I crave the silences that fill the air around me
Along with the solitude that usually accompanies it.
They are my friends.
They comfort me when the world starts to scream.
Sometimes I need them,
But too often solitude becomes loneliness
And the silences become deafening.
That is the true curse of an introvert.
Wanting to be alone but not wanting to be lonely.

Suffocation
The walls of culture are closing in
Ready to stifle the flame of imagination
They can't control it so it scares them
In that flicker is the possibility for a bonfire
That could burn down their fragile empire
It could illuminate the darkness
they have tried so hard to create
By surrounding us with the weight
Of daily monotony
They've instilled in us
A desire to fit into the social norm
A fear of any tangible form
Of creativity
They have made it foreign to us
To question
The boundaries formed to bind us
This is my rebellion

Your presence demands the attention of all those in the room
It is like a scene
From one of those overused princess movies
And though there isn't much to do
My eyes keep returning to you
Oh the magnetism of your smile
Of the way that you wrinkle your eyes
When they by chance meet with mine
Could it be that there is reason
To these wonderfully awkward meetings
Or are you merely surveying the room
I quietly count the number of times
When in my planned and measured tactics
To ensure that you don't see my interest in  you
The number of times which your gaze is already meeting with mine
Quickly looking away and brushing your hair from your face
how many times you would quickly turn away to divert attention in a way
Hopefully showing that you are trying not to be caught in your process too
In this theory, I somehow build up enough courage to cross the room
With a path clearing as though this quiet audience knew
That a silent game
Was being played
In this space
That I was now attempting to cross
And as that distance closed
I saw a light in your eyes
That showed that maybe I was right
To hope for a reason behind these wonderfully awkward meetings

Do you not feel the weight of infinity on your bones
That as you search for the answers this burden holds
You are merely moving topsoil
We queer little creatures try to shout when we don't even have a voice
Try to dig yet don't have the sinews nor muscles to make a choice
We try to ascend past ignorance
And in doing so truly show it in believing there is any possible recompense
For this futile attempt to define our existence
We are merely flickers
Indistinguishable in the scope
Of the infinity that swallows us whole
But in the end there is truly only one answer
That no matter how much we ****
No matter how much we sift through the sod
There will always be the reaches of the universe to account for
The infinite presence of God

The strands of hair weaving back and forth
The delighted squeals of a young ******* her first day of school
Her mom returns the smile that is radiating from her daughter
She can see in the gleam of her eye
The dreams swimming through her mind
Of fairies and princes
And a castle on a hill

The strands of hair weaving back and forth
The delighted laughter of a young woman on her last day of high school
Her mom gently places the graduation cap on the head of her daughter
She can see in the gleam of her eye
The dreams swimming through her mind
Of the unbridled future
And all that will come

The strands of hair weaving back and forth
The delighted blush of the new bride on her wedding day
Her mom wipes the joyful tears from her daughters eyes while ignoring her own
She can see in the gleam of her eye
The dreams swimming through her mind
Of the groom that held her heart
And a little girl yet to come
Who's hair she would weave back and forth

Can you seriously not see what you are doing to me
I'm looking at you like you hung the moon
Yet it doesn't seem to faze you
I am choking on the butterflies that have outgrown my stomach
And yet you still look at me with those unwavering eyes
Oh those eyes
How they destroy me
I am left to romanticize these ideas you planted
Each growing into a beautiful flower in its own right
Words are flowing from my mouth yet I have no hold on them
For my mind is a little pre-occupied
Questioning those eyes
That still have a hold
On my panicking soul
I am afraid that I have found myself
Falling head over heels

The smoke of the ashes darkens my already ebony lungs
A black that knows no bounds has settled on the desolate ground
Being what caused this plague in the first place
The sunrise no longer has meaning
With no hope for the day to come
For today will be the same as all preceding ones
So I sit
And I write
Because that is what I do
Yet I no longer write of beauty nor love
For both have been stifled by the oppression of such a complete eradication
Of all the things I once admired
The things that lined the pages of all my pieces
So as I sit and watch the smoke rise from my cup
Seeing others walk by enticed
By whatever is on their devices
I put down my pen and close my book
For there is no longer anything to write or romanticize
To admire
If there is no longer anyone to look

The ring slides gently onto her finger
Till death do we part
he promises her
A vision of beauty garbed  in white,
She stands there, with wide blue eyes.
Struggling to take in this sight
He closes his eyes.
As their lips touch
he watches her white cheeks
Start to blush
He smiles, knowing that this woman is his bride.
The beauty of holy matrimony.
The fusing of two hearts.
A covenant made to one another
To love and never part
But in the rush of it all
I guess we forgot
To cherish and care for
Instead of casting in our lots.
Men, lead your houses with love
And when troubles come
Pick up your Bible
Instead of your bag
Women, support him
And when times get tough
Start caring
Instead of quitting
You are one spirit
Not just two bound by words
And when there are problems
Look to The Lord not the world
Marriage is a mirror to Gods love for us
And gives us a glimpse into that blessed day
When Jesus will see his bride lifted up.
He bled for that day
He took all of her sins away
Just so he could love her in this magnificent way
A vision of beauty garbed in white.
His scars were for her
He took on the torment of the world for her.
He wiped away every tear
And whispered in her ear
You are so much more than all of this
More than that blade on your wrist
More than those pills clenched in your fist
More than what the world made you believe you were
You are beautiful and you are blessed
you are a princess
That is getting dressed
For her glorious wedding day.
This is how it is meant to be.
This is the standard we are meant to meet.
Love doesn't have terms and conditions
It doesn't require complete perfection.
So If they cannot love your flaws
Then they aren't capable of loving your all.
So when the day comes for you to say "I do"
Make sure it's to someone who loves you for you.
After 50 years
She stood by his bed
His eyes were full of terror
Not of what he was facing
But of facing it without her
Both of their eyes were full of tears.
After a lifetime together
His promise was fulfilled
She sobbed " wait for me"
And he answered " haven't I always"
Then with his dying breath he promised her
Till death and then forevermore.

My mind swims when I see you
As I say "hi"
All intelligible thought leaves my mind
To only leave behind
Stick figure drawings of me and you
I mean that figuratively for given enough time
I would paint you a masterpiece
But this drawing was all I could muster for the sheer surprise
Of seeing you before my eyes
I try to regain myself and maintain my "suave" facade
Yet I find myself looking more like an awkward giraffe
I continue to jumble my words like a frustrating jigsaw puzzle
Also I'm pretty sure that my last sentence was in pig-Latin
I sprinkle in incorrect quotes from obscure 80's movies
And you still look at me with that unfazed look
A third party looking at my performance may have thought they were watching some sort of comedy routine and a poor one at that
I try to close my mouth to stop this mess
Yet my brain doesn't spare me such pity
I continue till I am sure that I have buried any chance of ever knowing you
Yet when I look up, I see a smile spread across your face

I wish that joy etched it's name into my bones, the way despair does.
Happiness is flighty and wisp-like,
While sorrow sinks and clings to hope until it erodes it all away.
Exuberance doesn't follow one around for more than a day, a season, a minute, yet depression can stalk it's prey for a lifetime.
My main thought is that, if joy is so good, why does it leave so quickly, and if despair is so bad why do I cling to it so tightly.

When I see you time stops
And I can almost see the air around you glisten
As it does in movies
But then I realize that I'm staring
And it quickly becomes awkward
My eyes quickly dart away
hoping that you hadn't caught
My prolonged gaze
And as my eyes drift back my fears are confirmed
I catch your eyes focused on mine
But I quickly realize
That you were kind of staring at me as well
Perhaps it was hopeful thinking
Messing with my hope filled mind
But I quickly match your gaze
Finding myself unable to look away
And we sit there
Until I realize that time
Was still passing by
And I hadn't even said anything
So while I continued my gazing
I decided to say hi
And you returned my greeting

Words are the seeds of rebellion
A simple sentence may imprint a design of unrest
On the minds of the oppressed
And when watered by the unending tears
Of the motherless child
Of the widow or widower
These seeds spring eternal as weeds in the gardens of the oppressors
How quickly these starving plants grow
In the perceived beauty of the truly demented souls
Of those who used the corpses of the tormented as the topsoil
For their design of a utopia
The weeds of unrest will rise in the minds of those who have lost all
In a sacrifice for the comfort of those who walk above them
They will choke the oxygen
From the society
Who survives off of them
Those who carry the world on their backs
Words are the seeds of rebellion
And they are those who will stand
When these perverted gardens fall around them

My heart aches
Yearning, burning
To find beauty in the mundane
To find meaning in the stirring of the strings
The secrets that hide behind the
Swell of the harmony
Why do our souls
Cling so desperately
To the mountainous musings of the melody
Riding over the hills
Of a despairing land.
The horns scream out the
Pain of the peasants
While the clarinets take up
The whispers of the voiceless
And the flutes cry with the motherless child
But all of that quiets as the black notes sail away
The strings adopt the voice of the man pleading to his star crossed love
To run away
And the woodwinds soon join the chase
Of this dreamy eyed couple from that ****** place
Music moves
It soars it sinks
It carries and spellbinds the wandering soul.
It promises a divine love that will heal
Music is truthful
It tells us that there is something bigger than us
How else could these vibrations
Rip our souls apart and just as quickly sew them back
Every soaring note carrying our dreams to the one that formed us
No other medium could as purely
Convey the true beauty
Of Gods unfailing love for humanity

Who is a poet?
What is poetry?
Does it bleed from the mouths
Of those oppressed by tyranny
Does it stick to the lips of lovers
Like freshly ripe strawberries
Does it lie in the lines of the workman's hands
Like the dirt of the freshly tilled land
Does it exist in the hearts of man
To be struck out, serenaded, or wizened
Does it seep from our fingertips
As a sap that heals our aching bones
When humanity is the illness
And suffering the symptom
Poetry is
The desperately sought after medicine

An anchor, is my soul
Resting in placid waters
Steadfast in its hold
On my restless heart
For it knows
The places to remain and those to depart
As I am subject to the moving forces of the world
Being a ship resting over the deep
And though the distance between
My soul and me
May grow and shrink
I find peace knowing that
Though we may lie leagues apart
My soul stays grounded as my heart drifts so far
An anchor, is my soul
set aflame by the Holy Ghost

There was something about the way she would close her eyes when listening to a song she liked.
It was as if she was creating a world behind her eyelids, moving along with the lilting lullabies she enjoyed so much.
When her eyes would eventually flutter open, she would try to hide it, but I would see a flash of sadness.
I was lost in her ethereal nature. Her fingers that danced through blades of grass that only she could see.
Weaving her way through shadowy trees planted in wide reaching glades.
Splashing through puddles like they were oceans and she, the storm, stirring tempests within them.
A queen, was she, crowned with clouds dictating orders to imaginary soldiers,
to save the inhabitants of the land.
Though her eyes were always seeing beautiful things, mine were only graced with her, and that was more than enough.

Little girl
Is your sky still whole
Still held together by the stories you are told
Can you still see without boundaries
Gaze at the horizon and claim it as yours
Gather the stars and call it your kingdom
There will come a day
When the slumbering dragon awakes
And steals you away
Your nights will burn and your sky will break
But don't you worry
For with every dragon comes a knight in shining armor

How far is far enough
For us to fall and drag ourselves through the mud
When will you be broken enough
To let it go as worthless and take the blood
Offered to us
How many times do we have to see man fail
To know not to place our trust
In this fitful lust
For the knowledge not meant for us
Men look at the stars and think
Those are mine to define
I must name them and place them in pictures beautiful to me
What foolishness to think
That the tiny dust
We make up could fathom infinity
It goes beyond delusions of grandeur
It is a mass hysteria under the guise of intelligence
This grand case of negligence
And It illustrates
What filthy rags pass as knowledge these days
There was a time when great men set their eyes on God
For they knew that he was the source of wisdom

Hope has thrived in the veins of sinful men
For you have willed it to be so
A population which had spit in your face
And turned away
Time and time again
Oh, how the mighty fall to the hand of corruption
Decomposition befalls their morals
Yet you lived
Though clothed in humility
Was king over all
And never did your head fall to temptation
Planting that seed of hope
That we can find salvation
In your steadfast love
For on that cross wasn't a pillar of prideful strength
Standing against the corruption of humanity
But rather a ladder to transcend damnation
And ascend past tyranny
The tyranny of men who remain in their lustful ways
Yet salvation remains outstretched to them
And there lies the foundation of hope
That though you lived in a condemned world
You didn't come to condemn the world.

I have to translate this emptiness into something tangible
Something I can easily digest
Because, currently, it is choking me
I want to see this beast with my own eyes
To stop those mind numbing questions
That have me drowning in self doubt
Am I sane?
Is this real?
Because it sure is real enough to lay me out on the ground
Questioning the reality of the stars watching me from great distances away
Sanity, such a fleeting thing.
Decided by culture and the forces that be.
It is hard to think outside of the box
When it would leave you drowning in the sea.

It is in the blood of the soldier
In the words of the peaceful protester
In the ever flowing wounds of the martyr

In the actions of one standing against tyranny
In the hope of one facing down the majority
In the one who fights for the right of diversity

It is the one who heals when everyone is wounding
The one who stands when everyone is breaking
The one who accepted steel in his flesh
for the soul of his beloved
The one who carried the weight
Of our deaths on his back
The one who loved us till he breathed his last.

I'm sorry that I'm not your Prince Charming
The knight riding in with armor shining
I'm sorry I'm not your superhero
Carrying you up from the ground below
I have tried so hard to drop my guard
And open my hands to hold your heart
But it isn't mine to hold
There will come one to guard your soul
One to stand up for you strong and bold
The one made to hold your hand
And I am sorry that I'm not him.

The lines bleed onto the paper
Aligning themselves into words and pictures
Masterpieces standing ignorant
of their own beauty.

Pastels sitting on canvas
Being pushed around with a brush.
They form many different hues.
Mixing with deep purples and vivid blues
Painting such a sad story.
That whispers of pain and vain glory
The edges are tattered and torn to pieces
The canvas is severely moth eaten
But the artist loved it,
It is his life's work.
for many years it had been lost
Rotting and fading and falling apart
But He searched relentlessly
Turning over and rifling through everything.
Until he found it
His eyes brightened up
Despite its dismal look

It had lost hope of ever being beautiful
Of being dignified
Of ever bringing hope to somebody's eyes
But the artist whispered to that tattered canvas
You are so much more than all of these
you are my masterpiece

I haven’t written you a love song,
not from any lack of romance
for you color my skies with your eyes
and your lips flood my mind with irrational thoughts.
I often write of made up lullabies shared over nights we haven’t had,
or some imaginary girl falling for this made up guy,
that doesn’t sound anything like you or me.
I don’t know what stills my lips
when trying to write of the night skies we’ve shared,
for they are the most beautiful ones I’ve seen.
I think it may be because,
even if I wrote with the most complex and beautiful language
it would never do you, or the days we spent
watching movies in the back of my truck, any justice.
Our love is messy and incomprehensible
mainly because I still can’t translate what I feel
when your hands brush against mine, gently yet with excitement,
as if there were magnets in them that just had to connect with mine.
It’s not poetic, it’s cheesy, and messy,
but it’s the best thing that has ever happened to me.
So please take this convoluted attempt to work out my feelings,
as your love song, my confusing, jumbled, and truthful ode to you,
the muse to all the fantasies I write.

The rain is racing down the window behind me
With a cup of warm tea sitting on the side.
I am propelled through the pages of the book that I hold in my clenched hands.
I am leading a charge into battle.
Storming the infallible towers that I ensure will fall by first light.
I am embracing my sweetheart
After a separation that seemed like a lifetime.
I am slaying the dragon
And saving the enslaved kingdom.
I am holding my love's hand
As we run through the night to places unknown.
The rain is beating against the window,
Yet I am warm living the lives of hundreds of others.

It was in the way she looked at me.
A tenderness I hadn’t seen,
That made me wish that we
were the only ones to see these stars
and dream these dreams.
I watched her walk down the aisle
with a bouquet of rain, dandelions, and beautiful things.
We were kids, yet we held our dreams in our hands
hoping to grasp tightly to them as long as we could,
yet loosely enough for them to take flight
carrying us by their kite-strings.
Dreams made of cotton and twine.
Trying to put together a masterpiece
one piece at a time.
It was in the way she looked at me
that made me see,
I would do anything to build a life
and tie together dreams
to make something beautiful
for her to see.

I wish I had known that holding onto this anger so tightly would make it take root.
Others would talk of joy being a seed that sprouted in time of oppression and indecency,
Yet I have found this to apply to all.
What you plant will grow.
What you feed will take root,
And anger, like a ****, will choke all else out.
A little seed, tossed by the wayside, without purpose, or design, has grown to swallow my mind.
Choking off sustenance from my joy, peace, and love.
It made me feel better for a time, it truly did.
It seemed dignified and eased the pain.
So I didn't get rid of it.
What you plant will grow.

As the day closes
There is a resting heartbeat
That echoes through the land
As breathing draws out
Into a yawn
Turning to the promise of dawn
Though the dark may be fearful
And full of horrors
It is the promise of day
That makes the night passable
Even a pleasure
For we know that we can rest assured in this peaceful darkness
When we know that it’s end is marked

Religion taught me to fear
It told me to deny the aches of my bones
As if there was something inherently evil about it
That this body that God knit together
Was destined to be broken
I'm starting to doubt the height of the mountains
Because of the depth of my current valley
Have I always been here
Was that hill I stood on
Merely a mound in a canyon
Yet there is one thing I am sure of
That God is and was always here
Offering to take this burden
While there was me trying to believe that there wasn't one
Because I liked it
It kept me inside the lines
And each time I would wander too far
Send me a crippling shock of fear
And now, only while looking back,
Do I realize that I want more

The placebo ticks are numbing my mind
After my imaginary friends have all stormed off
These Freudian slips are my only comfort
As they give me hope that there is something under this rotting facade
I swear it was beautiful long ago
I know that is hard to believe seeing how it is now
But that pile of rubble once was my pride and joy.
I built up this faux appearance of self confidence
Along with just enough structure as to hold it up but not enough to be real
So now, here I am, raw
Unprotected against the elements
The towering spires attracted them
The stone throwers
And as expected it came down with the first couple of pebbles
But I love those minutes as those spires fell
For it was that destruction that made place for the cross
That worthless skeleton made way for this hope
Hope that I can be more than this facade
That I can be this person that I tried so hard to hide away
Under layers of protection and false fronts
Because that cross told me I was beautiful
It told me that I was worth revealing because I was his

Just wait
That's what they say
When I talk about me meeting the girl of my dreams
But why
I mean, I will wait
I will wait for the day to come
When I'll be struck by love
But please don't imply that it is a simple task
It is far from that.
As I wait I am counting the wasted moments I could be spending with her
The unshared sunsets
The unwritten sonnets
I am drowning in a sea of unfulfilled potential
But in the end I truly don't mind for I know that the moment that I'll meet her is worth it.
Worth this loneliness
So I won't "just wait"
I will strive
Strive to be a better man
To become the one able
To hold her hand

Thorns are ripping at my side
I can feel the sin that my blood has committed inside
Of my wretched veins
They provide
Temporary life
To our decomposing frames
Rather they wither and die
Then feed the drive
Of this repeating game
From grace we fly
Run till we die
And allow the ground to lay claim
Of the body that lies
Under the sky
In this eternal grave

God rip these earthly veins
From this fallen frame
And replace them
With the never ending streams of glory
Flowing forth from you
Your words knit my life
Into the beauty that can be seen
In the earth and the sea
In the birds that fly free
From this sinful earth
Allow me to escape the death of my blood
Of my sinful flesh
Slay this body lord
And make me new

I want someone who can hold my hand as it slowly ages
Someone who can take the pains of what time steals away
And make it worth it
Just to wake up to her face
Watching it reflect the wrinkles being drawn over the passing days
And always being able to see the beauty that first enamored me with her
I don't just want a love that lasts
I want a love that ripens with age
A love that grows as our hair grays