Lord,
     *You see me as a saint
     While I see myself a sinner
     You see me on the next page
     As I'm stuck on this one dog eared
     You see me as beyond myself
     I see me where I'm at
     You see me like nobody else
     Please help me to grasp that fact

Lord,
     You see me through your sacrifice
     I fall down on my knees
     You see me through the breath of life
     In you I need to breathe
     You see me in pure love
     A love I'd love to have
     You tell me that you are enough
     Please help me to grasp that fact

Lord,**
     *You see me in eternity
     I see myself finite
     You see me beyond the veil of humanity
     I've yet to turn on that light
     You see me as your greatest creation
     I see all that I lack
     Over me you have elation
     Please help me to grasp that fact

they're saying "all you do is drink and cry", "I think you're bad for everyone" and you're not saying anything and I'm saying I love you,
I ******* love you
And maybe I needed something to bring me back to reality maybe these bathtubs are always a little too deep for me but I fit so perfectly in small spaces because I learned when I was 14 that i was never gonna grow into a butterfly
but my aunt still calls me hers and I'd still flutter my eyelashes on yours while the earth turned to ash because I like things ending so softly
and you are a ******* miracle if I've ever seen one I want to sleep with you so badly, on a trampoline in the summer and I want to watch you do bad things and smile so sweetly at you and you'll know that I don't give a **** what you do as long as you're still loving me while you're doing it because baby we've got this one life and I've been loving you as long as I have known what love is and I know it's in the way you whisper and I know it's in the way you say you're my world and if the world stopped turning tomorrow we'd be the only things still moving with excitement you make me so nervous and calm and nervous and calm and deep breath you make me nervous I bet you'll make me nervous when we're older and I'm making you pancakes and I feel your eyes on me and I burn my fingers but you always kiss them better baby
you're an alleyway and the kitten that sleeps there
you're the rain on the windowpane and the water breaking the levee
I'm drowning in everything I have ever said to you so if I say one last thing one last thing,
while you're not saying anything,
I love you,
I ******* love you

I keep telling myself that if I lay here long enough something's gonna swallow me and it's not because my heads been somewhere else lately it's because I sleep on the floor. Even when I don't. I sleep on the floor. The mattress has holes because mattresses get holes sometimes when you don't have blankets to cover them and you're too cold to put the cigarette out on anything other than yourself or what you have to sleep on now. Last year I'd spend every day in bed with a little bag full of drugs and a map to the bathtub just in case I forget what I took two seconds ago because I think it happened yesterday and I take more. And then I'm shaking, not because I'm cold this time. I'm seizing and nobody is home because everybody leaves me for preachers or church or a campfire or someone prettier. This part is foggy. I remember again a bathtub, an empty hotel bathtub and my mother and I say mama did you leave the door open on purpose and she says I went to church. She went to church. She went to church. Bathtub. I sleep there. Even though we are in a hotel I sleep in the bathtub because I like the way my anxiety sounds when it echoes. I like to hear it. Play it back. Memory. Back to the only house I've ever lived in alone.  I'm seizing. I stop. I hear you. I somehow forget that it's 4 in the morning. It's my birthday now, nobody knows but it's my birthday now, teen years behind me but still a teen year drug addiction and you tell me to look out the window so I do. And the sky's on fire. I don't fall asleep again for three days but the sky's on fire. And so am I. And so are you. And I don't want to go back to the place I go to when I see the faces but I put myself here. I push and push and push and then I act surprised when something falls off the edge. I'm alone now. Even when I'm not. I'm alone.

there's nothing to prove
there's nothing to do
no batting of eyes
or smile ever cute
nothing that old
you can add to the new
that could ever make me
fall less for you

there are no cliche's
no way to behave
no dwelling of past
no dreaming of days
no coming of early
or leaving of late
that could ever make me
want to give you away

i will never lie
always stand in the truth
in all that i say
in all that i do
i'm cutting all ties
letting it loose
everything in my life
that keeps me from you

because i once made a promise
and i'll make it again
to love you forever
and never say when
in love more today
than i was back then
come whatever may
till the very end

Robin Hood,
Has clearly changed with the times
Giving in to the rich
As they steal the poor blind

Doesn't much care
How today's money is spent
With his dead end job
At the government

Robin Hood,
Works like a slave
With hours of overtime
On most holiday's

Spends after hours at the bar
With his merry men
Telling tall tales
Tossing back Tonic and Gin

Robin Hood.
Then goes home to his wife
Dreaming of better days
Of a better life

When he stole all he saw
Out smarting the law
Instead of tied down
To the ball and chain of his job

Robin Hood,
Figures he'll never retire
Like all the rest of this world
He'll one day just expire

Finally accepted my terms,
only to face a new battle.

Poisoned by trusting his love,
with wounds that do not heal.

These scars that I bare,
continue to grow deeper.

Diseased and contagious,
I have become a risk.

Fearful of another mistake,
I am hesitant to love her.

Instinctively, I withdraw,
this is not her burden.

Yet without her, I can't win,
she is everything I am not.

She is my victory,
for every painful tear shed.

Copyright ©2015 Jamie Johnson

I thought I had found my love
but she was just a name;
a series of letters
that held up all my words.