Wild weary wanderer come to me rest your heavy head
Tired hungry travelers all come to the table and be fed
When the burden is too heavy and the load too much to bear
Stay with me and know just how much I care

Come give me your doubts and worries and fears
Be assured I will answer and that I am all ears
Listen now, be still and hear the whisper faintest voice
Earnestly I seek you I call your response is a choice

Come Saint come sinner come young and old
The ends of the earth and the four winds are the flock of my fold
Come together in love and unity
Strive for greater peace and harmony

Out of the many we find a place all as one
Together turning from darkness and learning to face the sun
In a beautiful family so many strong
All find a place they can belong

There is a peace and love far beyond compare
To which, when exposed, you cannot help but share
Caught up in the world there is never enough time to do
Because it was not for the purpose of doing that I created you!

I created you for love, with love, in love from the dawn of creation
You see, I created you to be: be with others and with me in right relation

You are my children and I love you more than you can conceive
Enter into the song, join in the feast, receive and come to believe
Sense the love coursing alive and warm through your veins
In the final analysis love has won; only love remains.

You who are lost, you who have found
You who are seeking find your feet on sacred solid ground
Here there is a place of truth and light
Light a blazing beacon in the blackest night
Here is a place of refreshment and rest
Here I take you in my arms and hold you close to my chest

I have written my name upon your heart burned my word into your mind
In the Father Son and Holy Spirit you have been SIGNED

Just relax and try to let go of the ill you feel
Let me in and slowly begin to heal

I have set my SEAL upon your heart I have marked you as my own
From now on you will never be alone

I died to conquer sin and death and so DELIVER
Life in abundance and healing river

So SIGNED SEALED and DELIVERED now I SEND
Send you out to be fishers of men

You are mine and I AM YOURS
Always and forever from present day to eternity's shores

To vaccinate or not?
What about diseases we forgot?
Like Polio, T.B. or Smallpox?
Kids can't take peanuts to school, or not,
Bu they can bring Measles and Whooping Cough.
What other diseases have we forgot?
To vaccinate or not?

Autumn gone in the winter
Keep warm, nothing else will bring her
back, if only we can go back in time
we'll learn to forgive, never forget her life
Autumn gone in the winter
keep close, everything else will wither
when the time comes, closer than expected
we'll find ourselves, our pain ended.

It hurts to grow up, it hurts to stay
Struggle to survive, things don't remain the same
I see the violence, I see the hate, I see the pain
Another shot and others gone, it's just another day
Moving on, losing, it's confusing along the way
years gone by, all those around me change
the pressure is real, those fires untamed
we'll suffer in silence, our illness unnamed.

Autumn gone in the winter
Keep warm, nothing else will bring her
back, if only we can go back in time
we'll learn to forgive, never forget her life
Autumn gone in the winter
keep close, everything else will wither
when the time comes, closer than expected
we'll find ourselves, our pain ended.

kids grow up different around here
some kids grow into eternal fears
some come out alive, some without minds
harden their hearts, all to stay alive.
rewind, rewind, rewind.
if I could change a thing, they wouldn't stay in line.
tough love comes in tough times.
tell me yours, I'll tell you mine.
we'll heal together and find ourselves divine.

Autumn gone in the winter
Keep warm, nothing else will bring her
back, if only we can go back in time
we'll learn to forgive, never forget her life
Autumn gone in the winter
keep close, everything else will wither
when the time comes, closer than expected
we'll find ourselves, our pain ended.

when will things get better? I don't know
not anytime soon with this status quo
I wanna see my community heal and grow
not have them deal with ordeals and go
I don't want gentrification, miscommunication
love and support, it's my motivation
what are the implications of being left in this situation
a small population without consolation, left in suffocation.

Autumn gone in the winter
Keep warm, nothing else will bring her
back, if only we can go back in time
we'll learn to forgive, never forget her life
Autumn gone in the winter
keep close, everything else will wither
when the time comes, closer than expected
we'll find ourselves, our pain ended.

Inspiring community, my support group
Admiring the art displayed
Thank you for renewing me

© Jl 2016

I stand before my classroom
on the first day--
it is Research Methods
a course that I am forced to take
but I am assured it is for the best
even on the first day
I am told that you can use
this course for everything.

But I don't know who
they are trying to convince,
is it me that the course has meaning
or themselves that they are worth something,
because if it's the 2nd
then the professor probably shouldn't
call on me to answer the question.

In my mind the redundancy
is a wax wrapper
to a lollipop that
I don't understand why I need it
as it was already wrapped in paper
and now I struggle
to find purpose for
a flimsy piece of plastic-wax
that I can hardly even see.

Rotating my head around
as if a person waiting in a traffic accident
and wondering if I can see the body
from where I am sitting--
luckily this is a class room
and every body here is
part of collision that they
never intended on having.  

The drought of thought
that I see spilling across the class room
and the formality of facing forward
while actually daydreaming
is sadly part of this necessary course--
where pencil stained desk
are the only things worth
drawing my attention.  

It's our special day
this is only the first meeting
and instead of being here 3 hours
we get to leave here in 1--
now everyone realizes
this traffic will last longer
than originally told
so maybe it's better
to get outside and walk.

I've left a part of my heart in Denver, Colorado.
Four twenty somethings jumping into the the freezing
lake head first from the mountain tops just to see
what it's about. We counted flannels and puffy vests
and tried to calculate the net worth of this place.
Rooster cat opened a up a blank wall to me where
I blew out my brains and left my phone number.
Remember, your neighbor might be lonely.
Lavender lime muffins and clouds intricately laced in
patterns meant to hold the sun hostage for but an hour more
as it gently strokes the broad shoulders of the 14ers backside.
Without them, how do you know which way is west?

The things we say to one another:
we could
choose
to make them mean something.

I could tell you that I love you,
even though we've never
really met. You could
tell me that you're dying
and it scares you.
We could talk about the rise and fall
of injection-moulded empires,
the rise and fall of your
mother's chest, as she
took her last breath.
We could vow to behead tyrants together.
We could promise
that we'd never fall victim
to that same sickness. We could
compare our hurts and find a
connection
in our mutual pain. We
could try to share our loneliness,
and maybe the world
would be less lonely.

Or at least we could
speak,
like you're a person
and I'm a person, like we're both
made of the same
beautiful, doomed matter,
only separated
by social convention and
accidental skin;
we could say something worth saying.

Instead: plastic bag tax, The Match,
weight loss and where to buy
the best factory-seconds shoes,
the televised finals of something or other,
the rising cost of corned beef, the
obligatory conversation piece
about the weather.

Can't we talk
just a little bit
bigger than this?