I enter the labyrinth
in hopes of finding You, O Lord
with fear and trepidation
I walk on

I enter the labyrinth
wrongly do I journey
in the space I go
when You were in the lines

I walk through the labyrinth
anticipating Your call
waiting for a sign
to tell me I am Yours

I walk through the labyrinth
hungry for Your embrace
craving the touch
of the Master's hand

I journey in the labyrinth
circles in circles
trusting in You
O Lord, my guide

I journey in the labyrinth
the labyrinth of life
and I find You, my Saviour
in the simplest and most wonderful of things

I exit the labyrinth
thankful, grateful
that for one blister in time
I am blessed with Your peace

I exit the labyrinth
reaching the sunset of my years
looking back, I realise
You were with me all along

Numbly perform before the crowd
the sign of the cross,
a bow before the altar,
a melody or two.
Why do they burn us?
We are no sirens,
and song is no witchcraft,
not the kind they douse with holy water.

Lift up your hands to the sanctuary
and bless,
But do not let them meet.
Do not praise.
Your God is not found in music and dancing,
though he cries for the horns,
begs for a drum,
weeps with longing for harp.

You give him a voice,
monotone with no emotion.
Is this how you hear him?
A drone in your ear,
harsh admonishment,
one voice,
or silence?

My God is music.
He sings in the breezes,
in the hum of the earth,
the clapping and stomping,
the praise.
He is the breath in my lungs,
the words on my lips,
the touch of fingers on string.
His voice is many,
raised up in song,
raised up in the praising,
raised up in the "Hallelujah! Amen!"

Why don't you hear him,
those with ears among us?
You are not deaf.
You are dead among the living prayer.

Back on the loop past my old flame's house again
I sleep in and I show up late because I can't get you off my mind
Between failing friendships and endless gap years I feel like there isn't much of my heart left
But I'm still here
And I cry but I don't talk about it anymore. The people I love are a text message and 45 short miles away
But I'm too scared to cross the distance
Emotional or physical I'm too ******* scared to even ask for prayer
Singing out hymns to an estranged father imortalized in memories from last year and in the gruesome images depicted in stained glass windows,

Hallowed be this place in me.
Hallowed be the space in between my ribs.

 and my brother is a gospel singer to a basement full of people who are just as scared as I am
And He rides the crowd like Jesus walked on water
He lifts his hands caught in the same spirit that torments the angels and demons alike
And maybe god hears him screaming through the walls like I do
Maybe god cries too
But if he does he does a good job hiding it
And my parents are on the continent that I turned my back on a year ago.
I traded family dinners for a decomposing raft and tried my luck at the sea
Only crossing the water to drink wine and share the communion of post apocalyptic dreaming or political warfare we are so horrified and mesmerized by
The fellowship of the modern day saints,

Hallowed be this place in me.
Hallowed be the hole in my head.

Icehead baby don't you come to close to me
I'm friged baby I'm too far gone to see
And I've been dreaming about summer while I've been reading up on life in Antarctica
Cold tundras and odd communities I could work in maintanince for the price of living
Meanwhile I'm surviving my own tundra the endless night never gives way to sun for seasons on end
And my friends grow wings and fly into the sun
 a thousand variations of Icarus they're going to be dead and gone on while I'm still landlocked in concept
Or in orbit far in space
Wherever I am, I am distant
Living on the memories from years past
So I'm driving the endless loop past an old flame's house again
Connecting the dots between my ideas of dependency space and time
And I'm fine
In love with the seclusion of the towering trees
The security of a prolonged gap year
The warmth of the ice in my head
And as the roots of the divine cover my mouth and bloom in my lungs
I sigh and give into my year of hibernation.

Hallowed be this place in me
Hallowed be the expanse of this space.

Let the resin of my pain be the fan to my flame
And introduce new and old ways for me to feel
Complete me. For I am only incomplete
While forgetting how You came to save me
My goal is still in sight
It only feels hundreds of miles away
I now know that I love myself, for I wish me good
Allow my actions to do good for others
Let me save them
In this way I know many more things precious
Grant me strength and courage to work within You
My God
My compassion and my love will be my ultimate strength
And I am thankful of a reminder of who I can be
Amen

Once there was a MAN,
Who saved me according to plan.
Ever since I was born in this world,
HIS name was foretold
  
HIS powerful words and story,
Became a history.
HE died on the CROSS
Only to save my flaws.
  
HIS unconditional love for me
Open my eyes to see...
That my life will never be the same,
When I started calling out HIS name.
  
JESUS, HE died for me...
So I will live for HIM.

I asked God, why I was born ugly and others are pretty?!
I asked God, why I was poor and others are rich?!
I asked God, why I was sad and others are happy?!
I asked God, why I am coward and others are hero?!
I asked God, why life for me was so cruel and others are not?!
I asked God, do you love me or you love them more?!

*And God answered... Yes I love you so much that I gave you this kind of life, a life which enables you to know me deeply. An opportunity to ask to me. To communicate with me. Others?! Yes they had all they want in this world but did they know me?! Did they have time to ask me or to thank me of everything they had in this world?! Life here is only temporary, trust me, I got you.

You've got the popularity
You've got the face
You've got the hair
You've got the body
You've got the money
You've got the mansion
You've got the food
You've got the beautiful wife/husband
You've got the beautiful children
You've got the best friends
You've got the job
You've got the car
You've got the suit
You've got the shoes
You've got the gadgets
You've got the accessories

You've got all what you wanted here in the world...

but...

In the END,

still all you've got is...

HIM.

Tagalog poem I made for HIM...

Tanging Ikaw Lang

Simula pagising ko sa umaga
Mukha mo na ang nakikita
Kahit sa oras ng pag-idlip
Ikaw ang nasa panaginip

Saan man ako pumunta
Ikaw lang ang gustong makasama
Saan man ako makarating
Ikaw lang ang nais makapiling

Gagawin ko ang lahat
Mapaglingkuran ka lang ng tapat
HESUS, ikaw lang talaga
Sa buhay ko wala ng iba

Two o'clock sober
might still be hungover
you're begging for my tongue while I beg for your love.
I never thought I'd love like this,
one-sided and founded on ever unstable lust. I shouldn't even call this love,
I think it's love and I think you're just in it for a ****. Writing
poems about you is "hard" because I can't admit
what I can't bring myself to say out loud. You told me your secrets
and I swallowed the seeds, letting your admissions
bloom inside of me.
How could I have been so stupid? I should have known
you would plant a garden just to leave.
Girls made of gardens wither without affection
I must not be your favorite flower. I don't think I ever was
but you keep coming around just to see my petals unfold
every spring and I let you leave dew drops all over me

We've done this before. Lines and rows of blooming pinks and red,
scratches, finger prints, bruises, hickeys, marks that fade
after a few days. No matter how many days it's been, weeks, months
we find our way back to the patch of wildflowers
where we first decided to make love.
There will always be changes to the scenery and
I can't think of anyone else that I would plant myself anywhere with.
One of us is always leaving but somehow the wind blows us back home.

I'm not religious anymore but the Ten Commandments
seared inside of my psyche flash
before my eyes and I hear myself repeating
"Thou shalt have no other gods before me"
while I make myself ****** to the pictures you sent me. One night,
I wrote everything about you that I idolized in big letters on lined paper
and ripped it into squares. I twisted the paper bits
into your godly shape and whispered
your name as I dropped you into a floral candle and let the flame
eat your tiny body. Have you ever felt crazy?
Have you ever been so in love that it makes you crazy?
Until you've made a lover into an effigy
and tried to force your passion for them to rest
by cremating their paper remains
I don't know if you understand how close love and crazy really are.

I swear. I swear, I'm done.

But I'm not done. I pretend to forget
the way your name feels for a while, I pretend to idolize
other things but when you appear
uninvited to my dreams I can't forget the things I've seen. You kiss
my forehead as midday sun
settles on my skin and a garden of roses
start to bud where you've planted love. You pick the most precious one
and when you cut the stem I **** awake, facing the candle
where I tried to destroy what I thought of you. I don't know
why I see you everywhere and I don't know why
I keep asking questions that I'll never have the answers to.

Once you're actually here my laugh bubbles
from my throat and chrysanthemums and lilacs and daisies
fly out. When you kiss me I swear I feel ivy
entwining itself into my hair and my eyelashes grow tuberose.
I bloom with you and when you leave I become winter, waiting for you
to tend me. Every day with you is spring
and I know exactly how fast the seasons change. "Thou shalt not covet"
but god, I want you
I want you to trust me with everything and I want you to sow more seeds.
I can't tell you the last time I read my bible,
I thought it didn't have a hold over me anymore but I want you
to choose me and I don't want
to feel like I'm setting myself up for heartbreak anymore.

I've been thinking
about touching you
for so long
And now that I am
it feels euphoric

Your skin,
as soft as
I remember it

I melt into your words. I catch the flame
flickering on my bookshelf
where I burned your likeness and look into your eyes
flashing my most devilish smile.
You're back in my room and you've covered my body with sticky honeysuckles
and forget-me-nots. You, imperfect as anyone else but I see you
like you're some walking god. You, human as me. Your hands
left prints of hibiscus on my skin and when you leave
I open my diary to the page where I pressed cherry blossoms and maple
leaves and they fall as I write about how happy I am to see you.

"I just don't think that men like you like women like me who have moonstone eyes and crazy day dreams, women who dot their poems with inky pearl tears, pressed poplar leaves and, well, I wanted to write you a poem but I can’t think of any creative words. I want you to read how beautiful you make me, how your eyes drink me in, how I overflow for you. I want you to feel the conflict in my heart... so rarely that I see you but every time we reunite we are even better than the last. I don't know if you want to read it but I want to write you a poem. I want to write you a poem that makes you cringe because I write with honesty. I want you to feel the rhythm of my words the way we feel the rhythm of our bodies. You should be happy to inspire someone’s poetry. You, you don’t love me. And that’s fine, because I’ll always look back at you and see sunshine streams on your skin."

My room is all white and pink, floral print and my African violet.
You look perfect in the rosy glow
of my feminine sanctuary and I feel so appealing,
I trust you enough to show you everything, I say, luxuriating the words in the sunlight.
I want to absorb this moment to keep me warm. When I lay alone
thinking of drifting to sleep in your arms, it is this moment
with you around me,
the way you kiss my face like I mean something to you
and this is the place I go, when I swear
all of this means nothing to you. Doesn't everyone want to feel home?
Maybe I think being with you feels like the kind of home
with a nice garden I want to live in. Maybe you feel it too.

Maybe I'm reading too far into everything
and not saying enough of anything
maybe both of us say nothing hoping the other will
be the one to admit the feeling
but you, as soon as you leave and I tell myself I’m done. Swearing
I've burned up the last of you, I’ll never do it again.

I can't stop thinking about you

And I'm back thinking about you, too.

In the most unusual manic-panic creep,
Wildly lurking behind every corner,
The Shadow was about to recover some ungraspable but always constantly desired idea..

A fantasy, a darker shade of fantasy: a fun fetish.
Or, perhaps, could it be foolish fanciful notions?
This fully torked delusion can be a haunting mirage.  
A make believe vintage slogan ghost from generations past.
That worn out American Dream. That Life.

THE LIFE:
-Free from the routine confusion and disorder-
Dreamed by all but known only by creatures who dream of other more sophisticated things.

Silenced but still flailing at grasping the point or any and all major traffic signs,
the Shadow returned all the acquired mixed-matched pieces and useless information slowly..

I remember because it was a autumn night.
Leaves were falling and there were trees white with moonlight.

It was a cool night overflowing with mysterious excitement that unforgettably changed the mellow quite in all bright lights.
Suddenly there was a new bustle among the stars as the speed of light left a stirring in the darkness.

-A secret above trees carried on the wings of winds-

This covert paradox of milky way wonder experienced when he kissed this girl-was a vivid spectacle of unutterable visions never mentioned but still loudly exuding a slinky lust.

This was a soul cleansing need,
a physical miracle,
***** deeds done dirt cheap overdosing religious experience with every swelling ******!

These are the divine musings of the Creator, my Creator.
These are the ideas of any other brave soul who decide to capture their essence in moments.

For a moment at one point in time, these sacred thoughts belonged to God.