always had to say 'him'
skate over the facts a little.
just to be safe.
I have to pretend to be safe.

the centaur does not always want to run, the centaur
sometimes sits, and accepts what is told to him
one must sit still to learn. But, what the centaur finds
is that when he sits for too long, shackles begin
to be thrown over him, and his muscled arms and legs
strain, break free, and launch away, burning bridges behind him
out of an instinct of hatred for constraints and a wild passion
for freedom- sometimes he forgets that he needs
to cross those bridges again. But it's okay. He'll find a way.
But, sure as hell, he'll learn his lesson, and he won't sit still. It's just as well.

the archer is not flighty but rather intensely focused
once fired, the arrow will pierce and remain
but I will gallop away the moment I want to leave
not a second sooner or later, and my mind is detached,
gone.

and if I didn't always hope for the best
and flee from the worst,
then maybe I would've been able to stay
but a half and half person can't possibly love halfway.

so many poems tell you that you have to fill
the first few lines with a lot of ******* imagery
to fill the stanzas before you hit one or two lines
that actually mean something: and by that heroic
couplet, or whatever the english teachers say these days,
the whole ******* poem is redeemed.
I don't think I should have to write sixteen stanzas
for the sake of the last line, but here I am
so I might as well elaborate a bit on the rooftops
and the moonlight on her hair and the fact
that I cannot love her as I wish I could and
I never dreamed of Paris like other women always expected me to
the smell of baking bread and the Eucharist
hurts my knees and heals my soul, thank God
for God, but it seems unfortunate that we as people can't just
ignore the existence of our Creator. Something calls us back
something hurts us in desperate moments when we've
written sixteen hundred stanzas and none of them meant anything
and we're afraid to show our faces to a priest or our mother
when I drifted away from certain shores I thought
I wanted to inhabit forever, the cross I clung to
led me through sunny and tumultuous waves
I always did like being on the water. I always did
like salt and water and earth and wine and I am
a child of the Church- my Church that tells me
there's nothing wrong with being tender
nothing wrong with having a soft heart-
you see, our God's heart bled out
and He never concealed His tears.

I've been in love with love and the idea of
something binding us together.

not everybody is perfect, but that's the point.

There are some people who weigh heavy on the workings of the world
shifting powers and stirring, pumping the flow of truth up and down and around
some people can't participate without altering, a mere footprint on the snow
causes an avalanche. Some people tread lightly, knowing any mark
they leave is a scar, but some people's souls carve scars into the world
with every breath and living motion. Some people leave gouges,
throwing their weight around and unknowingly setting
hearts on fire and sending minds into the cold, unknowingly
the center of a whirlwind, breathing hurricanes into existence.
I'm sorry I've changed so much. I'm sorry. I can't help it.

I have never much liked science
and I never knew why, until now.
Because I have always known the grass is green
and I am constantly refreshed by the knowledge of
the fact of something new.
Knowing a formula, a law that tells me
the grass will be green every day
tells me to forget that the grass is special.
How can something be special if it is green every day?
How can anything be special if it is always the same?
A law gives me an explanation of how it will always be
and, personally, knowing something will always be
destroys my sense of wonder that it is here today
why do I care about the magnitude of a single repeating pattern?
if it repeats, it repeats. No matter for how long.
So, if the law says forever, it's no more special because
it is forever. In fact, it is less special.
I've never cared much for science because these laws
tell me, "it's not a miracle. In fact, it's always this way. Here's why."
And something, something deep within me, says,
"That's it?"
and science responds, in its dry voice, and tells me,
"That's it."
And I am convinced, still, in my heart of hearts, that
that can't be it. There must be more. Because I know
the grass is special. I know the world is good and unique
and different every day and deeply personal.
I don't care for laws because I know there are miracles around me
and a law tries to explain everything- and sure, it does.
Everything except the fact that this world is special.
I would rather be grateful the grass is green today than look at it
and say, "Well, I know it's green and will always be,"
and move on to the next fact to memorize,
in an empty pursuit of knowing all the laws. These laws
don't fulfill us because they don't lend us any sense of wonder.
They tell us the world is not special. That it's explainable.
I would rather appreciate it that it exists today and for what it is
rather than follow a pattern for all eternity.
Because I know that it's not just "That's it."
It must be more. It's got to be more.

it is a strange practice, learning to understand someone
it begins with a rough sketch of 'the way they feel about
their parents' or 'what happened to their siblings'
and it progresses on with a Myers Briggs evaluation
sometimes taking their mental pulse in different subjects
marking what they care about and what they don't
enscribing the single sentence of their
self-worth, their desire, and their motivations
on whatever it is that binds the two of you together,
and growing with them and learning the way in which they grow
you know their crystal lattice and you know how it forms
a molecular structure in fractals, in fractals, in fractals
that builds and changes but is always quite the same,

I know what makes you laugh,
I know how to make you cry,
I have learned you and I know
which keyholes can be pressed, slid into, or clicked
I know of all your crevices and your breakages
and I know how to fix them or how to
drive a wedge so deep inside you that you splinter
I can map when your breath is short and I can chart
your secrets on the walls of my heart, kept there
like a case-file in a robbery- you have stolen
me, my very existence,
and there is an arrow and a pin and lines drawn
to every single bit of who you are
I have learned you, I have measured you,
you have been weighed and found wanting
and I know what it is you are wanting in the depths of your being
but the finding of these things is difficult and rocky and awkward
for you have taken what it is that is me and you have
patterned it over the immense and layered texture of you
breaking and filling holes, pouring into a mold
and I am invested, now, for I am made for you,
but there is no turning back and we must go on from here
I learn and change from the people around me
but first I must learn you.

It is a strange practice, learning to understand someone,
but once I understand you, then
now, now we can begin.

these discourses are too private to even share with the sky himself

God knows what He's doing
every seed He plants in my heart will bloom or die
exactly the way it's supposed to

what does it mean to be a child? an animal? a human? an adult?