I was just 13 years old when Vincent Van Gogh took me out to a wheat field and shot me in the chest. He said I'll let you in on the easy way out because eating yellow paint just doesn't help but god, doesn't it sound poetic? He said he craved ***** things in a letter to his brother but when the paint didn't make his art any better he used bullets and blood instead.

I was just 16 when Sylvia Plath opened up the oven for me. My snow boots turned to puddles and the smell of cookies muddled with the gas filling up my head. She said putting words to paper just doesn't hash it and a poets mind is nothing but ashes so better to let the thoughts burn.

I was only 18 when Virginia Woolf tied stones to my hips and led me adrift into open waters. Gasping while my hands struggled to stay above the waves she told me that this was the only way and that stories were just stories. She could write a million of them but never escape the loneliness of being unable to evaporate inside the pages.

I was 21 years old when Ms Monroe told me it was as easy as falling asleep and swallowing some seeds that would feed and feed until they felt like yellow paint. Easy down the throat like the men that she'd known who now tear at my curls. She said wanting to be loved comes at a price that money just can't buy and pills will always be cheaper.

I am 25 years old and have carried their woes down my arms and legs like Marley's chains. All the gun shots and flame rots and drowning spells and yellow pills have beckoned me with promises of a happy ending. They convince me that all artist's lives end the same but I know that they don't have to. So—here I still stand, clutching their art in my hands, braving a world that they were too good for.

Dare the dainty
All in eaves, a dance of we've
Sour regards for a knowing heed, the eclectic key
Wavering in the air, to tell a story of finality

Salt, dust and whatever else
Rhymes with damnation, the tows of veracity
Become like lucky butterflies, the solution in bells
To worth and occur, with a certain mighty...

Sounds of music, to die for
Through the hollow of sunshine we find so warm
The completion of a single thought for avidity, so sore
Has the curiosity of chances, and the decency, only more

Should we shoulder a pathetic distance, from the nerve?
Or is causes guidance, to a realm of liberty ensconced
We woke, and walked to the notion adding, a due friend
With seasons of come, to light the way to sits, of around...

About now
The tale has become ours for a looking have, and the moment gave
Mirrors, seldom fears and a host to what nears
The romance of aptness, for a circle of deem, that has it to save...

Our God often waits away from the crowd, standing in the margins,
right up against your discomfort of being closer to the edge of others.

He invites you to intentionally trust incidental strangers,
because that’s where He’s made his home,
in the threshold of love, in each adjoining reaction, one to the other.

So go to the margins, to the verge of your comfort, reach out
and get closer to your marginal, desert road, cross-border God.

And there you'll find the ordained moment, the precious place of gentle surprise
and the sudden challenge that heralds adventures beyond what you can ask or imagine.

Step outside your norm, but within His plan for this day

and maybe – just maybe
you’ll meet an Ethiopian.

I remember it was cold and quiet. We stood up beneath the scattering stars.

Silently staring at the landscape outspread in front of us, where the mountain touched the sky.

Losing count on the steps taken, you wondered how many dreams townspeople had to reach the summit tower seen from afar;

Spreading lights randomly with no purpose to guide. Little yet arrogant. Like a candlestick being put on the top of the world, accidentally.

Or maybe, incidentally placed to embody the messiah for those who would discover it that way — which might be peculiarly irrational.

Despite the lame fact, it still mesmerized you. I just knew the moment your starry eyes were seen in the dim night. And out of the blue, it captivated me too.

We sneaked from the despotic night, releasing laughs from the deepest and most untouched alley in our lungs. Our fears were freed.

Nonchalant towards the thing ahead of us, even to the time that felt prematurely withered.

"I remember once this priest brought hope to our house, and we just followed him since then", you said. That’s how you told me that miracle wasn’t the thing that kept us living, but hopes that enlightened.

Unyielding lost in the most chaotic ecstasy I have ever encountered. It became that moment when a knock on the door wouldn’t be able to break our reverie.

Modest. Humble.

We then walked unafraid through the open door that led us to the home where the sun rises.

They wouldn't let me leave the office until I would look them in the eyes

I saw horrible things in their eyes

they wanted me to see horrible things in their eyes

if you talk
about it
they'll tell you
its just a case
of centring yourself
before
it builds up;
placing yourself
in the moment
and understanding
what cannot be changed

except
there is
no progression
no steady curve
it goes from
a carefully traced line
to a scratched
scrawling scribble
that tears
through leaf
after leaf
of paper
whether the message
is legible
or not

apparently
        its simple;
in that split second
between empathy
        and apathy
before the destruction
of everything
outweighs
the strength
of all
that has been
accomplished
i simply need
to breath deep
and
count
           to
                ten

i'm still waiting
to be told
what to do
when my count
reaches ten
and
i'm still
angry

Obsidian wind chimes
welcome the crashing waves
as another day exits, slowly
sinking beneath the bay.

Cool waters drenched in
an almost amethyst hue
offer mental reverberations
as I ponder what I am next to do.

Though the sea is but a tide
that ebbs & flows-
repletes & recedes-
her words of wisdom forgo
past the banks of her beaches
& spread a breeze to every corner
of night.

She beckons me within myself;
her deep abyss but a mirror.
Her waters shine in a glimmering splendor
as she makes the path ever clearer.

To leave this shore that raised me
is not a sign of disrespect, but a show
of honor. My broken levees have her
to thank & for that, I call her mother.