Beloved, you were waiting in
the veins of my soul to provide
sweet water to quench my
spiritual thirst

no person, *****, or acclimations
relieved my desperate thirst

Today, I am a channel of your life giving water that
I freely share, and in return I am given the gift of
peace and serenity in my soul

mind frozen
  
                body tense

I keep telling myself that I care about spiritual growth

but **** it all to hell
        
                    i want to be close in the biblical sense

somewhere there's bumpin' and grindin' happening this very minute.

intimacy intimacy, i tell myself

feel my feelings

i've been numb to my ****** feelings

i get all this, but sometimes ****** thoughts and feeling hit me so hard.
                         i don't know what to do with them, they just mess up my head.

i want serenity.

        i want peace.

              i want some wisdom in all this.

i am not a monk.  
    i do not want to be celibate,
                                            but **** I don't want to be overwhelmed either.


For now I am embracing my *** crazed thoughts, but not acting on them.

                i am more than my thoughts and feelings.

                                                  i am.

wounds on the surface are easier to heal,
then the deep wounds I experienced as a child.

sometimes my old wounds of my heart rub against
the wounds of others, and in the confusion we lash out
against each other, when in fact we are reliving an old pain.

when I embrace my brokenness, somehow I can move forward.
in loving my self and extending forgiveness and gentleness to
my own heart, I am able to extend love when someone I meet
bring their wounds forward.

slowly but surely, my deep wounds guide me to a deeper surrender and deeper trust in a loving God that holds me safe.

my own thoughts keep me trapped,
the bonds tighten when I try to
think my way out

I am only truly free when I open my
heart and mind to something different,
which is to open myself to love

I am slowly lifted out of myself,
when I give and receive love.
helping others, really helps me
to be free

life is a process
and sometimes a cause
can never be known

I have experienced in my heart
that some knowing goes deeper than my intellect

I know with my heart-mind that I am loved,
and it's given me hope to be free of self-hate and self-harm,
and for that I am grateful

no great awakenings has happened today,
but something small has shifted and my heart
is just a little more free and light than it was yesterday

each day sometimes can feel weighted with life's responsibilities,
and feels like more of a burden than a gift

a subtle shift happens in me when I trust in a God I don't understand to guide me, to where I do not know, but
I know I'm not walking it alone

nothing else
is needed
just hope,
and trust
in *love

I will hold you close
and turn on the light

strange that my
self-will and self-centered fear
had to be emptied
before I could be filled by
a Loving Power

I did not surrender,
because I was so spiritual
but I had no where else to turn.
the gift of desperation was truly grace, a free gift, but in the moment I only saw it as a curse.

utter futility of self righteous anger
wraps it's dark cloud around me.
my brain becomes foggy, and my
perception becomes distorted.

love feels like hate, and pain feels like freedom.
my fear leads to anger, which leads to a split
second choice where my fists punch a concrete
wall.

my hand explodes with pain that spreads to my arms
and then to my whole body.  the pain numbs my inner
pain and discomfort.  I want to be a spiritual person, but
sometimes I'm just a frail human being afraid to feel hurt,
so I numb myself with pain.  Utter insanity to try to escape
suffering by self-harm, but that's what happens sometimes.

I am left facing the wall cradling my hand.  I am left with a feeling of utter futility.  My own powerlessness over my
self destructive behavior leaves me humbeled and willing to ask for help.  God, help me let go. Help me not harm myself and others.  Help me feel emotional discomfort without resorting to
punching walls.  Help me be free.

i feel the Inner Light
shining inward and outward
in the holy silence

I sit and breathe
wishing peace, happiness, and freedom
for myself

I sit and breathe
slowly wishing out
to strangers, friends, enemies, and all beings
peace, happiness, and freedom

I sit and breathe
letting the metta grow
my heart expands just a little
as I sit here and now
with all my joys and sorrows

may I be at peace
may I be happy
may I be free from suffering

may you be at peace
may you be happy
may you be free from suffering

may all beings be at peace
may all beings be happy
may all beings be free from suffering

if you are lost and alone,
don't  give up hope.

there is a place called home
waiting  for your return.

I know from experience,
because I once was a lost soul.

my body rejects milk
I wish it rejected
your lies

I am at home
in my heart
as love bursts forth
like contagious laughter

dear friend do not loose hope
someday the shards of broken pieces
will be lifted out and placed
to create something new
a beautiful tapestry of color
and life lived through pain
to create a beautiful
mosaic

trudging on the road of life
can be sometime so hard
and lonely.

I am grateful I am not alone.

Love*
I humbly bow to you
and promise to follow
your quiet whispers
to my heart

Where you lead
I will follow

lost in a sea of despair
with no end in sight
people pass me by
but I am unable to cry out

desperately treading water
to stay afloat and yet a part of me
just wants to let go
stop fighting and just sink
to the bottom where I can rest

I see no way out
no sign of hope
and yet something
keeps me going
I will not surrender to
this sea of despair

I am gasping for breath
gulping water
dizzy with exhaustion
before I sink I cry out
with my last breath "Help!"

suddenly hands reach out for me
lift me out of the sea of despair
and as I cough out water
my eyes begin to see
a fellowship of people on a life raft
I ask them where they came from,
and a man with a gentle smile answers
that they have been there all along waiting for me to see them

the sea of despair made me blind to
the very help I was looking for
until in that moment of desperation
I was open and willing to ask for help

the air is so thick that even your thoughts melt away
in the Southern heat.  sweat starts pouring until your
clothes start clinging to you like an unwanted lover.  heat and sweat seperates the true Southerners from the wannabe's,
who don't truly love a place even when it's too **** hot.

I awoke with fatigue and pain,
but my soul lifts with renewed hope
as Love floods my heart, cleansing it

you said you loved me
and now you ask for space?

what happened to till death do us part?

lives burn bright
and die out

some are remembered
and some forgotten

each light is precious and unique
in the end which lights are remembered is
insignificant

your light brings
joy on a summer's night
playfully dancing in the dark

I am saddened by
your dimming light
as you approach eternal night

your life is finite
but the joy your light has brought
will burn through eternity

grateful for another day
with breath in my lungs

there were days when
I used to pray for death,
but today I pray to grow
so I can be more useful
and to help another who
is suffering

my soul was hibernating
until gently roused by Your love

words flow out of me like the punches of about boxer; each word like a natural series of punches flowing out of a trained boxer.

But of late, I feel more like an old boxer, who has fallen out of step. What once came in a fury takes a force of will to summon out a few words from me. Maybe the well has run dry, but I wouldn't be a poet if I don't keep coming to the Source to once again let the words flow like a fury of creation being unleashed.

a brief moment of clarity
a moment of grace is all it takes  
to truly surrender

the hard part is to keep surrendering
a day at a time, but not as hard as
living in the hell of my disease

grateful to be free just for today
and to be trudging
on this "road of happy destiny"

moments of clarity
come and go

spiritual awakenings are
always happening now

it's hard sometimes to be grateful
the very things and people i am grateful for
slowly wear on me, when I am not centered

as i breathe and slow down to listen to my heart
something shifts and i can open up to life with
a grateful heart

i quickly forget that there was a time in my life
where i used to wake up praying everyday
for God to **** me

today I wake up most days with a grateful heart
I give thanks for the day and
turn my thoughts to someone else I can help

i am trying to not just be grateful with words,
but  put it into action.

lost in ecstasy
of the present moment
here i am

there is a slow burn that
irritates from within

my only relief is drinking
from the living water
that quenches my thirst

feelings of deep discontent use to swallow me whole.

now I am bombarded by a flurry of hope and love

most of my life I have tried to keep
appearances and show the world
that I was a strong confidant young man

I smiled my polite smile as I was dying inside,
so afraid to share with any other human being
all the shame and guilt I kep buried deep inside

I have a fellowship of people today,
where our common weakness unites us
and we find strength in mutual vulnerability

when I embrace my weakness,
I allow God to enter into me
through my wounds

how easily I forget along with the rest of the world
that God chose to meet us face to face in weakness,
in a flesh like mine

anxiety is another form of fear
that keeps me frozen

.                                              

                                                 sunrise
                                 meet the              and greet
my soul wakes to                                                  it with a smile.

emptying out boxes
discarding things I no longer need
rediscovering treasures
I had frgotten I had

as I break down each empty box,
I feel a little lighter, more free
soon the things I have been hoarding
are all gone, and I can't rember why held on so long

one room down, few more to go
I wouldn't miss it for the world

i am a resentment factory.
i build and construct my resentments by manual labor
                                                                                                with fine tuned finger movements.
but then the industrial age happened, and i started
mass producing my resentments.

a great sage from galaxy far far away once said
"fear leads to anger. anger leads to hate. hate leads to suffering."

o how true that's been for me.  my factory of resentment leads to
anger, and mass production of anger leads to self hatred.
i am left with a box full of resentments and anger that just sit in storage.

the beauty of all of this is that my factory is run on fear, the main power source.

i need to shut the power  off and blow up the factory.
anybody got some TNT?

I am sitting in front of a small coffee shop
listening to the birds chirp and smelling the rise
of cigarette smoke infiltrating my nostrils from
a barrista's hand.

random thoughts rise like smoke from my mind
as I sit and settle into myself and just take in
a everyday of this new city I arrived at last Wednesday.

The life of the urban jungle of D.C. seems far removed from
this sleepy quiet neighborhood.  No sirens every 30 minutes or sounds of construction in the distance.  

All this reflecting takes me further back and makes me muse about how I got from being an angry punk kid to now a 34 year old, who just bought a home with his wife and expecting a new baby.  I am grateful for everything that's been given to me, and especially for the ability to be grateful.

Maybe I don't really need to figure out how, but just here and now fully open to the present.

life unfolds in its mystery
full of joys and disappointments

Your love carries me away
into chambers of my heart