I used to say, "burn me to a crisp"
and now there's nothing left to burn
I want nothing to do with love- *******,
I want you
to mean nothing to me,
I'm so sorry but driving me crazy is not
a romantic idea anymore, I'm tired
of wanting to smash my head through a window around you
I'd like a ******* good night's sleep, if that's alright
so kindly **** out of my head,
**** out of my heart,
**** out my life already if you're not going to stay.

I wish I could write songs-
I know exactly what I'd say.
I'd tell you that, "I wrote you a poem today.
If you're reading this, I loved you more."
And it would cut me to the core
but I'd sing it anyway. Only by myself, though-
full blast on the highway. Alone on the road.
But I can't write songs. I just sit at home
sometimes, and remember, and wonder.
We used to say things would never change but
in the end, I guess, I made you forget
or you forgot on your own.
Either way, I loved you more.
So I (or you) had to let go.

God doesn't want me to feel like this
love will win in the end- love will win,
after all of this, love will win

a while ago, you told me
mr. huck told you that
"men have *** for power" and
"women have *** for love"
and you'd thought to yourself, wait,
I'd do it for power.
I can't help but wonder-
if I had told you that you could've had me
on my knees begging for mercy,
twice,
would things have been different?

"She said she would have been the most important thing in my life, but she is the only thing that I don't have."
"Kiss me like that and forget about the future of our lives and the other side of the story."
"There's nothing wrong with me and you, and it is not a bad thing."
"sometimes I get lost in the world and you are the only way to the point where it was."
"I don't know what I want you to be but I know that I want you for me."
"Girl you are the best thing about being in love and I don't know how much I miss you."
"I really want to be with you and you don't know how much I love you because you don't want it and you love it when I am not sure."
"Falling in love again and I don't think I can be found, I have no one else."
"I just want to tell you how much you mean to me."
"Please follow me please please don't let me go back to the point of having to wait for you."
"Why do you think you can get the best of me and I have to go back to the same thing as the first time since I've never had you."
"my love is like the way I am so excited to be the first."
"kiss me you say but I shy away in case you figure out you don't want to stay."
"Making me laugh so hard I try not to mention it was the best thing about being in love with you."
"I'd rather be with you and you are the only thing that would make me laugh and smile and say that I can be used."
"you make me feel like I have to go back and forth between us and the other side is that I can't."
"You are the only thing that I don't have to do with a lot of people."
"I'm not going to be the best for you but I will try to be if it means I am able to love you."
"You know how much I hate you and you know how much I miss you so I don't think that I can't even see you at all and I love you so much for a long way from my heart."
"It's all over again and I love the way you want a relationship with my mom and I don't think that it was the first time."
"you said let me go and I don't know how to."
"Wait I have no idea how much I love you so much."
"tell me you're not going to leave me too."
"It's all about you but I'm still waiting."
"Yes you do not know what I was."
"I love the way you want me too."
"Love is the only thing that I don't know if you want."
"Dancing with the best of me in your eyes and I love it."
"I miss the old days when you are the same as the one I love."
"what happened to forever and a day?"
"what about the love we had and why is it so easy to leave me?"
"Take me back to the point where you could have been the most beautiful girl in my life and the only one who can make me feel."
"I can't work without you in my head and you can't even get to know me."
"Half of my heart is broken and the other side is the most beautiful."
"You cannot find the right time for me and I don't think that the two sides of you agree."
" I have no idea how much I love you so much, but it was the best thing about being a girl."
"You are not the only person who can make me happy and you are not going to be able to get to me ever again."

when I, or you, wake up and go downstairs
to see our parents in the morning and they say
I love you, how do you do, and you say
I love you, slept well, how about you?
and they say, good, me too, and you go to school.

You go to school where they tie and fasten your noose
and pull you under gray skies until you swear
you'll lose your mind, you go to school where you lie
and wait- covert eyes, surreptitiously despise that you have to
whisper to me, between closed walls and closed doors, I love you.

In this world of rules and halfway angry, halfway desperate
people, we build palaces so as not to see the little black box
underneath it all, this indestructible fortress, where no one can hide
or conceal, every time you open it, you get more and more undressed
naked, under the glaring light. (But hold me tight.) I love you.

when, in storms and cliffs, half past raging and half through sadness
what can we do to end this madness, when even in
the depths of our beings, even in the darkest of magic
we can't find the strength to say it, I can't open my mouth
because I've said it too much or too little, maybe, but I love you.

When the spires and pillars and holy desires clash, and this
Church cannot stand on sand, what is the one thing they've forgotten
they say that marriage is less, and more, too, but they don't
even know what they mean, after eternity's lost all hope of despair, what
is the one phrase that their God cannot bear? I love you.

In alleyways of the heart, in broken and forgotten verse- in drunkenness
and dying, what slips in through the cracks that the light gets in? What
scandal is too vulnerable to be wounded? Why do they call it sin? the blood
that flows under the current, between the leaves of book pages and underneath
pulses beats from long ages, (please have the nerve to say it), I love you.

If, at the end of time, when there are no more rhymes
when the forests are burnt to ashes and all life left has died
when breath no longer rattles through the bones of the dirt
and the darkness has quenched all of our God-lit thirst
what have we left on this Earth? I love you.

I love you like the roof loves the shutters
I love you like blue loves green
I love you like 'school' loves 'zone'
I love you like rust loves metal
I love you like an oak loves its twin
I love you like the Moon loves the Earth
I love you like a magnet with the same pole
I love you like a star-struck poet loves a muse
I love you like someone who has never loved before
and I've written it a thousand times, but I've never said it to you
because I love you like Darcy loves Elizabeth
and I'm scared if I say it aloud, you'll hear it.

I'll figure it out alone.
No one owns me, darling.

will someone just tell me who I am
and will the rest of the world just let me be it?

Cigarettes, love, and spring are all that really matter.

I have a tag on tumblr
specifically called 'parenting'
so that if and when the time comes
I remember what I needed when I was younger
and I can be that person for my child.
I write love letters to my future spouse
sometimes in pen and sometimes on the typewriter
so that if and when the time comes
they know how long I've waited for them,
they know that they're a dream come true
and how amazing it is that I can wake up to see them next to me.

maybe I should be a nun
or date that boy in orchestra
or adopt more cats
because anything would be better than
spending my free time learning love songs on guitar
so i can melt your heart if need be
and constantly dreaming about you
and being crushed every waking minute.

"And now I'm one step closer to being two steps far from you."

Down to Earth, it's like I'm frozen, but the world still turns
stuck in motion, and the wheels keep spinning 'round
moving in reverse with no way out.

How many nights does it take to count the stars?
That's the time it would take to fix my heart.
Oh, baby, I was there for you
all I ever wanted was the truth.
How many nights have you wished someone would stay?
lay awake only hoping they're okay
I never counted all of mine
if I tried, I know it would feel like infinity
Infinity.

Eyes can't shine
unless there's something burning bright behind
since you went away, there's nothing left in mine
I feel myself running out of time.

I knew what I was doing, I always do
I moved my mind into believing that I was there
that we were paired, alone, that the world
forgot about us but it was okay, and I was so warm
so warm and so beautiful that I woke up and realized
that it was not- and for that, I cried, but not really
because I cry for fear and not loss now
I realized that the most tender and valuable thing I have
is my heart, and I've neglected it for so long
****** it dry and left it there- and only now
can I feel myself healing.

it's not about the innocence of the life
who are you to weigh the sins of children?
it is about the life itself. We are all children,
we are all unborn in the eyes of the Creator.
and His name is God.

I can do it-
because I have no other option.

spring is when things start to boil over
people fall in love, break out of it,
burn, awaken- the world wakes up and is born
you look out the window and the air doesn't make you numb
it quickens you, quickens something within you
and your soul is alive again your soul is alive again
your soul is alive again, so alive- and you can feel,
and in this thawing, everyone collapses and falls together in a muddy mess
we were pillars of ice standing alone but now we melt
our fur stands on its wet ends as we yawn, calling for our mothers
when for so long it seemed broken, dead and gray, all things suddenly are green, and so
we find each other in spring.

in spring, suddenly the sky falls
one minute it's sunny and clear and you feel
your skin toasting, the next the clouds overcome
and fat droplets swirl up dust and sink onto you,
sizzling and cooling, and it's dark again but it's all a blessing
it's all a blessing and maybe you don't see it
but God is on your side.

"Do you believe in God?"
"no, I am my own God"
"are you happy?"
"yes. ...but also I am cutting and depressed and in pain constantly."
"doesn't sound like happiness."
"it's God's fault I'm unhappy. that's why I don't follow him."
"maybe it's your fault you're unhappy because you forgot about him and what he really is."
"if he was all-powerful, he'd make me happy."
"no one can make you happy. but following him, really following him, you will be. he is love."
"No, what about all the pain in the world? God caused that."
"God never caused pain. people caused pain when they abandoned God, but he never abandoned them. all the people who hate in the name of religion are misinterpreting it and don't know who God really is."
"whatever. he's not real anyhow."
"didn't you just blame him for all your problems?"
"..."

here I am sitting in my car and the sun is hot through the window
at 7 in the morning it dries out my lungs, ricocheting off the nearest alien
vehicle, here we are forgetting that we are not I
(and here I am pretending I am we), the sun increases
the pace of my breathing, who is the sun? they ask
with little care or knowledge of who I am, and we forget, ******
that we are not the sun (and here the sun is pretending it is you)
and my steering wheel is sticky and there's a mark on the floor
I can't remember what from (and here I am pretending I was there)
listening to this **** song I can't get out of my head
and it's not the one the sun thinks and it's not the sweat dripping down my shirt
and it's not the ******* car next to me, either
yet I can't forget, (and here I am pretending to remember.)

when it's just me and you the whole world seems to fall away
but in the bustle of the whole world, me and you seem to fall away
and doubt creeps in between us.

everything is always falling, falling, falling
everything, including me, is always falling

into place.

it's not hard to be alone, your soul just needs time
to heal, and to be held gently in the hands of God.

I sat there a while, growing wilder and fighting against it. I couldn't leave and I had to keep contact in order to fight. But I would never be the same. Never. After tonight I wouldn't ever look the same, or feel the same. Just what I'd be, I didn't know; I couldn't go back to what I was- which wasn't much- but I'd lost too much to be what I was.

it's cold winds buffeting you so you can hardly see
your new jacket billows around you like a parachute,
it's your very first mountain and you're about to be blown off the top.
Your sister goes over the "Do Not Cross" line
and she doesn't get hurt, so you realize the line doesn't matter
it's black waves and gray skies colliding with spurts and spews
of wet belief, it's ordering the wrong thing and laughing for days
about it, it's coffee after every meal and going into a bar
for the first time, it's losing your passport and it's rain
and mud and hotel rooms and your family together
it's having friends in Argentina, it's twelve hours
of laughter and tears and cards in a hotel because your driver didn't
pick you up. It's knowing your mother for who she really is.
It's running through graveyards to look at these
crisp hills and polluted rivers and cute boys too old for you
and you don't talk to them. It's mead and dancers
and hot colorful rooms and castles and daggers
and eating things with your hands. It's strange cities
that you love and your parents hate. It's warm breakfast
in a pastel of a place, it's sloped streets next to a beach,
even though it feels like winter to you it's warm for everyone else.
It's chicken and stuffing sandwiches. It's train rides.
It's waiting at a train station. It's fear and anxiety and fog but it's
cold and refreshing and breathtaking and cliffs
and rocks carved out by the thumbs and nails of a creator, and you launch
into this green, stony world with nothing but your own freedom
and the ancient love of your family and your God,
it's the mist on your face before you even thought about growing up
the last breath of your childhood but you felt as if it would last forever
no end was in sight, it is just there and it is happy and it is free
and somehow you were growing up in the midst of it.

See, I am doing a new thing!
    Now it springs up; do you not perceive it?
I am making a way in the wilderness
    and streams in the wasteland.

all poetry does is create an aesthetic with words
all I can do is sit inside my room while lightning flakes
across the sky with fireflies and dragons of rain, gallons and gallons
drifting down in not-quite-a-race over my lukewarm roof
white faces sit together in black chairs while black faces dot the walls
I am warm now, when I used to be cold- but I don't know
if I can feel anymore, I'm rubbing my toes but they're numb
I don't know if anything is broken. Is anything broken?

I see the moon, the moon sees me
the moon sees the one that I long to see
so God bless the moon, and God bless me
and God bless the one that I love.

It seems to me that God above
created you for me to love
picked you out from all the rest
because He knew I loved you best

I see the moon, the moon sees me
the moon sees the one that I long to see
so God bless the moon, and God bless me
and God bless the one that I love.

I had a heart enough for two
until I gave it all to you.
So guard it well, as I have done
for you have two, and I have none.

I see the moon, the moon sees me
the moon sees the one that I long to see
so God bless the moon, and God bless me
and God bless the one that I love.

If I get to heaven before you do,
I'll carve your name on the golden stair.
Way up high, for all to see
just how much you mean to me.

I used to see fire in your heart
now all I see is the smoldering embers as you slowly die down
I don't know where the sparks went when we used to bounce off each other
and ignite everything around us
I don't know where the sparks went
because they can't light whatever it is behind your eyes, not anymore.
I want to believe I don't love you so
I'm ignoring you and running away
and telling myself you wanted it like this
I want to believe I don't love you so I told myself I wouldn't return your calls or texts but you haven't said anything to me since I dropped off the face of the earth three weeks ago
I want to believe I don't love you
so I'm making myself hate you,
and it's almost worse.

if you seek to avoid every pain in this life
you have some growing up to do
and sorry, hate to break it to you-
but it's going to hurt.

you get this beautiful expression
wait, 'this' is singular- you get THESE beautiful expressions,
on your beautiful face, all the time. more recently
there's been that one, kind of playfully suspicious
and your smile has gotten more and more dazzling
daily. and there's that other one with the sleepy eyes
like 'I don't have time for this' when really,
I can tell you care. and maybe I'll be able to stop loving you,
but the chances of that happening are slim to none.
I'll stay here, be who I am, love you tenderly,
tenderly enough so one day you'll
fall in love with me too.
Not sure how you feel now, not sure where to go...
so, for now, I wait.

Lord, I will be your house,
you need not roam unfounded;
I know that you're my one true spouse
on this sole path, I'm bounded.
You need not tents or broken hurting
I will take your light and from me shine it
I can't wipe away or ignore it by skirting
the issue, don't need to be reminded,
From the tallest mountain to the smallest mouse:
Here I am, Lord, I will be your house.

ready for some substance, meat on the bones of my soul
time to sit, and think, and talk, and tell the truth
no more meaningless words, humor without love
ready to be still and know that God is God, ready
to bare my existence before another, to cry, to sink deeply
into the arms of someone I actually care about
ready to stop living an empty life, we are living emptily because
we are afraid of what substance will mean for us. We are afraid
of what will happen when we tell the truth, if we cry
we are afraid of who will see us and know us for who we are.
The bravest thing is to know that the world will tear you to shreds
but to keep showing them yourself anyway- to keep
being vulnerable, to keep pounding your hot heart's blood through
your veins when the world wants you to be cold and quiet,
to speak up and to tell the truth, you will not lie, I will not lie.
I will not forget to have lived when the time comes to die.

when I look into your eyes
it's like watching a black hole
as everything in its orbit is sublimated,
spaghettified, caught outside time
trapped into the toxic love of the unlimited-density-object
time slows down, and it slows,
and it slows, and it slows,
until it stops.
and nothing ever reaches the center.

don't look around 'cause love is blind
and darling right now, I can't see you.
I'm feeling proud, so without a doubt, I can feel you
'cause we are who we are when no one's watching
and right from the start, you know I got you.

I would like to kiss somebody
it doesn't matter who
I would like to kiss somebody
anybody in particular would do
I'd like the feeling of lips on lips
a body pressed together or two
maybe I'd finally feel what it is to really kiss
since no one's ever shown me, I never really knew.
I'd like to be desperate for somebody
feel their chest pressed against mine
I'd like to want somebody
to fill my soul with unadulterated vice
I would like to kiss somebody
I would like to get my tongue entwined
I would like to lose all inhibitions
on the devil's table, dine.
I would like to kiss somebody,
it doesn't matter who.
I would like to kiss somebody,
in particular, you.

learn to control yourself before you try
to control other people

did I miss something
or did I meet his nice alter-ego
that you guys approve of
because the man who you have an actual reason to dislike
didn't seem to be the one I met last night

Who the **** is Jane Austen and
why the **** do we consider her works masterpieces?
Jane "boring" Austen lived an ordinary life and wrote very articulate
and pointedly ordinary examinations of character and mundane things
such as first impressions, and virtue, and proper court manners
She is the equivalent of an Oscar-winning author, because she has
mastered the art of being stunningly, fascinatingly mediocre.
She is precisely in the middle, and so balanced there that we applaud her
verbal gymnastics skills.
Works like these don't seem to carry an opinion of much of anything,
They just kind of blankly exist,
the kind of production that, if turned into a movie,
would have a nice, bland, Enya soundtrack.
There are no tears, nothing to make you feel,
It acts to make you numb,
leave you with a vague sense of discomfort and frustration, like
"What's eating gilbert grape" or "little miss sunshine"
in that everyone agrees blindly that they're good, but
they're not exactly sure why they're good, because
they're too close to life and too far away, there's nothing real,
it's too unpleasant to ignore and too familiar to watch.
It's useless, I can see this **** every day,
movies and books are about extraordinary life, to inspire us,
change something,
not just to make us okay with how stagnant we are,
or to examine our stagnation.
These books don't change anything.
I refuse to read or to write anything that steps around
the eggshells that are the fragile opinions and egos of
this, the 'everybody gets a trophy' generation,
I will not submit to anything less than feral reality and a
crazy, completely insane world, because that's what it is
my beautiful blood is more than beautiful,
it's wild and hot and pumps faster with every gasping breath,
and it deserves literature worthy of the heart that holds it.

last night I had a dream we were inseperably entwined
just as every single night had been for three weeks
and we held each other like we would never be apart
faces and limbs smashed and entangled and
when everyone else complained of the cold,
we woke each morning, our bodies regulating each other
toasty from the company throughout the night
like a piece of rope made out of two pieces of vine
is that my leg or your arm? it doesn't matter, it's love
not the sultry, romantic kind, but the kind that enables
me to miss you across hundreds of miles and
held together holding each other with no one else in mind
to hug my pillow and think of it as you, for together
we have a bond that is the rock, the foundation and
it was torn out from under me but I will think of you
all year long, until we meet again and my nights will
once again be warm.
like two atoms in a molecule, inseperably combined*.

why is it that Jesus is my savior
my hope, the king, the ruler of the world
creator of the universe, Immanuel,
the Lamb, the Incarnation, the light,
the way, the truth, the life
alpha, omega, beginning and end
but from all these titles
the one that means most to me
is that He is my friend.

I have told you these things that in me you will have peace. In this world you will have many sufferings. But take heart; I have conquered the world.

To the Jews who had believed him, Jesus said, “If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples. Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”

They answered him, “We are Abraham’s descendants and have never been slaves of anyone. How can you say that we shall be set free?”

Jesus replied, “Very truly I tell you, everyone who sins is a slave to sin. Now a slave has no permanent place in the family, but a son belongs to it forever. So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed. I know that you are Abraham’s descendants. Yet you are looking for a way to **** me, because you have no room for my word. I am telling you what I have seen in the Father’s presence, and you are doing what you have heard from your father."

"Abraham is our father,” they answered.

“If you were Abraham’s children,” said Jesus, “then you would[c] do what Abraham did. As it is, you are looking for a way to **** me, a man who has told you the truth that I heard from God. Abraham did not do such things. You are doing the works of your own father.”

“We are not illegitimate children,” they protested. “The only Father we have is God himself.”

Jesus said to them, “If God were your Father, you would love me, for I have come here from God. I have not come on my own; God sent me. Why is my language not clear to you? Because you are unable to hear what I say. You belong to your father, the devil, and you want to carry out your father’s desires. He was a murderer from the beginning, not holding to the truth, for there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks his native language, for he is a liar and the father of lies. Yet because I tell the truth, you do not believe me! Can any of you prove me guilty of sin? If I am telling the truth, why don’t you believe me? Whoever belongs to God hears what God says. The reason you do not hear is that you do not belong to God.”

A new name for a new person.

Joseph was the only sinner in a house of holy people
but when the angel came, he accepted the word of God
with less doubt than anyone else in the entire history of salvation.

Just because you love someone doesn't mean you can have them and sometimes it means you shouldn't and sometimes it's no one's fault. Just because Joseph loved Mary doesn't mean he could have children with her, because he loved God's plan and Mary's welfare more than the idea of being with her. And for me this kind of heartbreaking selflessness is something I relate to a lot, because sometimes even though the feeling of love is there, it's not meant to happen in the way we expect, and sometimes the way we are called to love people is different from the way we feel we want to, and sometimes the way to love people through your actions is exactly the opposite of what you think your heart is telling you.

But at its core, that love is what drives you. That love of God (and of whoever it is that you love) can be and IS heartbreaking and sometimes we have to make a choice that seems impossible, for the sake of the other person and the sake of God. And the very feeling that makes it impossible- love- is the very feeling that makes it possible. If Joseph loved Mary any less he would have acted on his feelings and just had *** with her- or if he loved her even less than that he would have left her to die, just to save his own image. But he didn't. He proved that he loved her more than those things. He loved her more than himself and he loved her more than anything else in the world. He created a seemingly inexplicable paradox- he loved her so much that he was willing to give up expressing it, for her sake. And by not expressing it, he did.

Isn't that incredible? That he reached a level of love that absolutely divided his own interests from hers and made him willing to sacrifice the usual expression of that love and maybe, just maybe, the sacrifice of the usual expression of love was the ultimate and perfect expression of love. Because it wasn't a usual love. Joseph didn't love Mary with a usual love.

He loved her in a way that didn't for a second stop to think about himself, his own wishes. He loved her enough to not love her, even though everyone else told him he should and even though the plan for everyone else seemed to follow an ordinary path- marriage, then ***, then children. Joseph proved that the ultimate expression of love isn't just following this path- it's being brave enough to do whatever is best for the other person and God regardless of what the world tells you and what your own passions tell you.

Joseph loved Mary enough to give up all hope of loving her the way his heart told him he ought to. He gave up the entireity of his own heart to her, keeping nothing for himself. He loved her the way God did. And that is love.

I have felt so good, so good,
so excited and passionate and free
and I feel like I can express who I am without having to stifle anything
for me, joy is expression- joy is freedom
I can run and yell and scream and the intensity of my emotions is not bad
I do not mean to dance through life,
I mean to care, passionately, completely, I do not want to skim the surface
I want to laugh and act ridiculous but I want that to be acceptable
I'm tired of people telling me to chill
because chill is a terrible way to go through life,
refusing, refusing, refusing to live and love
saying 'just calm down'
because this wild life is not calm, it should not be calm
you have only a hundred years- probably less
so live them.