Rainbow trees all the while bruised and broken me.
I’m so preoccupied with my mind that I don’t feel the autumn winds,
I don’t hear the crunch of leaves.
St. Cloud is draining.
These friends are character staining.
I’m steady screaming,
“How could I let this happen!”
Drunken stupors have left me stupid broke.
“Look at this fool who trusts too easily in the wrong things!
He gave his last dollar but then his friends left him to rot.”
Sometimes I feel I am akin to fallen leaves, trampled and left for dead,
just waiting for that cold and certain burial.
I wonder if leaves dread the snow, because I fear the winter.
I always get the blues.
I wonder where these feelings will take me this time.
Often I feel like my intellect wants to move,
but my will cowers in the face of my feelings.
For example: I saw this video a while ago,
I can’t get it out of my mind,
in fact I see it all the time.
It was a Syrian boy pounding on his brother's distorted and bloodied body.
He called out to him, but no one was in.
He called out to God, but I don’t know when he’ll get back to him.
I just know that I have to do something.
If you want to know one way salt can be made salty again it’s through tears.
They fell out of the phone I held above my head as I was laying in bed,
they were dead sea salty.
I saw his pain and tasted a fraction of his despair.
Despite all this I’m still afraid, because I don’t know if I can do anything.
I used to fight a lot when I was young.
My slap was a comeback. I was explosive and irrational.
Nowadays I can’t talk much when I’m angry, sad, or anxious.
Some parts of me have shut down, now words get stuck in my chest
– car crash, pile up, highway traffic – like a blocked artery.
I need to find my voice again because I’m sick like heart disease.
Meanwhile the world keeps feeding me all this sodium,
and I can’t get my words out so I’m clutching my chest like a heart attack.

I look around at the world, it’s countries filled with greed.
Dead bodies piling up and up and up.
It doesn’t care how this bleeding heart bleeds.
I try to keep up with the news,
but the media knows all too well how to condemn a person,
how to paint persons in a good light,
but they’ll never tell you to love people for their own sake;
to love them because they are human.
I couldn’t love myself because I am just so human.
I’m in treatment now.
Hoping desperately to recover the lost parts of me on these tracks of recovery.
I am a slow moving train with a lot of baggage.
I have no final destination, I’m destined to keep on these tracks until I die.
Slowly recovering, yet thoughts of suicide still dance in my head like popcorn.
I try not to indulge them praying the seconds between each pop lengthen,
until the kernels burn to a crisp.
I have to keep moving.
I got to believe that this burden will lighten as my wheels propel forward,
but it’s hard because I’ve been anxious and depressed for so long,
I don’t really know how else to feel.
I’m accustomed to lying so when you ask me how I am
- my first instinct is to say I’m fine.
Then again most people don’t want the genuine answer to that question.
So why answer insincerity with the truth.
I didn’t want to drag anyone down to places they’d rather not be,
so I severed my bonds.
Social anxiety is always present and always alienating.
I’m visible only past a window of smudged and ***** glass.
Nobody seems to see me as I shiver out in the cold,
always on the outside looking in.
It’s strange how much access I have to old acquaintances on the internet,
it’s sad we’re all estranged.
Everyone I know is a world away, and I’m a ghost in every world I once knew.
Depression came on like a tumor on my back.
It grew in size becoming a heavy weight that slowed me down.
Eventually I fell into a pit not eating for weeks at a time.
I neglected my physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual health.
I wanted to die so I dug further into dirt and darkness,
where I hid from the Light.
Depression started a game of musical chairs in my mind.
I outlasted everyone and sat in the seat of importance,
but I didn’t realize that once you win you always end up alone.
Please forgive my victim mentality, I’m an adult, I know it’s ugly.
It’ll take me time to renew my mind,
because I knew abuse long before I knew the Truth.
I used to be grounded and down to Earth,
but at some point I found I was laying face down,
while everyone around me stood.
So I started chasing a high, because the lows were too low,
and the highs felt so good.
Substances stole my substance,
and now I’m a shadow of who I once was.
I lost self-worth somewhere along my journey.
I try to retrace my steps, but I can’t find it.
This poem is a missing persons report.
Can anyone help me find myself?
God can you help me do what you want me to do?
The devil is rising- he wants me to remain stuck.
The old demons take the front line saying,
“Long time no see, ya drunk.
You’ve been smoking so much **** you forgot about us.
You forgot about lonely lights on the corner of empty streets,
soulful sorrow, passionate poetry.
Come with us we’ll remind you who you are.
Insomnia is kind, it just wants you to come alive.
Wake up! Why do you waste your time?
Stop doing what you’re doing, you know you can’t change!
You’re dumb, socially challenged, you can’t change!
You’ve already done too much damage,
there’s no reconciling of your past.
You’ve already had a second, third, hundredth chance.
Do you really think God will give you another?
You’re a betrayer, a liar, a cheater,
a thief, a bully, a hypocrite, a murderer,
a slave to your own wickedness, you wretched sinner!
Why do you pull at those chains?
You can’t change, and you’ll never be free!
Do you remember who you are now?
There is nothing more for you.
Joy is a myth, sanity is artificial, hope is vanity,
but broken promises, pain, despair, and death is your reality.
Run, run, but you can’t outrun us.
Drink, drink, but you can’t drown us.
**** yourself you waste of space.
You tried suicide before but failed so we’re here to help you finish the job.
You nuisance tie up that noose, because no one likes loose ends.”
Some Days I don’t believe them, some days I want to believe them,
some days I fight not to believe them, and on other days I believe them.
Then another voice calls out in the maze of my mind.
It says follow me and I will show you the way out.
It doesn’t shout and taunt like the others.
It is calm, by its very nature it calls for reverence.
It leads me past rooms where before I had wept,
and wailed in a prison of my own making.
It leads me out of the painful past, away from future anxieties,
through the present troubles, and onto a clearing,
that leads to a hill, in Calvary,
where my Savior bled and died for me.
Jesus paid for the sins of the world from the beginning until eternity,
and when I remember this I am free.
Surely the truth is a sword that cuts to the point.
I was a world of lies chasing after the lies of the world.
When God came and put me on trial I had no defense.
My lies and excuses were wrapped around me like lifeguards,
but they were insufficient floating devices,
unable to help me in my ocean of conviction, guilt, and shame.
I fought for years running from his voice.
I hid in the darkness but he found me in all my hiding spots.
He shined the floodlights and told me,
“The only way to stay above the water is to first die.
You must drown the old self, because I am the God who resurrects.
You’ve been baptized into my family.
You’re a child of God.
Stop condemning what I have made clean.
Stop trying to earn my love. I give it for free.
I know it doesn’t make sense to you,
but I’m God I’m not ruled by your two cents.
I created you and the box you try to put me in.
I am not bound by time and space,
I create galaxies in scarce time.
I raise trees out of dead seeds.
I speak volumes through a whisper.
I revive countries through war and despair.
I return hate with love, and if you ask me I forget wickedness.
I cherish the weak.
As you heard the first shall be last and the last shall be first.
I pour out my spirit for the poor,
while the rich who cling to their greed will never feel me-
they continue to gather riches for themselves but are never fulfilled.
I govern through the rule of opposites so forget everything the world tells you.
If you look for fame wanting to be known, you will forget who you are.
If you gain the world, you will lose your soul.
If you lose your life for my sake, you will find it.
You will find me.”
Well I’ve found you God, and you have brought me to where I am.
Now, lead me to the bunker rooms of your heart, hidden from sin and self.
Where spirit communes with spirit, as deep calling unto deep.
I don’t know what the future holds. I don’t know if these feelings will subside.
What I do know is that I surrendered myself and found victory in my defeat.
Now and forevermore I will praise the one wielding the sword that gives life.