Unappeasably curious
Darkness drawing me in
The monsters hiding in stupor
Never knowing a victim
Who reaches towards horror
Who runs into the night
Who dresses in cobwebs
Never fearing the light.

I love tragedies.

Don’t get me wrong, I hate it when people get hurt. I hate devastation and sadness and I am a strong believer that life is too short to be anything but happy. But as much as we wish, hope, and believe for everything to turn out right, it won’t. It can’t. Life’s balancing act will bring you to your knees, and there is nothing you can do about it. Best friends get in car accienents, our most beloved pet is put to sleep, and the man in shining armor we think is our happily ever after turns out to be hiding a devastating secret.

But, I love these moments.

Because when they happen, it makes us take a minute out of our days. It makes us ignore the cell phone and cancel lunch meetings. Tragedies bring us closest to what is most important in our lives. Tragedies are the one thing that shows us what we value most in this world. And once you know what’s most important, nothing else matters.

In all these tragedies, from the seriousness of 9-11 to the annoyance of a broken ankle, we figure out that the darkness is important. The darkness can show us things that are hidden by the mask of the light.

Write a poem using these random words:
Zinc, blood, time, ants, grey, chrome, popsicle, doll

Here's what I came up with... your turn!
__________________­_

The nurse yells down the hall
ZINK! The patient’s monitor calls
And his blood runs white as the floor.
God where’s the time, because I need more.  

We’re all here for a reason they say
From the ants in the hill to elderly Mr. Grey
But I can’t see past the cold chrome walls
The popsicle sticks and the “get well” dolls

We’re all here for a reason I know
That nothing lasts forever, so I must go

I’m so tired off all the *******,
Floating happy riding rainbows.
A fleeting high that never lasts,
So you light up the world again tomorrow
Running from the future like your past.

Why are we pretending to like each other?
Why pretend to get along?
Fake smile form a peace treaty
that was signed on a shaking ground.

I just want to be honest
In a world that favors tricks and schemes.
I just want to find another human
That sees I’m really me.

We see what we want to see.
Hearts deceive to hide from pain.
Your illusions held up by mirrors
That shatters at the seams.

The crisp stagnant air hits my body as the glass doors effortlessly glide open to reveal one of the very many bare necessities of life. The Sunday morning’s warmth is quickly stolen by man made light reflecting off of perfectly shined, laminated flooring. A line of worn men and overworked mothers stand in an aggravating compliance as an apathetic clerk makes time stand still.

The mundane and ordinary occurrence of shopping at the grocery store clashes with the radiant stream of colors attempting to outshine their competition. Thousands of choices, but which one is the best? Some things are small and easy, others large and heavy. Some things boast about preserving life ,while others smile at the heart stopping taste of happiness.

The scary part is that these choices are completely in our own hands. Choices about our futures, our families, and our desires. Different hands grabbing different items, each converging here together on seemingly different paths of life. Forced to make these choices in this place, we are all equal.

Every CEO, underpaid nurse, and starving college student is forced to put aside personal agendas for a moment in time. To remember that we are human. To remember that no matter what happens outside of these doors, there is some thread of familiarity that binds us together, even as the world seems to be slowly ripping apart.

This grocery store suddenly seems like so much more than a crossed off line on a Sunday morning’s to do list.

Someone once told me not to be afraid of the dark. Dark, they said, was nothing more than the absence of photons.

So, I took a walk in the dark. And I found out that the dark is so much more than the absence of light.

The dark forces us to no longer look outward. It does not let us see beauty or terror. The dark does not let us feel the reassurance of the sun’s rays, to gaze at a pink sky slowly sinking over the horizon, or to be lost by the numerous magical wonders that surround us with each sunrise.

Without this sense of surrounding, without this sense of sight, I find myself searching for the light. I look up to the stars, the only form of true light that shines through the darkness. And I am forced to look up. I am forced to look beyond what I know into a world that has questions forever unanswered.


For once, I don’t try to explain. Because no one can explain the magic felt by looking up at the stars. Sure, science  tells us that they are burning ***** of gas millions of miles away that are cold, dark rocks by the time we see the light.

What the science can’t explain is why we are drawn to these rocks. For looking up at the stars somehow represents the vastness of the universe, the smallness of a single human, and the beauty found in a silent darkness.


And for just this moment, I have seen more in the darkness that I could ever see in the light.

In a big city far away, I can build fairies and dragons in the sand.

In the big city I paint with neon colors that shine with the light of a thousand angels.

In the big city I find a different person around every corner, and a different life around each seaside bend.

But when it all goes quiet, when it’s just me and a jeep and the land.
When I don’t have fairies or dragons or dreams that distract me, I’m left with an empty road that leads nowhere.
I always end up back on this road to nowhere
because nowhere leads me straight back to you.