if I could distract you with silence
would I have more power than you?
if I could recount all your follies
would you even know what to do?
if I could become what your vice is
would you have a beat in your heart?
if I could convince you you’re living
would you even know who you are?
if I could throw stones at your language
would you even speak once again?
if I gave all that you wanted
would you dare to challenge my friends?
if I made it seem like I’m perfect
would you still go seeking The Truth?
if I gave you all of my knowledge
would you give me all of your youth?

my lungs are on fire
my head is awake
my heart has been wading
and silently breaks
my breaths getting shorter
my thoughts growing weak
my feelings surrender
to what I can’t see
I blink at the people
and then I look up
I want to be with You
to learn how to Love
I hope to be water
returned to the sky
like a droplet of rain
falling back in Your eye

it
happened in september, i remember it so well
a day inside the life of someone going back to hell
but what could you have possibly forgotten to forget

to process in your memory as something you'd reset
for on the day you let it in your tracks were made anew

the very ones you worked so hard to gradually remove
and now the square you're sitting in is labeled with a one
the mind you dress with heaviness you beg to be
*undone

These sticks and stones are made of bones for I am of the earth
And everything I ever throw was welcomed at my birth
I will not speak with tired tongue, these matters will not sleep
But be there some hypocrisy, my words will swallow me
And if they do I'll make them choke until I'm fully gone
The louder parts I'll lodge inside, they'll hurt to drag along
Consider it necessity, a claim I chose to make
I'll justify with every breath, I'll bend until I break
My memory will suffocate as both my lungs collapse
From bone to ash to earth again, I'll live again perhaps

...
the positives, the negatives, the everything at once
I seek you in my solitude and all of what there was
I cannot even see you like the other people do
And there is room for clarity when no one else is you
The highs, the lows, the in-betweens - they wreck, undo, restore
And recognize, without a doubt, the claims we made before
I knew I'd come to find it, this devotion I'd misplaced
And here it is in front of me on someone else's face

The fruits of what you planted here are rotting in my
mind
And every day I lock the doors and leave it all
behind
I'm looking for a fire that will **** the rancid
fume
But as for now I'll rectify in ink and through a
plume
Injustice reigns in all you do, oh planter of these
seeds
I've felt you water parts of me with hotly boiled
deeds
You've burned me more than I can say or memory can
claim
And how I can be of your flesh should drive me half
insane
Instead I balance what I know with what I've seen you
do
Let clarity prepare a way to purge what's left of
you
I'm almost there, I sense it now, the last I'll use this
key
For I have found the other room you tried to hide from
me
So take your place inside yourself and I will walk
away
And harbor neither hatred nor the curses you could
lay
I'm breathing now, I've filled my lungs with freshly seasoned
air
I'm entering with both feet in, a newly painted
lair

I think I left a part of me in someone else's hands
I'm counting on my memory to tell me where I am
But what if all the tracks I laid begin to disappear
Will anybody know the way that gets me out of here
I hear the train inside my head delivering the news
Your sense of rationality was beaten black and blue
Suppose there be a remedy for every kind of pain
Or I could simply use a mask to hide it all the same
I wonder if I'd recognize the face I used to see
My home is not the place I had believed it once to be

I've thought about the future ever since I understood
that I could walk with purpose in the shadow of the good
And when I wasn't looking I would fall into a trap
but everyone who knew me knew that I was coming back
I may have been unfolded and divided into three
But every part together is the whole of what is me
I'm talking to myself as much as I have talked to you
I won't be too upset if you don't see the way I do
I've been here long enough to watch a dream become a wake
A state of adaptation I can keep or try to change
I met my little self again and there I was in awe
I thought she wouldn't know me but my goodness was I wrong

I couldn't see the world the night I saw your face instead
And somehow came to memorize the places in your head
You must've known these very roads would pave their way to me
Or at the very least prepared for time to let it be
So as the skies that you have kept awaken with the sun
The light reflected in your eyes will render me undone

I think about the Loyalty a heart was born to have
to beat for what is Bolder than the passions of your hands
to hold onto a Message written somewhere on your veins
so you can sing to rhythms you are learning more each day
your Life is but a song the heart has sealed within its blood
so let it pour upon a world in dire need of Love

There is a blessing that I cannot give
I fear if you take it I'll no longer live
I've gotten so close to releasing it still
Knowing i'd vanish once you got your fill
But all of the anger has bled from my bones
And love will restore what my body condones
The moment is here and delaying can wait
Surrender my words before it is too late

my head can be crazy, my head can be sane
my head can be home to the worst kind of pain
the kind that revisits - unwelcome, unkind
belittle the days that were good to your mind
it leaks into dreams so to make of you less
attacks you at night when you’re trying to rest
but this is what’s crazy and this is what’s sane
your mind is an altar, a product of pain
the kind that will knock ‘fore it opens the door
acknowledge the body that lies on the floor
the kind that shows empathy for you and me
erases the days we could never be free

if I could be water I'd fall over stones
I'd move like a shadow without any bones
I'd feed into rivers that come from the sky
and cradle the stars as they learn how to shine
I'd sing to the moon so the ocean could hear
and move its whole body without any fear
the tides would be perfect and gracefully made
the sun would be honored in every day
if I could be water I'd know how to be
a slave to the motions set finally free

have I not seen you in so long
i had a dream but   you were gone
in waking up                   again today
i searched my heart      to find your face
will I have light                     enough to see
or will the day                               be night to me
i want so much                                         to let you in
to show you everywhere                       i’ve been
the whole is me              when i am yours
the door unlocks, the oil pours

I layed beneath the summer sky
I took a breath, let out a sigh
And words from somewhere in my mouth
Released themselves into the clouds
I felt the dark upon my skin
Came there to try to settle in
With every limb I sought to be
Apart from what it did to me
I held my Spirit in my hands
It gently helped me understand
What I'd been seeking in my mind
Was everything I'd compromised
To smother light and hide my home
Had put me out where nothing glows
A single moment changed the way
I look at everything today
But just as I began to sink
I muttered words that turned to ink
The pen was never mine to hold
I gave it up and let it go

Where is any sanity the world told me it had
For everywhere I look I see the creatures going mad
It must be in the water and the air that we all breathe
A kind of animosity that never takes reprieve
To linger there inside is the way for it feed
The appetite of villains who consume your every deed
Protection can be offered but it is not what it seems
An optical illusion that unravels in your dreams
But when they make you restless, the monsters in your head
Insomnia will settle on the weightiness of dread
And under all the pressure every body will retire
Dissevered by the senses and returned into the mire

i carried you in heavy thoughts
and put your bones inside a box
i say all this to say what's true:
our bodies die before we do
i trust that even though we age
the time we have will set the stage
for when our minds take up their flight
to see the sun and touch its light
the weight of you inside my head
will turn to ash's heat instead
and only warmth will then remain
our souls alive, our bodies slain

I want to find a pair of wings before I  float away
'Cause flying gives you more control so you can leave or stay
But every time I try to search I step on shallow ground
And thus the journeys I take on are all the more profound
I scribble down with shaking hands the places that I've seen
And hope that any details missed can fill the in between
I've come to know this dusty road is longer than it seems
But facts are only relative to poorly written schemes
It's only when my balance slips that I become attuned
And fully comprehend my state, to lies and death immune
Enveloped in a cloud of fog, I've made it past the shore
Of everything I left behind to float away once more

I sent you out a servant to the sadness in your eyes
Thought there would be the teacher you would learn to recognize
And even as I watched you break a thousand times in two
I left it up to lessons taught to show you what to do
I stored our conversations in the corners of your heart
And buried them in soil that will never fall apart
And should you need to reach me when you stand upon that ground
I'll walk with you again so you can tell me what you've found
For there beside your footprints are the slightest hints of mine
My Faith once had the daughter I've  been keeping all this time

my days have been numbered, my Soul has been bought
by all of the blood I could spill with my thoughts
and there is a Savior where ego once lived
Who grants me His Strength as I learn how to give
my mind was a riot, my heart was a stone
that turned into ashes and Rose when He Rose
a looter, a liar and addict of wrath
was given The Grace to be led to His Path

When everything that's tangible distracts your lonely head
And weaves you like a tapestry on someone else's thread
...
You'll find that the embroidery will never seem to match
Designs that were original, the bias is the catch
...
What was in the distance transformed when you got close
And yet you tried to view it as something less morose
...
Possessive with your senses, especially your sight
You caught the kind of blindness that gives itself the right
...
To walk around the edges, periphery askew
And look to aberrations to tell you what to do