I stepped into the fire
and it burned me,
Nearly incinerated all of me
But I couldn't leave it
I almost liked it

I sat in that black and grey ash
I wallowed in my jaded joy
I felt like a mere toy
In life's game
Endless years of pain
And very little gain

I wiped away my tears
With grimy hands
My heart crashed down to the ground
And hit the cold concrete floor
My heart shattered into a million tiny peices
It had been made of crystal,
It once was so beautiful.
Look what life has done.

"If you can dream it you can do it."

Don't lose your hope,
Because this is what your life depends on now
When you only have these dreams left to your name
The sun is setting
But your inner flame is growing

Just don't lose your hope
It takes time for your dream,
Like a seed
To grow into a full grown tree

Be patient and see
The fruits of your labor
Will be worth it in the end
When you see how many lives you have touched
By your courageous work.

On old mainstreet, sits an old café,
Where home-town-grown musicians play.
Sometimes they like to change its name,
But the clientele stay just the same.
When times are tough down in the town,
You know you can’t get the Black Dog down.

Rednecks and faux-necks and used-to-be-loggers,
Crafters and rafters, and activist bloggers,
And poets and hippies and mystics and fools,
And outcasts from the secondary schools,
And gypsies too: you’ll find them here,
Drowning in local, hand-crafted beer.

At night, locals sip organic tea,
And turn up the menagerie
Of lights and mics from another age,
Pieced together to make a stage.
And there, the guitarists waste their breath
Beating the Same. Four. Chords. To. Death.

There are some new lyrics, there and here,
But all of them memories of yester-year:
A year spent in the same **** space,
With others who’ve never left this place.
They sing of their dear loves and pasts,
And how much longer the wandering lasts.

And on they wail, and on they moan,
And twang the antique, rustic tone,
But their faces show they like it here,
This breaking haunt of yester-year,
And after the set, they carouse with cheer,
And smile contentedly to their beer.

On old mainstreet sits an old café,
Where home-town-grown musicians play.
Sometimes they like to change its name,
But the clientele stay just the same.
When times are tough down in the town,
You know you can’t get the Black Dog down.

Take me to the thin places
Where I can nearly grasp God,
Step into the ethereal
Swaying with kaleidoscopic celestial beings
like the cool breeze dancing with the branches of the willow trees

I ran out too far on the ice
I found the precipice, the end of the world
Looking down from the solid glacier I stood on, I was so small
I saw darkness,
Only darkness

The ice cracked, the world split in half
Earth's core wailed out
Crying tears of flames
We tried to console her,
The Mother we abandoned, the Mother we abused
We tried to console Her,
But it was too late.
Her sadness consumed us.

Sometimes, humanity still has faint glimmers of vestigial memories
That makes them look up from their hand held devices
For one passing second,
To contemplate if there is more to this life
But no answers are found on their Google searches
And they forget,
Like they always do.

But I remember,
Some of us still do
The way the babbling brook laughs,
The sounds of chattering birds
Hearts being shared with loved ones
Smiles being shared with everyone
There must be substance in this world
Beyond all the vanity
And we are determined to get it back somehow
And in that pursuit,
To gain some semblance of sanity

But as the world wars,
As the girls paint their faces
And the middle aged men buy their fancy cars
As we all pretend
With feigned smiles
With stoic personas
We curate our perfect lives,
For we desire people to like us, to love us
As we actively hate ourselves
Well, I will be seeking those thin places
Where I will be absorbed by the stars
The sky will be closer to the ground
Which my feet will no longer be on
I will be as light as a feather
Being carried by the breeze of the Spirit
In iridescent splendor I'll rest
As this world continues on in it's ubiquitous unrest.

I wanted you to love me,
That's all I ever pined for through these years
But I still cry most times
When I think of the fact that you failed to love me
I'll never understand why you didn't love me
You claimed to,
But it didn't show in your actions.
You were selfish.
As was I.

But that's life, right?
It keeps cracking your heart open
Until you can't close it anymore
It gets to the point where there are no plausible explanations your mind can come up with anylonger
It gets to the point where
Only your heart can comprehend the world with all of it's suffering
Only your heart can try it's best to patch up the world
With the bits of love that flow through you from God

Keeping an open heart is baffling, really
It just doesn't make sense
It's hella painful
Exceptionally brutal
And exquisitely breathtaking, beautifully astounding
There are no words in any language
That can properly express
Genuine love

But let's keep it like that
Let love remain a mystery
In it's confounding splendor
Leave it to be one of those few things
That academics can't pin down precisely
Let love be what it is in it's truest form:
Magical
Like when you really see nature for the first time,
You know?
You see how really gorgeous it all is,
And how intelligent it is
And in that passing moment of awe
It's easy to entertain the idea of God
But you eventually have to walk back to your cubicle
Where your mind is like a safe container
That computes certainty
But love is magical,
Love is uncertain,
It's powerful

I guess what I'm trying to say is that love is transformative,
You know?
And it's humbling
I mean, I'm not talking about Romeo and Juliet,
I'm not referring to RomComs where a man and a woman fall in love within the span of three days,
C'mon,
Can we all admit that is BS?
Love is not magical like the way it is portrayed in fairytales
Love is magical because it is the very essence of life,
The driving force of life
It's what sustains us,
It's what connects us
It's what changes us
Into brave children of God
Formerly we were
Scarred, angry little children
Throwing darts at perceived enemies
But no one is the enemy here,
That's what love reveals
We're all just lost children
Hiding under the shielded guise of our egos
Until, well until
We throw up our hands in surrender
And say with all our heart,
"I can't do this without you God.
Help me."

Hello? Hello? Hello?
Words make less sense
When I'm standing by the door
Emerging through the galaxy
Being birthed
Cramping my way through the
Birth canal
Screaming,
Breathing for the first time,
Breathing for the first time.

Goodbye never felt so sweet
like yellow suns morphing into pink
Man, life is like a beautiful sunset
Or kissing someone you love
During the soft magical creamy light of the dawn

But I know, boy do I know
That sometimes life has those days
Where it seems like all the colors have been drained
From the flowers, from the birds, the grass, the sun
On days when you feel like the blistery night is
Most relatable
When the moon barely shines
When you feel like you tread this world alone
With tears streaming down from your eyes

But those days,
As deep down as they reach
Don't have a long trajectory
It's just, well,
I know that you are really strong
I mean, I know I don't know you
So you're shaking your head right now
And you're like,
"******* ******,
With your inspirational ****"
I mean, I know
Sometimes I overdo the sentimental

But I've been down in the pit too, okay
And some days I am just literally amazed
That I'm still living, breathing, existing
In this flesh body
I just didn't give up
Well, sometimes I didn't give up simply
Because I was too scared to hurt myself
But
I've learned so much,
I've grown so much
I'm different now
And I'm not sure if I'm happy about that or not
Or just, well, indifferent
But I am happy to be alive

I guess I'm just more spiritual now
I really liked Taoism when I learned about it
In summer school for ninth grade history
You just go with the flow
And see where life takes you
No journeys,
No destinations
You just lay back
And enjoy
Disconnect from the ratrace
Living from a place of infinite grace.