Siren wails
One stranger about to take his final breath
Eyes gazing at familiar faces
Piercing through souls
Melancholia reverberates
I can’t save him…

Raising flags
Amid the morning dew
Inquisitive minds of the youth
Along the misty garden of roses
Wisdom routs ignorance
I can’t teach them…

Pompous buildings rise
Along the busy traffic of the north
Breathtaking visions realized
Through pens and grids
Gasping folks looking up and passing by
I can’t build them…

Splattered blood
In the streets of darkness
One innocent life forsaken
One fatherless son
Can justice be given?
I can’t defend him…

Who am I?
Why am I here?
What does living mean?
Is life naturally chaotic? Empty?
A whirlwind of doubts
Blocked the future they envisioned

I couldn’t save him.
I couldn’t teach them.
I couldn’t build them.
I couldn’t defend him.
This life swims in the pool of regrets
Where this aimless mind drowns in oblivion

And there in the midst of nothingness,
I found myself...

(i'm 42% sure
i don't exist.)

intensely greased
plastic hair
secondhand green day
coldplay in the rain

i love the sound
that waxed paper
deli sheets make
and i could choke
on a glassed reflection
of celery salts and windex.

(i'm 42% sure
i don't exist
because when i look into
my eyes i see someone else)

i'm not catholic
and do not
understand who
st. peter is

but i wonder if he won't let
us into heaven because we're
failures or if we're failures
because he won't let us into heaven

(i'm 42% sure
i don't exist
and questioning how
bad hell can really be.)

too quiet for a saturday
i wrote the word
decaf so many times i
forgot how to spell it

decaf
decaf
decaf
decaf

(does decaf
have two f's?
because i don't have
two f's to give anymore
i mean i would but
i can't even find
vowels much less
extra consonants)

when i was a child
i always counted in
mississippis
now that i'm older i
find myself counting in
cappuccinos

i dreamed my
legs were bleeding
and i remembered
that they're not

i want so badly
just to sleep in
a bag of crystallized
ginger and swim
in a mixing bowl of
tasteless tea.

(i can't tell what's
real anymore
but i'm 42%
sure that i am not.)

Let's say
Hypothetically
Someone was
Keeping score
And I had a
Perfect
Unsurpassed
Record.

In that case
There would be
Three hundred and twelve
Pieces of paper
Somewhere
In my house with
Five to thirteen lines of
Text on each of them.

And then suppose
Five and thirteen averaged
Out to somewhere between
Seven and eight.

Then do the math
And tell me what seven or eight
Times three hundred and twelve is
And then think about how
For each line of text on each
Sheet of paper
There is another
Sheet of paper in some
Binder somewhere
Or a pile in the righthand
Corner of my room.

And remember
I'm just one person.

And then think
About the butterfly effect.

Do you know
What happens
In the mail room
When you're not around?

Do you know
Who uses the copier
In the dead of night
Or the morning dawn?

Do you know
Where we go
When we
Die?

Or even
Why we're
All alive
To begin with?

It's sure
As hell

(Or should I say
As unsure as hell
Because no one can
Agree on anything
Even a universal a
Concept as hell)

That we're not living
To make paper
To print out our
Personal whims on.

And then think
About the butterfly effect.

i run in circles
around and around
sighing and waiting
for my soul to be found
a new day arrives
an orange slice in the sky
but still i lie
an empty vessel, a blank line
no end in sight
- 07.19.16

what do you do when you're uninspired?
when life feels like a pale instagram filter - a worn out memory.
when it tastes like a bread slice that's been toasted for too long.
when your soul doesn't catch fire anymore.
when excitement becomes an alien emotion that belongs to another space and time or just someone else.
when inspiration's at your doorstep but you can't hear the doorbell because you're too busy searching for it among the ashes of your cigarette.
what can you do when your body's a living coffin for your dead soul?

You pretend, you pretend, you pretend.
Until the clock wears out & it's finally Game Over.

Once, an old friend asked me; what would my soul look like, if others could see it?

"A bug," I replied.

To crickets, the mantis is terror incarnate--a fierce behemoth, with knives for hands and without mercy. It is to be respected and feared, it is mighty and dignified.

To a human? A mantis is...

"A bug."

It is the debris among the mud between the treads of your sneakers. It is the gross infatuation, the scientific fascination--it is weak. It is small. It is inconsequential.

I yearn for a life of primitive needs and void of wants.

I yearn for the mantis, seeking only to destroy enough to line his stomach, all in a day's work, back to the safe spot where the "bigger and badder" can't reach you.

Life would be eat, sleep, repeat,

and I detest my self-awareness. I'd rather fail the simple life of a mantis and die without need of fulfillment,

Than to realize I'll no sooner discover what "fulfillment" is to myself than reach it--and to be torturously aware of that,

So very, very, existentially aware.

"My soul would look like a bug."

It's been a little while since I decided
since I started telling everyone who asked
since I posted it in every corner
since I declared my major.

But what if I don't want to be a teacher?
What if I go off to college,
and I suddenly have the courage to do
what I didn't want to do before?

I'm afraid that it won't work
afraid I can't make it work
afraid to let go and fall
because what if it falls through?

All I want to do is music,
and yes,
I'm minoring in music
and honestly
I could be a teacher
but I'm rethinking that.

I know I don't have to go with the career
that matches my major,
and that I could finish out a teacher's license
and then go on to music.

But I could be so much more prepared!
There's so much more I could do
if I majored in Songwriting, Music Performance, or Worship Ministries.
What should I do?

What can I do?
I can take generic classes now,
ones that can count for any major,
and choose later.

But how long can I wait?
I'll just have to be patient
and wait for His guidance
because He knows what I should do.