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River Jan 2019
Orange sun-ripened
Bliss
Heaven dripping down my lips
Streaming down my sun-kissed skin.
Missing summer
River Jan 2019
“I suppose I’m just shy”
I think to myself,
As I cave into myself,
Or rather fold into myself.
I look up at them.
Some I am fond of,
Such as the retired nurse,
Laugh lines creased in her face.
Others I am subtly repulsed by,
Vitriol bubbles up in me
As I observe his behavior
That I find unseemly,
Especially since vestigial emotions
Of lust
Are connected to him in my psyche.

I don’t know,
I don’t know how to feel.
That’s a funny way to put it,
Because is there a particular way a person must feel?
I wonder from where our final decisions originate from.
I wonder why I am internally perplexed,
Not satisfied.
I wonder what can help me.
I see people who also suffer
With my sense of discontent and disconnection
But their ways of dealing with it
Don’t seem to heal
Their dissatisfaction.
If anything,
These people who seek therapies
For their woes
Only seem to fall further into the pit
They had found themselves in.
The labels psychologists
So frivolously bestow onto them
Have become a ball and chain
On their identity
Causing them to fall
Down the endless void of their suffering.

I just so vividly perceive a sickness in society,
And it makes me want to jump out of my skin
I don’t know….
Because oft times I find myself
Surrounded by people
Who easily pontificate,
Stepfords who don’t
Show any sign of a spark of Life
People who religiously
Play out their learned roles
From childhood,
Until their last moment on earth,
Never really going off script,
Never really having a desire to.

Now, I feel as if it’s almost unfair
That I had to feel these ways I do,
That I can see the world for what it really is.
But when I say this,
I know in a sense I am wrong,
Because my mind is just one mind
Synthesizing my reality through the
Scope of past experiences .
But why do I have to have this orientation?
Why can’t I just live a simple-minded life,
Like before?
Why must I always be searching for truth,
Searching for the reason why we’re here,
Searching for purpose,
For a deeper meaning behind all this?
Can I just forget?
Can I just forget and go back to a simpler time?

A simpler time
When the real world
Was the only world I was truly concerned about
It’s simple, straight-forward beauties
Nourished my soul enough.
I didn’t have any pressing need to
Explore unknown realms of the esoteric.
The natural world already had so much available to explore
And discover.
I was satisfied.
I was content.

But the anxieties of youth
And the horrific pains
Of childhood abuse
Created within me an incessant need
To improve myself.
First it began with makeup.
I caked layers and layers of makeup
On my acne filled preteen face.
Then I delved into the mind altering world
Of drugs,
With an emphasis on hallucinogens
Which was just another way to escape reality.
Just a mask of concealer that I could hide away under,
As my mind’s fantasies--
Fantasies that I could manipulate at will,
Became more real than reality--
A reality that I had known primarily to be
Cold and unforgiving.
But eventually the drugs took control of me,
And fate made it so
That I had to stop.

Finally, spirituality.
The final frontier, at least for me.
The most compelling of them all.
Absolutely endless and seemingly
Without dangerous side effects (not so)
Just another delusion I bought into, it feels.
But not quite.
There isn’t yet an ending
For this segment of my life.
I’m not sure
If there will be an ending to it.
I’m trying to find a way to actualize it though,
Instead of it being
Just another extension
Of my hopeless orientation to get lost
In daydreams.
I’m attempting to call this new chapter of my life
That I am currently writing,
The “Love in Action” chapter.

Well,
That’s it, I suppose
I don’t know why I make myself do things I don’t want to do,
Which inevitably makes my mind
Disengage
But anyway,
I guess I just want to become “real” in this lifetime,
And heal,
And stop searching so much,
And go back to the innocence,
The carefreeness,
The quiet joy and contentment
Of my childhood.
American culture is such
That EVERYTHING that can be commodified
Will be commodified.
So, I have to cut myself free
From the hypnosis of capitalism,
From the ideologies of the white man
So I can be lighter,
Flow through life with more ease,
Unaffected by this world’s disease.
River Jan 2019
I've spent so much time searching
Spinning in circles
Looking for ways out
Of suffering
I found quick fixes
That didn't actually fix anything

But I needed to be unravelled
Touched on the inside,
Because I felt unloved
and I was lost
Expending so much energy
trying to be found,
All the while
God's love was available to me
I just had to take hold of it

Words fail
to describe
the subtle essence
of knowing
that I am loved
by an infinite God

This warmth
like liquid gold
Pools up in me
As I ponder
Over this newly discovered truth

Knowing now
that I no longer have to
Chase down this love I've craved for all my life
in people
That I have it right here, right now
And all I have to do
Is bow my head in prayer
Or open my Bible
to have access to this love

But eventually
This love begins to
spill forth beyond the parameters
of routine prayer and
bible reading
Opening your spiritual eyes
to see
All of God's creation
singing glory
to His majesty

And your heart
Begins to experience
An insatiable yearning
to tell others
About God's kind of love
Hoping and praying
That one day,
Just like you
When the moment is right,
When their heart has softened just enough
And their mind's strict
sense of reality
is thrown off balance
due to the unexpected,
Then maybe,
they'd give this almost ludicrous concept
of a God who loves them so much
that he came to this earth
to die for all of humanity
a chance....
And maybe, just maybe
They'll be able to experience
God's kind of love
for themselves.
River Jan 2019
Dear Me,

This path you have decided to take
isn't going to be easy
I know you feel as if
You didn't have a say in choosing this path
But this is exactly what you signed up for
Before you incarnated

But I will be here for you
When your world of illusions
Come crashing to the ground
Again and again
You build and cling to
New worlds of illusions
When your old ones have crumbled
What if you stopped frantically building,
And started trusting
That this process of unbecoming
Is precisely what you need,
What you you came here for

Though your path will be painful,
It will also be full of joy
Moments of beauty you would never experience
If you were burdened by an Ego
steering your life
This is why you must detangle yourself
From all the false notions
You have attached to yourself,
And heal

Because I want you to
Dance in the rain and
Cry in the sun
And be fully present through it all,
Embracing your bittersweet humanity
Opening yourself to being
A beacon of light.

Dear Me,
I love you dearly
Things will change drastically
from this point forward,
But I don't want you to be scared
I'll hold you in my arms
Through it all,
You're braver than you know,
You're heart is going to grow
So big and wide,
But you can no longer hide
You will get to know intimately
The most blissful ecstasy
and the darkest nights
But I will always be here to guide you,
And whisper:
"Everything will be alright,
You will survive through this,
And not just survive but grow
So don't fear losing people and things
Only fear that you would ever deny your call
To Love on this planet earth."

Love,
You
River Jan 2019
Love is what some may call a strange drug,
But this definition of love
Is not what I will be writing about
What if love is life itself,
Transient,
But like air filling our lungs,
Slowly, deliberately,
A spark of life caught within me

My mind isn't much good
When it comes to figuring life out,
I kept trying on different denominations
of Christianity
But that was like
Me being attracted to a certain type of man,
Though they all had their differences,
Their core was the same
I tried to force myself
To connect to the core,
But I just can't....
It's not for me,
Not for who I truly am

We think we know people, but we never really do
Yet we shouldn't feel lonely
Over this realization
Connection isn't hindered by a lack of merging
It's actually kind of fantastic,
To know
That what is considered to be you,
This person with this name,
this identity
With these memories and experiences
Can't be replicated,
That our essence
Is as brilliantly unique
As a snowflake or
Our fingerprints

I used to steal money for drugs
I was hungry for love
There was just too much I had gone through,
And not enough help available to me
I reached out my hands seeking help,
I did
But people,
People with their problems,
Their trivial lives,
Caught in the web
Of never enough
Always seeking more to
add to their plastic kingdom
People who write half-assed posts on Facebook
About changing the world
After they sustain some social tragedy,
But never really do
Help others,
ever

I realized this
When I was suffering,
Almost dying,
Some help,
I can't deny that
But most turn away
Eyes full of scorn
Shaming you for suffering in the first place

I don't know what to do about this world anymore,
Because I still find myself
Sobbing alone
Having emotions from my past,
Rise in me, suddenly
Like violent waves
Giving me no other option
But to ride them
And I think to myself,
As the remembered emotions
Settle down
And I can breathe again
"I lived through that,
And I'm still here."

Now,
though I've learned to touch beauty within myself,
Cultivate it like a garden,
Almost creating beauty out of thin air
I still yearn to touch beauty in the real world,
And I know there is plenty of beauty
Woven into the earth,
Like in the trees, and my bare feet on grass,
Butterflies and my crazy *** dog yanking my arm,
Always reminding me to keep moving forward
But I want to touch beauty in people again,
But people are so wounded
And I'm so wounded
And armored
and scared
To touch the core of love again
Because you touch it
And it enraptures you,
Until it doesn't
And you're left all alone again,
Sitting within the desolation of your mind
Silence drumming against all the doors of your mind
Like an unwelcome visitor.
There are too many lonely people.
I am one of them.

I can blame myself for my loneliness,
Say that I isolated myself,
That I had the propensity to
Because shame was a demon
that had possessed me almost entirely
But that's not completely true
I did put myself out there,
Knocking on doors like a vagrant,
Begging for just one person to let me in to
the interior of their heart
And hold my mangled heart too
But I found so many closed doors,
And when someone did open their door,
We would fall into the familiar dance
Of the family dynamics we were raised in
I always felt short-changed,
used, not seen or heard or loved
So I hid.
Isolation is living in an abandoned car
On the side of a road that no one every drives down
In the frigid winter

I want to write a happy ending to this poem,
But right now everything is bittersweet,
And so that's better than before
When isolation ruled my life
Yet my desire
for real, honest connection
Warms me
And is like a compass
Deep within me
Showing me in which direction I must go
To find again
The roaring fire of Love.
I long to be warmed by.
River Jan 2019
My mind was a dry well,
But it has rained
Finally
I feel my heartbeat
sustaining me
I'm so alive,
I almost can't believe it,
Everything is so beautiful,
I'm savoring it.
River Jan 2019
These times of solitude are for growth,
Hours of writing, listening to music, reading, creating
Sometimes it can get lonesome and I'll feel bored
But I also sense deeply that this time is pivotal
to my development into the person I'm called to be in this world
It's a gestation period,
Where I'm being carried in the safety of God's womb
Until I'm mature enough
To embody and walk out
Everything I am learning.
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