There is little in this world that consistently causes our hearts more pain or which produces in us more need for forgiveness than rejection, especially from those whom it has cost us so much to love. It is universal anathema to the soul, and much of our lives can be unconsciously governed by the fear of it. So we find ourselves naturally asking, "Joy in the midst of rejection? Is that even possible?" Oh, yes! Not only possible but commanded of us who are believers in Christ. And not only commanded of us but ready to be gloriously bestowed on us like the most precious of pearls.

It's in the season of greatest rejection that we enter the season of greatest opportunity to discover the fullness of God's joy by discovering the fullness of His own heart. Walking in intimacy with Jesus through this searing pain may be one of the most priceless privileges of grace granted to us on this earth, for it opens up one of the widest doors for us to enter into the fellowship of sharing in His sufferings, and there is no more obvious chance to die to ourselves and live for Christ than in that holy communion of suffering with Him.

It's there that we're most able to clearly see Him and best prepared to clearly reflect Him, and it's then that we're empowered to live our lives here on earth from the very throne room of heaven, seated in the resurrected presence of our Bridegroom, where the joy always runs full and over. So our deepest heartaches will turn to deepest joys when we embrace them for the sake of Christ, to gain Him and be found in Him, to know Him in intimate detail through excruciatingly sweet experience. We will discover that the Lord entrusts the most luscious of blessings and the rarest of secrets to the most desperate and thirsty of souls, and that He delights to place the loveliest of wings on the lowliest of worms.

The gifts of myrrh's sorrow which the Father pours into the vessels of our lives are poured first into the hands of His own Son and flow through His nail-pierced scars before they ever touch us. And as we choose to graciously receive them as such, we are filled up with Him and enabled to pour Him out into the lives of others, even those who continually scorn and despise us.

The gift (yes, gift) of rejection is the high privilege of being asked by our Commander to become His flag bearer, receiving the esteemed honor of marching beside Him at the center of the front line, into the heat of the battle and into the face of the "enemy" (the rejecter), armed with no gun and carrying only His banner of love over our head for all to see. It's a sacred invitation into a certain death for the sake of knowing His love more intimately and for the service of displaying it more gloriously.

And if tempted to refuse the privilege, let us remember these two things: this life is so much more freely, joyfully lived when we have finally learned to count ourselves dead to it and alive to Christ, and the flow of His agape love through us will only be as strong as what it costs us to demonstrate it. The greater the cost, the purer the love; the purer the love, the more we are made like Him; the more we are made like Him, the more attuned we will be to His own heart's breaking and to our own breaking of it.

Oh, that we might be purged of ever thinking again that our neglecting of His love does not matter to Him! May He cause our hearts to break and break until we see how much it does! May we know the world's rejection again and again until we are finally scoured clean of our own despicable tendency to reject Him in favor of all our worldly playthings! No lover has ever endured more rejection than our Lover at our own hands and by our own hearts. And no lover continues to love through rejection with the determination and desire, suffering and sacrifice, tenderness and tenacity of our own Bridegroom. Can we not endure whatever He has called us to suffer for Him? Can we not allow it to drive us more fervently to His heart?... Lord, capture us by Your mighty hand and consume us by Your mighty flame, and may we pant and pine only for You, for Your love sets us free to dance in the midst of the fire!

How humbling, mystifying and worship-evoking it is to realize that the One we have so grievously rejected is the same One Who so perfectly understands and longs to comfort our own heart's grief when we are rejected. And to not run to Him now for that fellowship of healing would be to reject Him all over again and to break His heart once more. What could hurt Him more than our stubborn resistance to share in both His sufferings and His comfort when there is so much joy and intimacy waiting to be had with Him? Whatever ache our own heart knows, however deep and scathing, it cannot compare to the ache of His own heart when we let anything pull us away from Him, for He is rightly EVERYTHING to us—Father, Husband, Lover, Best Friend, Brother, Confidante, Kindred Spirit, Counselor, Nurturer, Rescuer, Healer, Hero... Behind the pain of every rejection is a legitimate need or desire that He is waiting to fill in us, and we have to let Him get to it by dying to our fleshly ones.

Or do we suppose that we might ever find true and lasting joy apart from dying to ourselves and abiding in Him when He died so that we might fully live in the joy of that abiding? No, true joy will only follow abiding; abiding and dying walk hand in hand, and rejection throws open the door for all three. Man's rejection is central to God's wooing, for it shatters our false expectations of human love and stirs in our hearts the longing for a perfect one. So let us not shrink back fearfully from that which can do us such good and teach us to love as Christ has loved us. With renewed passion, let us ask Him to wrap every affection of our hearts more tightly around Him that every desire might be united with His own and that we might learn to love in a way that sets our lives and the world around us ablaze!

To be despised and rejected and, still, to love—that is the ultimate triumph of Christ in our hearts, for we are never more like Him, never more full of Him, never more surrendered to His heart and His work than when He pours out His love through us to those who will not love us back. When we can stand in the face of bitter, cutting words, contemptuous looks and shaming mockery and still love fiercely but with a gentle and quiet spirit, we will know without doubt that it is His Spirit moving gloriously through us... Lord Jesus, Who so willingly floods our hearts with Your most precious gift, Yourself (and You are Love!), teach us to ever know You more and to rely fully on the love You have for us and ARE for us in infinite supply. Teach us to feast on the abundance of that love, and let it flow freely out of us to the ones who would reject, scorn, mock and hate us, so that they too might one day taste and be consumed by Your perfect love which drives out all fear—Your infinite, immeasurable love which heals all wounds and fills all emptiness and gives meaning to all of our pain. You alone, O LORD, are able to truly and purely love through rejection, but You live gloriously in us, so unleash Your mighty waters through us. Your love is everything, for You are Everything!...

Our all-sufficient Bridegroom is able to work His agape love most perfectly in us when that love poured out to another is not ever reciprocated, for it forces us to finally let Him fill us with Himself alone and to rely completely on His love instead of on the love of another to meet our heart's deepest hunger. The need for His filling IS our deepest hunger, and so our soul comes most alive not when it is loved by our fellow man but when it receives and pours out Jesus' love to our fellow man, expecting nothing in return but more of Him. Thus His love is made complete in us whether they ever love us back or not, and the fear of their rejection is eventually driven out by His perfect and perfecting love.

Even if love is never returned...never even received...it is never in vain, for "love never fails." To love someone, though we mean nothing to them, may seem too cruel a burden for the heart to bear, but the only thing worse than not being loved is to not love, and so the greatest tragedy of love spurned or lost would be to stop loving. For to cease loving that which causes us pain would be to let the pain win, but for as long as we love, really love with Christ's own heart, no matter what else happens, we win.

Love without pain remains unproven and, therefore, is meaningless, but love through pain invokes nothing less than the miraculous and inspires even the incredulous. The purer one's love, the more pain it causes when it is rejected, but only continued love can redeem the pain of loving, and only a perfect Love can heal love's scalding wound; the more scalding the wound, the better primed it is to receive that perfect Love fully into it.

There is great romance to be found in unrequited love that keeps loving, though it is beyond any human emotion or fleshly capacity or mortal understanding. It is a most sacred mystery which cannot be grasped with the head or even the heart but only with the spirit, for it is a love whose connection to Christ remains unsevered. There is perhaps no intimacy to compare to it, for it drives us to Him like nothing else will. It is a love whose longing for the other gives us the greatest insight into God's own aching longing for us. Only when it has cost us everything to keep loving do we begin to understand the smallest fraction of the wildly extravagant love Christ has for us or of the brutally scandalous pain which it has cost Him, and it will leave us in utter awe of Him and in love with Him like we have never been before.

As our focus is turned more and more toward His love for us and toward all of our previous rejecting of it, we will come to clearly see that agape love and rejection have everything to do with the the hearts of the lover and the rejecter and nothing to do with what the beloved and the rejected have done or deserve. For obviously we have done nothing to deserve God's love and He has nothing to deserve our rejection, yet He never stops loving us and we keep rejecting Him in ways we can't even comprehend. No one has ever known more rejection than the only One Who is completely worthy of love. Every time we sin we reject Him in favor of something else, but still He loves us without fail and without end. He loves us because He is love and because He has chosen to set His love on us. We are absolutely and irrevocably loved and accepted in Christ Jesus, and nothing and no one can ever change or mar that love. Our identity is completely secure in Him simply because of Who He is and who He says we are to Him.

Therefore no amount nor depth of rejection by anyone changes anything about who we are in Christ or our worth to Him. We do not need any man's love or acceptance to validate our worth, for it has already been established in the heavenly realms by the only One Whose verdict carries any real and lasting weight. We are significant and precious and holy to God regardless of what anyone else thinks of us or says of us or does to us. What has their rejection got to do with us? Nothing, for we are His! We are chosen and we are beloved! And so we are freed from the fear of rejection when we see that it cannot define us or taint us in the sight of the only One Whose opinion or judgment matters. It's a glorious thing to finally care what no man thinks of us, only the Master, for then we begin to be free to love all men as He loves them and to pray with deepest sincerity, humility and fervor even for those who spitefully reject us.

And even for that one who has hurt us most deeply, who has crushed our heart and thrown us to the wind like chaff without so much as a glance back, we will pray, no longer with only a slight and distant hope that he would return to us but now with a passionate desire to see the prodigal return to the heart of the Father. We will pray, not with a focus on life with him but with a focus on life for him. We will pray for a total and glorious restoration of his life to Christ, even if we will never be there beside him to share in the fellowship and joy of his homecoming, even if we will never get to experience up close in this life the thrill of seeing the Lord make something beautiful yet of his ashes. And this may be the hardest and truest test of our love for him—this painful sacrifice of desiring his absolute best apart from us. It is a wrenching blow to our pride and to our will (not to mention our codependence), for we had so longed to play the Muse and to awaken that beauty in him. So we know we could never yearn or pray for this out of our own strength or wisdom; it is simply too painful to our flesh. We must be led into it and through every delicate step of it by our loving Redeemer, our Bridegroom, as if He were leading us out under a canopy of the starry host and into the most intricate and intimate of moonlit dances. And so we begin to pray and to dance...

But even wrapped in Jesus' arms we are clumsy, stumbling miserably over our own feet. The music is perplexingly unfamiliar and the steps wildly unpredictable, and our toes feel terribly pinched in these new shoes. Maybe this dance is just too hard for us. Maybe we are not yet ready. Maybe we should sit it out for now and try again later when our shoes are a little more broken in or when our heart is a little less broken apart. So we pull away...

But He tenderly beckons us back: Dear and beloved bride, broken-but-beautiful one whom I have made My own, do not push Me away now, not after I have brought you so far. I have many more secrets to share with you and so much more to show you of Myself. But you are not letting Me lead this dance, beloved. Why are you so rigid in My embrace? Why so worried over the next steps? Let go of everything and abandon yourself to My love. Enjoy Me...Follow Me...Lean into Me...Keep watching My face...Let Me move you however I desire us to go...Trust Me...Love Me. Shall we dance, then?

Yes, we shall and we do! As He draws us into Himself, into the prayer of His heart and the dance of His Spirit, and as we give ourself over completely to the impulse of His leading, the details of our words and the precision of our steps give way to the desire and passion of His will, and the pulsating of our heart swirls to the rhythm of His own. The further He pulls us into union with Himself, the more we find ourselves desiring this same intimacy-with-Him for the very one who has so badly hurt us, for we see how badly he himself is hurting without it. We realize now that his running away from us and toward another is just as much a reflection of his insatiable yet misunderstood craving for God as was all of our running toward our own idols (including him). Our soul aches for his redemption and his healing and for his lost sheep's heart to be brought out of darkness and into the marvelous light that shines from Jesus' face, that he might truly know the pleasure of knowing the One Whose pleasure he was created for.

Somehow, through this heightened and mysterious intimacy of prayer for him, we are now discovering a strange and new kind of intimacy with this very one whose intimacy had so often given us the slip, this one whom we had so long loved and lived with but failed to uncover at all, and the fresh wind of it drives us even deeper into the ache of God's own heart for him and for us. It is at the center of that ache that we are finally able to let go of the hurt and the man and leave the matter entirely in God's hands, understanding that the Shepherd's aching heart knows fully all whom He has chosen and will never stop dealing with or seeking after any of His own sheep. And so...


                        We release to Him with a heart of trust
                        This one whom we love and always must
                        We can let go the man and rest because
                        It's out of our hands and always was


But the dance, like the feast, goes on and on, and the more we dance and the more we feast, the more we heal. Our Bridegroom wounds us by His own providence but washes our wounds with His faithfulness and binds them up with His love. The wounds and their healing make us beautiful to Him. They teach us to know Him, to hunger for Him, to enjoy Him and to please Him. And they get us perfectly ready for that most glorious of dances and that most joyous of feasts which are still to come but, perhaps, much closer than we might dare to imagine. It is time to awaken, dear bride of Christ, and to break in our dancing shoes!

I'm looking deep into her eyes

Looking into her eyes...
is like opening a door that leads...
to another door

Wait..really?  OK...I open the door.

This door leads to a long, winding path,
like the winding path of your love.  
The path leads to a third door

O...K. I open the door.

This door leads to a spiral staircase
descending down, down, down,  deep
into her soul.
At the bottom of the staircase is--

A door?

A door.

I open the door

The door is locked.  The key might be under the mat

Seriously?  I check under the mat

Nope, not there.  Maybe try under the small rock next to the door

Oh for the love of...I check the rock

There is a key

Wonderful...I unlock and open the door

Inside this door is a large atrium
the glass ceiling giving way to a
beautiful summer night, the stars
twinkling in the distance.  At the
far end of the Atrium, there is a curtain

Sigh I pull aside the curtain

There is a door

Come on!  I open the ruddy door.

You find yourself in a long hallway,
with fine art hanging along the walls.
Crimson carpet lines the floor.
At the end of the hall is a door  locked
with a combination biometric
fingerprint scanner/retinal scanner

What.

You have 10 seconds to unlock the door
before the hunter-bots de-atomize you

What!?  Ok! I try my fingerprints and eye!

The door unlocks and the hunter-bots stand down.
In the next room are three vials.  Two of them contain
terrible neuro-toxins that will lead to an excruciatingly
painful death.  The third will allow you to continue on
to the next room.  You have 30 seconds to choose before
you are terminated

What the hell is this!?

This is the path to true love hidden deep in her eyes

No, this is insanity!

15 seconds

OK!  Geez!  Umm..Vial Number 2!

You're totally dead

Oh god!

Just kidding.  None of them had poison...was just messing with you

THAT'S IT!  I'M DONE WITH THIS

Really?  There's only one more door.  I swear

...Fine.  What ridiculous thing do I need to do to open it.

It's already open.  You find yourself in a circular room
with a pedestal in the center.  On the pedestal is a hand
written note.  On that note is the key to everlasting happiness

I pick up the note

You smell sweet hints of your beloved's perfume and
notice the care that each word of the note was written.

What does the note say?

My love:

Next Tuesday Only --  Buy One-Get One Free at J.J's Pizza.  Cannot be combined with any other offers/coupons.  Must present coupon upon purchase.  Expires 1/14/14

...An expired coupon for Pizza?

Such a wonderful expression of love!

How do I get out of here...

You see a door
.

Loneliness.
What is it?
It is a concept we so rarely describe in detail.
We've made up a specific word for it-
Three little syllables-
Just so that we can say it and be done with it,
And escape the contemplation.
But I know my own loneliness cannot be captured,
Cannot be encompassed,
By merely the word.
What is loneliness?
It comes in all shapes and sizes,
A space,
A lack,
That can be big or small,
Sudden or excruciatingly slow,
Sharp or fuzzy at the edges.
Hell,
It can even be comforting.
What is it about loneliness that is so insidious?
Harder to rid yourself of than fear
Or anger
Or even such tricky, barbed things as doubt
Or hope,
That stick.
Loneliness doesn't stick.
It seeps.
Steeps.
You stew in it.
It is beginning to occur to me that I don't believe,
Once one realizes loneliness for the first time,
That one is ever truly rid of it again,
Even for a second.
I think it is a permanence that we as a race refuse to acknowledge most of the time.
Some forms of lonely are fairly benign-
The little tingle on the edges of you, when you are home alone and the house is silent,
And for no apparent reason at all-
No sadness, no fear, no thought that is particularly unpleasant that you must drown out-
You nonetheless feel the compulsion to switch on the television
Even if you won't watch,
Just to break the stillness with a human voice besides your own.
Then there are the darker types, the truly ensnaring ones,
The lonelinesses born of the memory of times when,
Perhaps, you were less lonely,
Or even thought that you had flushed the feeling from your soul entirely.
Loneliness is an otherness,
An alien thing that lives in your heart,
That makes you question whether there is anyone out there who would have you
If they knew
What was on the inside.
There is the type of loneliness that creeps up on you and follows nipping at your heels like a shadow on the pavement as you move through your day,
Reminding you, whispering in your ear that here you felt less alone, and there, and that those places are full now,
Of emptiness,
Because those times have passed and not had the courtesy to clean up their cobwebs-
Memories linger in certain little spots, and collect like dust little pockets of loneliness that grab you all of a sudden,
The way forgotten spiderwebs stick in your hair as you move through an old house.
This type is jarring, disturbing, and
Afterwards I always feel the desperate need to wash away the feeling,
Scrub myself down.
There is the breed of loneliness that is a bit more genteel,
And curls cold at your feet like a well trained dog,
Formal and subtle, but constant,
Watching.
This is the sort that makes you feel just somewhat hunted,
When you try to sit in silence by a fire at night in your living room
And find that you must read a book to drive the stillness from your head.
There is the truly hollow kind,
The kind that has no courtesy whatsoever,
And actually slithers into you, inhabiting your heart and stomach and bones
As you try to fall asleep
With ice.
It is this kind that, if it is strong enough
(and you are weak enough)
For it to remain until morning
Forbids even the smallest human touch-
Every gesture of tenderness from another person
Makes this loneliness increase,
Every embrace, every handshake, every accidental contact of skin
Becomes unbearable,
And the afflicted shies away,
Perpetuating a cycle of vicious disconnection.
They all leave a little something cold, even when they recede,
In the core of you, that won't be dislodged no matter what you try.
Loneliness,
Like a cancer,
Can only be considered in remission,
And never truly cured.
For when given room to prosper even for the space of a second it expands and swallows up your thoughts
Until they whither with frostbite.
I suppose I shouldn't be shocked-
As humans we live side by side, arms linked with
Most of the things that will eventually **** us,
What's one more, cozying up inside our skulls,
Inside our hearts?
We have a partnership-
An entirely human concept-
With all that destroys us.
And so we live with out loneliness, like a second shadow.
What is loneliness?
I am still unsure.
I can only describe what loneliness does,
Not what it is.
*I think that maybe to understand it
Would be to die of it.

One Winged Angel


Dec 10, 2011, 7:39:29 PM by ~OmegaWolfOfWinter
Journals / Personal




It was very late, and Lucian had just gotten back from his assignment. he unlocked the door to his house and set his things down on the bed. he removed his shirt and removed the bandages on his chest. that demon put up quite a fight... he put on a robe and decided to get some rest. he set his things down on the floor next to him and hung his sword by the bed. he exhaled deeply and relaxed, finally back in the comfort of his own home. sleep quickly enveloped him and he began to dream.
******
Lucian was woken from a deep sleep by the sound of his door breaking down. Two massive angels shrouded in black cloaks stepped inside his room as Lucian scrambled to his feet, feeling a sudden chill beneath his simple white robe. One of the angels spoke, "Lucian, Elite Angel number 373-14, you are under arrest for high treason, grand theft, and ******."
Lucian was dumbfounded at the accusation. "What on heaven are you talking about?!"
the guard-angels grabbed the warrior-angel and dragged him out of his house and onto the streets where a small crowd had gathered. They escorted him to the capitol, which wasn't far away. Lucian gazed up at the massive black monolith before him.
He was immediately sent to the rooftop, where the Punisher was waiting.
Lucian desperately tried to explain. "I've been set up!! Please let me go! I've done nothing wrong!!"
The angel to his left looked at Lucian in disgust. "Quiet, you."
He reached to Lucian's throat and he felt a massive bolt of electricity course through his body. He collapsed in their arms and blacked out for a moment.
He couldn't say anything; he had a sign of silence on his throat. He blacked out again and when he woke he was on his knees in front of the punisher. His hands were bound behind his back and he was held by a multitude of chains and braces. The guard-angel touched his throat and the seal of silence was removed. "elite angel Lucian, number 373-14, you are charged with high treason against the holy city, grand theft of a holy artifact and the murders of 7 holy officials, as punishment-"
"I didn't do any of those things!!!"
"SILENCE!! There is evidence that places you at the scene."
"What-"
"your punishment, you will lose your wings," Lucian gasped and tears formed in his eyes. "...and will be given the Mark of Eternal torture."
"No! Not the Mark!! Please no!!"
The punisher stepped forward and drew his slender sword. As he stepped forward, Lucian squirmed and fought against his bindings but to no avail. "God help me!"
"How dare you speak the lord's name, criminal!" the punisher slashed at Lucian's throat, grazing it and leaving a long, bleeding cut. Lucian groaned and said, "No... No... Please..."
the punisher stepped to Lucian's side and raised the sword. Lucian's tears came and began hyperventilating. "No, NO, NOO!!!"
The punisher brought the sword down and Lucian screamed in agony as one of his wings fell to the ground. Lucian was in so much pain, he wished he could die right then, right there. He was crying now, tears of sorrow and pain. "No, please, I beg you! Have mercy!"
For some reason the punisher then sheathed his sword. "Fine, you may keep your remaining wing."
"th-thank-" he was cut off as the punisher knelt down and grabbed Lucian's throat. He screamed again as he felt an intense burning. He continued to cry out as the punisher released him but the burning remained, slowly spreading over his entire body with such intensity that he lost consciousness multiple times. after an excruciatingly long torture, the burning ceased, and Lucian saw that it had etched runes and twisting lines over his whole body, almost his whole body, it had left his head and hands untouched. His voice had turned into a hiss and he tried to speak. he was unbound and he reached back to touch where his left wing had been, there was only a stump left.
"Lucian, you are hereby renounced of your warrior status. Get him out of my sight." Lucian was escorted outside, where the guardians left him stranded in the street. He blacked out and felt himself being picked up and carried somewhere else.
************
"he's heavy" thought the angel. He carried the limp body off the streets and through alleys, to an abandoned complex not far away. "Melinda!" he called. A slender young angeless came from the shadows.
"Who on heaven is this, Ven?!"
Ven looked around and said, "not here... Let's get inside."
he carried the angel inside and set him down on the dimly lit bed. He was still out cold. Ven sighed and said, "Remember that trip I took to the holy city?"
"Yes of course."
"Things happened there... the Network had me do some things..."
she narrowed her eyes. "What type of things?"
"i-i had to steal some artifacts...and some officials got killed."
"WHAT?!?!"
"i didn't get caught! But... i-i panicked, i blamed it on... On him..."
melinda was speechless," i-i cant..."
"melinda... Please..."
"no, i cant deal with this anymore, i'm leaving."
"wait!"
"no, ven. Figure this out on your own." and she disappeared.
Ven sighed and looked over at the one-winged angel.
"i'm sorry"
the angel stirred slightly but didnt wake. Ven looked at the stump where the angel's wing should have been, and the scars that lined his body.
"i need to take him to the Network... Maybe, maybe then i can finish what i started... And give this angel what i stole from him... I have to take him to the Holy One..."
he closed his eyes for a moment, then,"i promise, you will get your wing back." and he fell asleep.
**********
Lucian woke up as parts of his body burned fiercly. He cried out and writhed in pain. Soon the burning became a simmer, but it still hurt. lucians heart was beating rapidly and he was exhausted. He replayed last night's adventure. He glanced over his shoulder and as expected, he didnt see his wing. he could feel the blood caked on his back and he felt weak when he tried to get up. He fell and caught himself on the table. "wait a moment... Where am i?!" he frantically looked at his surroundings. He saw another angel asleep in a chair and a doorway behind him. The door looked weak but lucian wasnt sure he could do anything in his weakened state. "i have to try..." he ran, or rather stumbled toward the door and managed to break it down. He fell down outside and was temporarily blinded by the sunlight. He managed his way into the street, where the angels looked on in confusion. "i'm... this
is my street..." he hobbled over to his house and stepped inside. nothing had been touched since last night. "i'm not going to be able to find work... I'm not going to be able buy food.. agh! What am i going to do!" he sat on the bed, his head in his hands. he looked over to the wall, where he had his warrior blade hanging just in case. He grabbed his bag and packed some clothes. He changed into his finer dress clothes that he used on formal occasions. He grabbed his bag and put the sword on his belt. "i wish it didnt have to come to this..." he pushed on a spot on the wall and it slid away. Inside the compartment were his warrior armor and weapons. He took off the suit jacket and grabbed his vest. he put various weapons in their spots and shut the wall. He put the suit-jacket back on and buttoned it to conceal the vest. He felt energized and ready for anything. That was until he turned and saw the angel from the complex.
"where do you think You're going?"
"who are you?"
the angel looked amused and said, "you can call me Ven."
"well, Ven, i'm going to find the one who set me up, and i'm going to do what he did to me."
ven looked frightened. "why dont you come with me."
lucian didnt trust this ven. "i'm not going with anyone." and he dove through the window. He sprinted down the street, the bag and his sword held firmly in his hands. "i need money, i need food... I need to find him."
***********
after all these years of loyal service, after all he'd done, he'd been thrown out without trial, revoked his warrior status, and now Lucian was going to find whoever had done this to him, and he was going to make him pay. he was a fallen angel, and he had nothing to lose.
lucian was perched on the top of the church spire, contemplating where to start his search. *the evidence.. what evidence...?
"i'll start with the judges chambers..."
lucian looked to the north, where the monolith towered over the city. he jumped from roof to roof as he neared the building. i'll do whatever i have to... anything to clear my name. different parts of his body started to burn, and the others began to cool off.
the mark... its burning, it's going to keep burning...
he cried out and fell from the roof he was on. he hit the alley hard enough to break bone, but he happened to land on his wing, cushioning his fall, only a little bit though.
this mark is going to **** me someday... he checked his wing and brushed off the dirt. he folded the wing flat against his back and sat up. he got back on his feet and continued to the monolith.
will i have to live with this mark forever?
*************
(one day later)
"GET BACK HERE!!! STOP THAT MAN!!!" lucian was on the run. he found exactly what he was looking for, now he needed to find more information concerning the artifacts and the theif. but first he had to get away. he was turning corners and sprinting like a madman, but he couldnt escape the Detainers. then he heard a voice, "One Wing! over here!"
lucian looked towards where he heard the voice and saw an Angeless beckoning for him to come. "follow me!"
lucian reluctantly followed, winding through abandoned buildings and finally ducking behind an old counter. after a few minutes of silence, the woman said, "okay, we're clear. i'm Elora."
"lucian."
"oh... you're THE One-wing-angel..."
lucian looked down at the ground. "yeah... that's me."
"you were an elite, a warrior angel, weren't you?"
"yeah, but then i was set up and now i'm an outcast..."
"you were set up?"
"yeah, i was. i had everything i ever wanted, why would i need to commit those crimes? i was loyal, and trusted by everyone. and i swear that i will find whoever set me up..."
"and then what?" elora seemed to be waiting for something.
"i'm going to do to him what he did to me."
"what did he-" elora was cut off by lucian as he cried out. "what's wrong?!"
"the mark.... of eternal torture..."
"oh my gosh... i didnt know..."
"its nothing... i'm used to it..."
he took off his suit jacket and elora gasped when she saw his scars. she didn't seem to notice the vest of weapons or the sword at his side. "this is..."
"...the Mark..."
she grimaced as she saw them and said, "i'm sorry..."
"but why?"
"because, i was going to turn you in..."
lucian was on his feet immediately. "what?!"
"wait!! i'm not going to... not after seeing what they did to you..."
"how can i be sure i can trust you?!"
elora looked down at her feet and said, "you cant... but i can get you out of the city..."
"you can?"
************
Lucian was still finding it hard to trust Elora, but he stuck with her anyway. She took him away from the city and was about to turn back. Something inside Lucian wanted her to stay. "Wait! Don't leave. Come with me to the holy city."
She seemed hesitant but willing, "i-ive never been to the holy city...."
"It's an amazing place, quite a sight to see."
She took a moment to think and nodded, "I'll go with you."
Lucian smiled and walked forward. After long hours of relentless walking, Elora asked," how far do we have to travel?"
"A few more hours of walking..."
Elora sighed and said, "Alright..."
Lucian glanced over at her and saw that she was tired. "We should rest."
Elora and Lucian got off of the path ad took shelter beneath some gild-trees. "Elora, go ahead and rest up."
she reluctantly slept, but she was glad to, they had been traveling all day.
Lucian sharpened his blades and meditated while she slept.
Lucian prayed, like he had always done every morning. He had vowed not to let his becoming an outcast interfere with his routine. After he was finished, he sighed and glanced over at Elora; she was fast asleep. He then glanced at the sky and saw dark clouds quickly closing in. Lucian didn't want to wake Elora but he wanted to get her out of the rain. He set his suit jacket and weapons vest next to her and he extended his wing over her just as the rain began to fall. he was pleased to see that the rain would not touch the sleeping angel. On the other hand, Lucian was vulnerable, but he didn't mind. He would rather shelter Elora than himself. Lucian ignored the rain and decided to doze for a while.
***********
Elora woke up as a cold wind blew. She rubbed the sleep from her eyes and saw the millions of raindrops in front of her. it took her a moment to realize that she was dry. she glanced over and saw that Lucian was soaking wet and had his wing extended over her. "You should have woken me, Lucian." she extended one of her wings over him as he shivered.
"th-thanks, e-elora." she could tell he was freezing because even the feather's  above her were shivering. she decided to do something to repay his kindness.
"come closer, we can share body heat." suddenly the feathers stopped shivering, they became rigid, as if lucian was surprised... apparently he was.
"really?"
"yeah, its the least i can do." she sat closer to him and put an arm around him. his skin was cool to the touch and his muscles were tense, but they soon relaxed, as did the feathers above her. he soon stopped shivering and the rain stopped falling.

There it is again. That sound you've known for so long but can never grow comfortable with. It's resonance is beyond anything describable in this world; by these means. You know it so well yet cannot fathom it. Years pass without your awareness of what this thing, this intrusively disturbing abomination truly is. You effortfully and excruciatingly ponder, analyze and rework your thoughts to no avail. You are virtually incapable—and utterly useless.
As you stand, sit, or lie, pondering your lack of discernment, you stop in your tracks.
You realize something you never have before.
What is it?

Life is like a deck of cards,
you never know what you will get.
After you get what you (have) received,
you do not know if you’ll be deceived.

You try your best to play it right,
but all the noise made your grip (excruciatingly) tight.
You look left and right to find the answer,
you were not aware of the need of a Savior.

Life is like a deck of cards,
there can’t be just one player — at least two,
winning and losing depended on skills,
(but) sometimes before you even know it –
you were killed.

Every second — a grim sombre anticipation,
Every minute — a twist of hope and sense of admiration,
you try to scrape through using persuasion,
but all in all we’re in delusion.

A delusion, A deck,
of cards.

Dear Self,

For you it is November 9th, 2016. Despite all odds, Donald Trump is president. Mike Pence, governor of your home state of Indiana, is his VP.

You are 17 right now. You were born into a world run by George W. Bush. You spent your whole childhood hearing your parents yelling at the tv, angry at the Texas governor in the White House.

You grew up in Obamanation. You saw months of “YES WE CAN” and “CHANGE” stickers going up, and a magnet your family still has get put onto your refrigerator. You heard your mother’s sigh of relief when Barack Obama was announced the 44th president. That was half your lifetime ago.

You spent the last year following the campaigns. You were not surprised by Hillary Clinton running again. You “felt the Bern” of the somewhat radical Independent candidate previously unknown to you, Bernie Sanders. You laughed off the wild reality tv star Donald Trump’s campaign.

Months went by. Bernie and Hillary were fighting hard leading up to the primaries. Republicans slowly started to drop out. Big names like Jeb Bush, Mike Huckabee, and Chris Christie left the race. Bernie didn’t do good enough in the primaries, which was upsetting to most of your friends, your older brother, and your mom, who all voted for him. Ted Cruz fell off, defeated, in May.

It was down to Hillary and Trump.

You followed the comments made at their rallies. On their social media. You heard a lecture about the election from Josh Gillin of Politifact at Indiana University over the summer. You won an award for an opinion piece you wrote on Trump. As the election day grew closer, you watched every presidential debate. You analyzed them in class.

Last night, you stayed up until 4 A.M. to see the results of this election. You sat through excruciatingly slow interviews, political analysis, and different predictions. You couldn’t turn away from the blue and red maps, the aggressively American backgrounds, the anxious masses.

The tired tv hosts were right, it was a nail-biter.

As Trump gave his victory speech, you wept.

You wept for the months you spent wishing this wouldn’t happen. You wept for the 1920’s suffragettes, for the descendents of MLK and Cesar Chavez, for the Orlando victims. You wept for me. The people I joined. The people who will join me.

I am dead.

You learned in your final moments that homophobes look like normal people. They are not all rednecks with beer guts wearing ten-gallon hats. They are more elusive than that. They can be dressed smart. They can have friendly voices. Familiar names and faces.

A friend of a friend of a friend of a friend killed you. Someone you live near. You might have passed them in a car. In the mall. In the school hallways. It was someone that people you knew,  knew. You probably could’ve gotten their Twitter handle if you had heard their name before.

You were killed in a city that VP Pence had once stood in.

People tried to learn about your killer. Were they someone you knew? Someone who just went crazy? Someone who couldn’t handle who you held hands with?

You were too young, the local news anchors said. Your school administration said. Your mom said.

Mike Pence didn’t say anything at all.

Your friends didn’t say much. They cried. They withdrew. They wore baggier clothes. They bought switchblades. They washed “*****” and “ladyboy” off of your tombstone. They wondered about joining you, voluntarily and not.

The school newspaper’s headline: DEAD AT 17.

No one thought it would happen to you, except you. You stayed up late at night, imagining your funeral. The first thing you did in the morning was practice for your wake. Every time you left your house, you were a dead man walking.

No one  believed this more than you did.

The news anchors said it was just one of a string of murders. People said it was an isolated incident. Your friends said it was a hate crime. Your mom said it was the worst thing that  ever  happened to her.

There was no question that you were gone, even when they found you- chest jumping. There was only one thing to wonder: who was next?

Not an if, but a when.

I hope the when is  never.

All my love- to you and everyone else,

Yourself

“We love what we don’t know, what it’s lost already…”*
Jorge Luis Borges

I hang on to your portrait, in front of me;
among candles, copal, and all those things you worship in a mexican altar to the death.

You are my invisible jaguar,
you appear before me, between dreams, and I fell alive.

Full of wounds,
lacerated by my absence,
I put your portrait in front of the altar that my mind has conceived,
and you seem to hold the paradise's secret in your hands,which are made of ashes.
Then, according to the mexican & catholic tradition,
like a rural priest,
you start to draw a cross, made of the ashes of your magic, sacred hands.

The smell of the whole,
sacred being that exists in this spiritual plane,
lays on your profile, so beautiful embodied in your portrait,
which I prefer above any other reflex.

Finally, when I think on your lips,
is when I stop believing  in anything else,
and just keep on holding the devotion that I worship to your portrait...
Then I chase each single one of the naked,
flaccid,
vulnerable memories of you,
trying to protect me.

I think of you,
so profoundly and vividly right now,
that my skin transpires,
bleeds,
my muscles are tense,
and my mouth recites your name with all and its last name.

I wish that, under a supernatural power,
you're also thinking of me, at this precise moment,
and that some thought can touch me below my skirt,
and make the skin of my white buttocks to bristle.

White –Blanca in Spanish-; the name of one of my childhood’s friend.

And the same color of your so polish, european skin.

The rainforest of your sacred Chiapas.

I need you excruciatingly.
Like a dagger into my body.

I will like to see your portrait being devoured by the flames,
but I do not have the courage to throw it to the fire,
for its image will become strongly painted in my mind,
and the effect that you exerts towards me it will be more powerful.
Dangerous.

I had a dream a couple of hours ago,
it was me,
so earthly,
being blessed by your voice,
and the tattoo you have on your left arm, being kissed by my simple mouth.

Our skin,
together,
united,
white,
is the wall where the moon lays on,
Lays in our bodies making love,
in a black hammock,
conjuring with our pneuma to the whispering of the rainforest...

LAST THOUGHTS OF JESUS

Ayad Gharbawi

October 28 2009 - Damascus

What were the last thoughts of Jesus Christ as he was crucified?
Did he not doubt God when he uttered those famous words: “My God! My God! Why hast thou forsaken me?”
It sounds plain and clear: the cry of a tortured human being who is asking why has his God, or Father, left him to suffer in this unimaginably excruciatingly painful manner?
Why didn’t God save him from this hour’s long torture?
Did Jesus forget his Mission?
Momentarily, yes he did, for he was after all, human.
Who wouldn’t in such circumstances?
The sheer agony of his throbbing torment must have clouded his mind and in effect forced him to momentarily question what the point was in his suffering.
Now, it seems that he did recover his certainty, for the  last words uttered by Jesus on earth were: “Father, into thy hands I commit my spirit.”
In other words I trust in thee, I trust the words of My Father, God.
Interestingly enough, notice that when those unnamed bandits spoke to Jesus saying: “Are you not the Messiah? Save yourself, and us.” while the second bandit said: “Jesus remember me when you come to your throne.” Jesus did not reply to the first bandit. He did not say to him that he can or that he cannot ‘save’ him or save himself from the crucifixion – he chose only to answer the second bandit by saying: “I tell you this: today you shall be with me in Paradise.”
In other words, Jesus felt that perhaps there was no more time left to explain yet again, as to why he did not ‘save’ himself and the bandit from this torture: that it was God’s will for this truth and this scene to be so enacted out in the end.
Or perhaps Jesus thought what was the point in repeating what he had already spoken a thousand times before?
Jesus did forgive those who plotted to butcher him in such a dramatically lethal manner, for a man who not only did not commit one crime, but who was the essence of justice, peace, humanity and love.
What emotional and profound mental power he needed to create in his mind the feeling of ‘forgiveness’ unto those who are in the very act of slaughtering you!
It is, once more, simply unimaginable to our everyday human brains to comprehend how any mind can produce such a feeling in these awful circumstances.
And yet, I think, there must have been within the welter of thoughts of Jesus, a feeling that it must be good to finally die, for his life had been nothing but an anguished existence.
I say this, for didn’t Jesus finally refuse to talk or respond anymore to the hypocrisy and evil of society when he refused to engage in any dialogue with Pilate? The latter asked him: “Are you the king of the Jews?” to which Jesus replied: “The words are yours.”
All Jesus had to do was to deny the accusation that he had been preaching to people proclaiming himself to be the ‘King of the Jews’. Instead, Jesus refused to deny or confirm this accusation that could well have spared him his very life.
Why did he refuse to deny the pathetic accusation?
I feel that Jesus wanted to end his Mission – as God had so wished - then and there and that is why he no longer bothered to interact with Pilate or anyone else for that matter.
This is an important theme: for there comes a moment in time when Jesus felt that enough of the oppression; enough of the hypocrisy, lies, deceptions and that he had enough of the sheer vile, evil of Man and human beings and Mankind and all of the so-called ‘Humanity’.
He had reached a sublime moment in his mind, in his existence on this lowly earth when he no longer cared for this dreadful life and when he finally yearned to return to Paradise as he did promise the second bandit.
There was no need to preach the Good Word anymore. There was no need for his majestic presence. There was no need for any more of his acts of love and compassion to the poor, the sick, the blind, the crippled, the sad, the mentally sick and to all the rest of humanity.
What an overpowering, intensely painful moment that must have been when Jesus felt that his presence was no longer necessary!
Indeed, such thoughts are utterly painful for any person. It is the most overwhelming type of Farewell that anyone can do: in our humble language and life, we can translate it as when a person finally decides to withdraw from public life.
Pilate insisted that there was no reason whatsoever for Jesus to be crucified, and ultimately murdered.
But the crowds, maddened by their rage, insisted again and again with their demand that this utterly noble soul be tortured and killed.
Pilate squirmed with a way to release Jesus unharmed.
Finally, he thought he could succeed by appeasing the mob:
“Why, what has he done? I have not found him guilty of any capital offence. I will therefore let him off with a flogging.”
And of course they refused this suggestion!
“Crucify him! Crucify him!” they screamed.
And throughout this sorrowful scenery, Jesus stood there, quiet and refusing to utter one word in his defence.
For me, the momentous time had arrived quite clearly.
It was time for Jesus to deliver his spirit back unto God and yes he would willingly offer his body like the proverbial lamb to the slaughterhouse.
Actually lambs, cows and sheep do not get tortured for hours on a crucifix as they are slaughtered.
For, in truth, the butchering of Jesus was far worse than for any animal.
And so, as Jesus must surely have gazed at the panorama in front of him at Golgotha, or the ‘Place of a Skull’ and thought that there before him lay what was called ‘Humanity’, those that he was sent to ‘save’ from their sickening sins, perhaps he thought: For them I have suffered throughout by life. For the likes of these people I must die a most horrible death.
So I was sent to heal these people who have mocked me, humiliated me, flogged me, ****** me, and ultimately I am before people who have deliberately acted to butcher my flesh and my soul.
I was sent to heal those who were my disciples and who so did betray me with the ultimate act of love and tenderness – the kiss.
I was sent to heal those who were my disciples and who so easily denied me.
I was sent to heal humanity – a humanity that did not even turn up at my death, except for a handful few before my feet.
So much for you humanity.
Do not weep for me, for you – you people out there who did not stand up for me and who denied me and who did not even come to the final act of my death – it is you who shall now weep and suffer within the rest of your lives.
“Daughters of Jerusalem, do not weep for me; no, weep for yourselves and your children.”
Is this then what Humanity is?

Mumok Museum [24]

What am I doing in Vienna,
staring at cold sterile pop art as the whole entire world we're on burns,
in a city I never wanted to go to,
doing things that never really seemed that inspiring,

& it's not that I have an antipathetic attitude towards these pathetic fools,
in fact it's actually just the opposite of that because I'm an actual optimist,
which is why I don't feel inspired by bored cyborgs their wires or their tools,
& precisely why I'd rather gather flowers than be an actor for their power,

see I find more inspiration in a single leaf on a single tree by a river bank,
than from all the colors & lines contained within the walls of this museum,
which is why when I'm asked all the time what kind of poetry I read,
I reply I don't even read poetry see I don't find it in books I find it in seasons,

It's the same reason I don't need to go to church to pray,
because I don't need my messages from God to be translated by a human,

anyways where am I at & what am I doing?

Oh yeah Im at a museum in Vienna wondering where the inspirations gone,
& why everything seems so excruciatingly tiring,
see it seems we’re on the verge of a collective mental breakdown,
at the same time like we're on the precipice of a collective enlightening,

either way the system’s short circuiting & could do with some rewiring.

Why does every rags to riches story I know of those that've made it,
end in an overpriced designer outfit at home bored all alone & jaded?

Why is Consumerism followed like a religion,
I mean we're all made of the same DNA strands regardless of name brands,
I mean everything is just carbon hydrogen & oxygen anyways,
which may explain why materialism is immanent in every independent man,

while an apocalypse seems undeniably immanent &,
we dwell in the highest heights ever built still we don't totally understand,

we don’t worship Jesus we worship Visa,
putting good credit ahead of good morals,
don’t praise Muhammed in a daze we say our grace in front of TV Dramas,
no Buddha dreams just computers screens no real friends just PayPals,

& maybe that’s why it's easier to be blind than to see,
maybe that’s why we hide in museums behind Valentino sunglasses,
because we'd rather have expense tastes than be free,
but when you’re behind any type of four walls you’re trapped in,
whether on a Penthouse terrace with Paris in Paris,
or doing hard-time for white collar crimes with Madoff in a Federal pen,
either way we’re victims of our own additions trying to buy more time,
but running out of credit as banks are collapsing & the recession is relapsing,

so why even buy things when we know not so secretly,
that only Love will set us free from these retro restrictions & their trappings,

see,

the best things in life still are still free,
& yeah liberation is expensive & self renovations are extensive,
but freedom is priceless so live a life that's righteous,
seems that the Love Pyramid is the only pyramid that’s not a Ponzi scheme,

because we are all equal even if we’re not all treated equally,
that’s why some have no clothes while others wear designer denim jeans,
but these Diesels're 2 tight on my thighs this macabre carnival has no prize,
& I can do anything I want with my life but all I really want to do is breathe,

breathe,

breathe because this lifestyle is expensive,
but freedom is priceless,
even though they'll try to capitalize off of anything,
so they market it & try to price it,

I just,
want to find a place to relax & release,
& be free of all of this,
find true love & say “Fck off to the politicians & all their politics!”,

fck their programs fck their projects,
fck their ugly agendas dressed in artificially splendid splendor,
fck their quotas & their motives for treating human beings as objects,
fck their pre-programed consumerist culture of conmen capitalists,

fck there putting machines over human beings,
just to increase the place where their profit sits,
& I say all of this regardless of who it offends because I'm not an Apologist,
I'm more of a Lyrical Pharmacist,
who serves indiscriminate prescriptions in the form of transcriptions,
in order to assist in the additions that come from positive developments,
which will occur for sure once we switch the position we currently sit in,
& restore Divine Order once more in the name of Humankind's betterment,

in the game of life I play,
they know I'm so official that I don't even need a Letterman,

I just,
don’t know what else to say,
I don’t know why I’m at this museum in Vienna,
hiding away on the top floor writing this to you on a Sunday,

on the 5th floor got it all but I just want to give more,
I just want to gift these words then make my escape,
don't you get it I don't want to get more ****t,
if anything I just want to find a way to give more of what I have away,

just want to be alone,
but also want these words to be known so the truth can be shown,
but where do you go when you’re tired totally over it all,
& all you want to do is rest & write these poems,
but even with all you have you still don't know where to go,
because even with all these things you still don't have a home...

Hello,
could you please pick up the phone,
I’m calling because I still love you,
& I want to come back to you even though I know I’m already gone,

currently on the top floor of the Mumok museum in Vienna,
the floor is the 5th to be exact,
& yeah it’s true that I don’t know where I’m going,
but what I do know is I don’t think I’m ever coming back,

online & off track,
writing more words with more rhymes,
than any other living writer in contemporary times,
& no I'm not lying 'cause I'd never lie to you & yes those are both actual facts,

& yeah that’s a fact & yeah you can Google that,
but I’m going to follow that fact with a question,
before I forget to mention,
let me just ask you what I'm doing here in Vienna?



What am I doing in Vienna,
staring at cold sterile pop art as the whole entire world we're on burns,
in a city I never wanted to go to,
doing things that never really seemed that inspiring,

& it's not that I have an antipathetic attitude towards these pathetic fools,
in fact it's actually just the opposite of that because I'm an actual optimist,
which is why I don't feel inspired by bored cyborgs their wires or their tools,
& precisely why I'd rather gather flowers than be an actor for their power,

see I find more inspiration in a single leaf on a single tree by a river bank,
than from all the colors & lines contained within the walls of this museum,
which is why when I'm asked all the time what kind of poetry I read,
I reply I don't even read poetry see I don't find it in books I find it in seasons,

It's the same reason I don't need to go to church to pray,
because I don't need my messages from God to be translated by a human,

anyways where am I at & what am I doing?

∆ Aaron LaLux ∆

from The Holy Trilogy Vol. 2: Mandalas
available worldwide 08/08/18

That face is excruciatingly beautiful
Blinding as platinum confetti
For the new year of the soul

She is my conch shell
When I hear her, I hear me

That body is hauntingly whole
Strong as a steel gerder and just as smooth
For the structure we are building

She is my mirror
When I see her, I see me

Those hands are soft as silver
Holding the pages of our life
Strongly into the new book

We will write together.

Pulsing obsidian liquid pushes through cerise veins
Excruciatingly painful, yet never ending
Dark coils wrap around your stomach
Clenching in merciless vexation for unknown reasons
Ruthless needles sew an inferno in your heart
Blazing fire consisting of flames which jump
And ice. Pure cold solid ice
Is glided over you
So that your whole frame crumbles with shivers.
And all your mind can do
Is beg. Beg for this moment to be over with a single tear.

I pledge my absolute blind-faith and non-wavering allegiance
to the Flag and the totalitarian, oligarchic Viertes ***** (fourth Kingdom) for which it stands,
one nation wholly divided in any and all ways conceivable,
hell bent on Global Military-Socioeconomic Conquest in the name of the same God as our enemies
with liberty and justice for those who can afford it (Read: the excruciatingly wealthy).

So, you think I am a dark evil poet eh? Well, get a load of this! What would you write about if everyone you loved, your mom, your dad, your stepmom and your wife all died before you? You wouldn’t exactly be writing about rainbows and butterflies would you?! No, you would write about death, sorrow, and excruciatingly philosophical things too. So quit being so judgmental!  

Crows, sitting, watching you die
Watching, waiting, to feast on carcass
Your carcass they feed on

When I had to leave I felt like I was leaving a part of me behind.
Like I had found some amazing new piece to the puzzle of myself
but I couldn't add it until I finished the rest.

It would end up being the last piece that brought everything together.
You were the piece that completed me.

But I had to leave.
And it hurt so bad.

Now.
I have this empty feeling.
Because the gap in this puzzle left a hole in my heart
That can not be filled with anything from anyone else
except you.

This longing to be with you has taken over me.

Everything I do, say, or think
makes it's way back to you.

Life is brutal. mimicking the way I cant be with you.
The beauty in this world vanished
when I discovered how beautiful my own world was
and you,
darling,
are my world;
that I can't be apart of.

After realizing how excruciatingly hideous this world is
and finding so much better
and dealing with not being able to be with you,

it has exhausted any drop of energy I had left in me.
Drained the light from my eyes
and placed this ache in my heart.

And Baby, I miss you so much.
The way the sun misses the moon,
or how a desert misses the rain.
Like a cactus misses a hug
or a venus fly trap misses a kiss.

"LOOK!" So quietly you choose to speak...
I hear the sweet vibrations of your voice
my eyes lift to search a dark night sky
and you say, "There! Did you see?"
miles distant, shadowy light flashes
flickering over the mountain shades
lightning slicing through that atmosphere
and I answer you, "Yes.
"I wish that the thunderstorm was here."
you respond with your enigmatic silence
yet still I strain my ears
hoping to somehow maybe hear something from inside of you
even just a faded echo of your unshared thoughts
because you are my deepest desire
it's you alone that I most desperately crave
I'd sacrifice everything I have in this life for you
for only just a fleeting moment, I would
a moment in which you were solely mine,
worth more than I could ever have to give
my very soul cries out, agonizing, for you
my heart begs for your love to fuel it's own love
my flesh, my bones and blood burn to feel the warmth of your embrace
my lips quiver at only a thought of brushing against yours
my entire being tingles and aches to find solace in your affections
I'd rip my very soul from my deepest depths and place it in your hands
my heart I'd also eagerly tear right out of my chest
my promise, my solemn vow I'd gift with my bleeding wounds
never would I- could I, forsake you
if I could keep you, keep you, I would, indeed
a treasure I'd never relinquish willingly
passion, grace, unconditional love, yours forever and free
A picture of these, my most fervent of prayers and dreams...
split- second bursts of color and light
electricity, a bringer, a conveyor of destruction,
birthing fires in the brush and trees, and, mocking, denying me my love...
in that far away storm, a creeping portrayal; image, stretching wide:
I see a vision of your cherished face
I feel unbearable, disabling pains commencing
there's unfathomable sorrow, misery within me
I realize my heart is about to crack, break, shatter to dust and ash
no mind to how great and vast my love for you
no heed to my willingness to give up everything; anything
I glimpse it all in that fraction of a second
those stars; twinkling eyes, tell me an entire story, at the speed of light...:
so unfortunate, that you won't be mine now,
never else either, shall you ever belong to me
my gaze is drawn away, and departs from the place where the mysterious and celestial dwell
relinquish their view of power unleashed, blinking far off, in the sky above
I turn my head; swivel towards you,
for dire, is my need to take in every aspect of your beloved face...
maybe I'd misunderstood; maybe I'd been mistaken,
maybe a bit tired, rather easily confused,
or perhaps, it was a lie that the lightning storm's vision, sly and sneaking, portrayed...
but I can see the tangible, physical you, before me right now,
and, the truth - - -
(which I cannot positively know, for certain,
perplexed and having some doubts...)
- - - an obvious, unpleasant, ugly reality...
my tears have already begun brimming, as I watch, through a blurred void,
and prepare, because that mouth of yours is, once again, opening to speak
a bullet, slivers, pierce through to my soul when I hear you softly utter my name
"Alex, what's wrong? What is your problem now?"
how can you be so oblivious, as I feel so transparent? I ask,
but only to myself; not in such a way for you to actually hear me,
giving you, instead, yet another of my head shakes; slow, speechless reply...
I'm broken, and it's painful when you look at me,
what if you were to notive the sadness and hungry longing buried within my eyes?
please, please don't you look at me!
all of your questions, I'm incapable of answering,
never could I openly share with you how I so intensely feel
my fear of rejection has given me an answer in your stead
and, thus, this love shall go on only inside of me, in silence, secretly
despair, loneliness, burdens so heavy; wicked,
thick enough to rot me inside-out...
torn down, destroyed by love; my very own love - - -
(mine, a love undescribable... immense, immeasreable love;
love which was borne of my seeking indifference, but finding you...)
- - - until my savior of death comes,
will be working diligently to ******, slowly and bitterly, my life force
and impatiently, I'll live out the remainder of my days waiting and suffering;
looking forward to the moment when my black-robed executor shall, at long last, come,
and set me free of these suffocating bindings scarring, straining my heart...
for without you to hold, I am empty and lack purpose
I've no other hope on which to let the weight of my hurt bear
still hoping, inanely, for some unforseeable chance;
a growth of buds sprouting forth from the blooms of God's grace...
"Alex...?" oh, the way you say my name...!
"Say it if you have something to say!"
but still, once again, I say nothing at all,
just give another of my small, weak, neck-twist type of shakes;
a minuscule gesture that gets neither of us closer to anything, or anywhere...
I wipe away, quickly, a single tear that's escaped to leak down my face; slide down my cheek
you are the happiness of my world; my everything,
and yet, here I am, excruciatingly frightened, and left alone with that fear
paralyzing terror, stalking, menacing me into remaining silent;
horrors feeding my tentative heart cruel and brusing, nasty notions,
convincing me it's my destiny to uncover a crushing ruin of defeat, unavoidable,
if ever I was to make an effort to reach out
pitiable... I'm a motionless, frozen captive to its stagnating, discouraging taunts,
a demon, so intent upon pushing me to my hope's final demise...
until then, I'm just some pathetic subject to ludacrous torment; prisoner to torture
shuttering, I hear gleeful whispers in my ear - a surreal voice saying that all my fears could,
maybe, just possibly, maybe, be a confining falsehood; a tower of cruel lies...
...but then again, how could I ever find out and know for sure...?
condemned I am, by my own terrors; haunting fears of loneliness and rejection,
and so, I suppose, I'll never discover what you truly think and feel...
as I sit here, the passenger in your car, I'm so desperately wishing,
~ wishing that my lips and tongue could remember how they used to work;
~ wishing, so fervently, that my mouth, sewed, cemented, and stapled shut,
would somehow break itself open, and then, free, suddenly speak,
something! anything! any words at all!
a simple sentence could potentially be sufficient; could be enough to break these chains, to set my thoughts free...
perhaps, all it would take, language - me, bringing myself to fearlessly say,
"John, do you think you could ever love me?"
but no, I stay void of speech or sound
for now that's it, and there's no more to do - that I can do...
maybe the strength to ask will arrive on another, different day,
only, I hope, that if that could be true, it won't be too far off from now,
because, by then, it may have gotten to be too late...
SILENTLY, secretly, my very pulse screaming of my emotions;
declaring, to no one other than myself, my feelings, my love for you...
and without my vocalization, you just may never know,
but still, sweet man, my beautiful John, I so very greatly love, love, love,
everything about you...

Ever since she was young,
She heard stories about what happens after death.
She heard stories about heaven and hell, and everywhere in between.
She heard stories about forgiveness and salvation and redemption.
So when she decided to greet death as a friend one lonely night
On her bathroom floor, she thought she knew what to expect.
As her head leaned against the porcelain of her bathtub, she
Waited for the warm feeling to overtake the chill that came
From watching her blood pour onto the linoleum. But death
Didn't greet her like an old friend, or even like a relative
That she saw once a year at the annual Christmas party.
In fact, death didn't greet her at all.
If anything, it seemed as though she became death.
From her vantage point, slumped against the back
Wall of her bathroom, she could see her razor blade
On the far side of the sink, and the cut running
Vertically down her right arm, open and exposed.
She tried to move her head, then her arm, then any body
Part, but her brain seemed to no longer be in command.
She waited, and waited, and waited.
She watched the sun creep down the tiles on the wall,
And then back up again, and then back down,
Until she heard a sound at the door.
A distant knocking ricocheted off the
Walls of the bathroom and a soft voice followed.
She tried to speak, to scream, but she remained silent.
She heard footsteps growing louder throughout the house
Until finally they went silent, and a hand pushed on the door.
A scream, a shrill blood-curdling scream followed.
And then talking, and more knocking, and more voices,
And more screaming, and more footsteps, and more voices.
Until finally, men in white uniforms entered the bathroom,
Lifting her from her position against the wall. She tried
To speak, again, but nothing came out. They
Laid her on her back and suddenly her world went black.
She couldn't calculate the time spent in that bag because before
They zipped it up, they shut her half-opened eyes.
She heard more footsteps, and then cars, and then doors,
And then metal on metal, and then voices, and then doors.
Eventually, everything went still. No more footsteps,
No more voices, no more doors, no more screaming,
No more talking, no more knocking, no more screaming.
Everything remained still for a long time.
Longer than she could even care to remember.
She imagined this was death, the absolute end,
The kind of silence that wrapped around her like a coat.
But then everything wasn't silent.
If she was able, she would have sat straight
Up in a cold sweat, looking around frantically.
But she remained still and quiet as the soft noise
Made it's way around her eardrum like a vine.
She felt something touching her face, something
Soft and thin and pointed.
She focused on the object.
And then realized, it was a root.
The roots of the grass and the roots of the flowers
That were growing above her had finally come to
Reclaim their rightful space in the cold earth.
She wanted to scream out apologies to the roots,
And beg them to just let her go back to where she came from.
She begged the earth to spit her out like a rotten piece of fruit,
Back into the bathroom she so desperately wanted to escape.
But the earth was set on taking back what was rightfully theirs,
And that included her.
Slowly, over an excruciatingly long period of time, the roots
and branches and dirt found their way onto every surface
Of her once pale skin. It wrapped around her neck, nestled
Into her crevices, and poked at her soft spots, until there
Wasn't an inch that wasn't graced with nature's touch.
So she stopped begging the earth to leave her, and
Started welcoming the earth to embrace her,
Until finally, it claimed her again.

I love you to the moon and back, yet on earth, I hate you back and forth.

I am happy with a suppressed sense of agony. So ecstatically vibrant, yet miserably tormented.

I live day to day, walking and “maturing”, yet move no further than beyond the grave of a past, long dead and gone.

I’m awake, don’t you see?

When I wake, I open my eyes in a helpless sleep. Outside my tiny being, I see nothing but me.

I call myself a mother, or a father, but never gave birth to a daughter.

We call ourselves a “family”, but exist so disconnected — wavering and dislodged, apart and separated. Smiling resentfully, painfully, excruciatingly.

All for the cameras of course.

I am respectful — to be respected! I shower in lies, and cover you too, so I need not see any offensive residue.

I am a strong person, cowering and contracted to the slightest sight of error.

No vulnerability.

I’m brave, don’t you see? A plastic rock, standing impervious to the sea.

I love you, I love you, I love you. But I don’t see you, nor hear you, don’t know you.

I understand you, of course, “I understand everything!!!!” But I don’t see you, nor hear you, don’t know you.

I know you, I know you, I know you. Yet I don’t see you, nor hear you, don’t know you.

You’re crazy, poor child! Why can’t you lie like we do!?

Why can’t you NOT feel like we do!?

Why can’t you NOT see as we do!?

Why can’t you just “forgive” and “accept”? Take it all, all our objects in their entirety and forget the emptiness of your soul. Sacrifice yourself, for you need not forget, we gave it ALL.

Don’t you know yet? This world is OURS to own. A “truth” to be known.

Your perception; a mere fallacy to be shown.

Don’t you know yet?

Everyone agrees.

We stand before an army of validation, against your small speck of reality.

All memory, all harmony, all said and done -- buried beneath.

We are the bringers of truth, the proclaimers of wisdom and sound guidance. And you, our poor child, just a little voice to be silenced.

A lost soul, drifting outside the “right” path.

Reach for our direction.

You’ll travel upon a dusty, well-trodden track, and with feet now imprinted with scars. Rest assured though, for we travelled there too; feet too ***** to bear and too numb to care.

Take our confident hands, our dearest child. We’ll lead you through a clear path with tainted feet.

You’ll fall and we’ll rise in disbelief.

You’ll scream and it’ll only echo our fears.

Dancing is a way of life, dancing is life. Some say you crawl before you walk, I say you dance before you breathe. How do I explain the feeling of; spinning, jumping, running? I can’t. It is indescribable. Dancing is such a magical thing, you can speak to the people who can’t speak, and you can feel for the people who can’t feel, you dance for the people whom will never be able to dance. Most don’t understand where I am coming from. Why I am not sure, but if a person stopped and listened. They will hear the music of life and where there is music there is a dance, the dance of life…

This dance may be one of the hardest to get through; the preparation will be excruciatingly painful. But everyone does it. Everyone hears the music at some point. Have you ever listened to Beethoven? In his symphonies there is a pattern. It starts out slow; it gradually gets louder and louder and then BOOM! The ******. Beethoven’s master pieces are a replica of life. Think about it, really hard, and listen to the music.

Can you feel your foot tapping? The sound repeating in your head? This is the first realization of the dance. Now your swaying back and forth, like the trees in an autumn breeze. This is the second step, but the first motion. I want you to get up and throw the tips of your fingers to the stars in heaven. Then pull them back down. And breathe.

What is it that you feel? Perhaps relaxation or maybe happiness, possibly anger or frustration? Whatever you feel don’t let it go away. The feelings you get when you dance show the audience that you are human. Like all humans you will make a mistake you will fall, you will trip, you will tumble to the floor of the stage. That means nothing and don’t let anyone tell you differently. It means nothing because, without those mistakes there will be nothing to improve.

Improvements. Simple things that can change your dance. Keep your arms firm and your head held high. Your arms are the roads to your heart. You let them slack and fall, your heart gets crushed. Try holding a friends hand to keep them firm. Your friends will always be there through this dance. Don’t let your head drop for you head is the door to your mind. If you let someone in you lose personality. Your dance becomes someone else’s. Those are the only things you can mess up, but for some reason these mistakes happen more than once.

In the end when the music stops and the crowd cheers at your achievements. You know that your dance has made an impact maybe in more ways than one. Dancing is a way to communicate to show who you are. So when you hear the music, start tapping your foot, sway back and forth and, dance. Dance just not for you but for the people that can’t. That is the dance of life. Your life.

Before I sleep or when everyone around me is asleep,

I go to an empty street. I wear a coat to protect myself from the cold.

It's a nice cold.

The type that kisses your cheek makes you shiver a little and fills you with giddy.

In the middle of this street is a lamp post; I like to weave words and art from this lamp post.

But I need to go back to slumber

But I need to  go back and play with numbers

And when I don't have these things to worry about

The light goes out

I wait for it to turn back on

Most of the time, it doesn't

I play with the wires

Or maybe perhaps I should go looking for other lampposts and fires

I try to call friends

But it all leads to dead ends

The light of the lamppost will not come back

So I try to make in the dark

And it is excruciatingly hard

All that comes out is a horrible chord

Outside the street, everyone tells me the song is beautiful

But I what I still hear is bad and inexcusable

I'd wish that what happens on that street

Stays on that street

Because the darkness of that lamppost seems to follow me wherever I walk

So, I decided to pause and stop on the sidewalk

Maybe the solution to this darkness is simply changing a wire

Or moving on to find another flare of light

i have poetry that doesn't deserve to be written on paper, metaphors that are so strong that my pen quivers when i try to write them down. they only deserve to be written between your legs with the tip of my clever tongue as the pen. it is the type of poetry that can only be recited with your moans in the background, and with your nails digging wounds into my back. i want to watch your reaction as you die a million ecstatic deaths while i write each and every word of my ****** poetry at the back of your ears, on your neck, on your collarbone that shyly peeks through your shirt and the middle of your ******* where it always feels like home. i want to worship constellation of stars on your back with kisses. every kiss serves as a period, every stroke of my tongue is an exclamation point. i want you to curse my name and pull on my hair as you feel my kisses go, oh so excruciatingly slowly, up your inner thighs. there are not enough metaphors for me to tell you how beautiful you are to me, but here i am still trying to praise you with everything i have.

Be careful little one

You have the frozen globe of existence at your Fingertips
Marking Tracing Melting  oh so slowly much too fast

Diligently your dead eyes glance gracefully into infinite bright spotlights
Your fragile razor-edged smile’s tearing the corners of your lips

Insecurely holding yourself excruciatingly precise

Marking repugnant lines down your too young face
Spine’s held ram-rod straight pretending to keep your world afloat on a

Butterflies listless fluttering wings

The tiniest misstep reverberating inside your hollowed breastbone

In.. In… In…. Inconspicuous

Comparable in the manner of a lamp bumping the floor two houses up
Breath hitched tattooed pulse brings life to your porcelain pores

Tip-toeing on egg-shells of yearning aspiration

Flinching at the cold intangible fear that’s grabbed your hand
Makes you come to life a stones throw too freedom
Diamonds ruthlessly rip into soles and ****** toes imprisoned in silk

Wine stained lips sneer at rows of red velvet

They grasp everything you've strove for, they are the power
Passion, adrenaline, up most urgency sweeping you away

The most elegant anguish rushes out forming awestruck wild abandon
Waiting your whole life for this moment boiling down to now

Day after day year after year

Pupils blown wide it’s do or die spread your arms and take your bow
Self-loathing narcissist

You only dance as if the the sky is falling when you feel all is beyond repair

Never have you been more *beautiful

They also came for you in the middle of the night,
But found that you had gone to Buenos Aires.
The Guardia Civil questioned your wife in her home,
Surrounded by your four young children, in loud but respectful tones.

They waved their machine guns about for a while,
But left no visible scars on your children,
Or on your young wife, whom you
Left behind to raise them alone.

You had been a big fish in a little pond,
A successful entrepreneur who made a very good living,
By buying cattle to be raised by those too poor
To buy their own who would raise them for you.

They would graze them, use them to pull their plows
And sell their milk, or use it to feed their too numerous children.  
When they were ready for sale, you would take them to market,
Obtain a fair price for them, and equally split the gains with those who raised them.

All in all, it was a good system that gave you relative wealth,
And gave the poor the means to feed their families and themselves.
You reputation for unwavering honesty and fair dealing made many
Want to raise cattle for you, and many more sought you out to settle disputes.

On matters of contracts and disputed land boundaries your word was law.
The powerless and the powerful trusted your judgment equally and sought you out
To settle their disputes. Your judgment was always accepted as final because
Your fairness and integrity were beyond question. “If Manuel says it, it is so.”

You would honor a bad deal based on a handshake and would rather lose a
Fortune than break your word, even when dealing with those far less honorable
Than yourself. For you a man was only as good as his word, and you knew that the
Greatest legacy you could leave your children was an unsullied name.  

You were frugal beyond need or reason, perhaps because you did not
Want to flaunt your relative wealth when so many had nothing.
It would have offended your social conscience and belied your politics.
Your one extravagance was a great steed, on which no expense was spared.

Though thoughtful, eloquent and soft-spoken, you were not shy about
Sharing your views and took quiet pride in the fact that others listened
When you spoke.  You were an ardent believer in the young republic and
Left of center in your views. When the war came, you were an easy target.

There was no time to take your entire family out of the country, and
You simply had too much to lose—a significant capital ******* in land and
Livestock. So you decided to go to Argentina, having been in the U.S. while
You were single and preferring self exile in a country with a familiar language.

Your wife and children would be fine, sheltered by your capital and by
The good will you had earned. And you were largely right.
Despite your wife’s inexperience, she continued with your business, with the
Help of your son who had both your eye for buying livestock and your good name.

Long years after you had gone, your teenaged son could buy all the cattle he
Wanted at any regional fair on credit, with just a handshake, simply because
He was your son. And for many years, complete strangers would step up offering a
Stern warning to those they believed were trying to cheat your son at the fairs.

“E o fillo do Café.” (He is the son of the Café, a nickname earned by a
Distant relative for to his habit of offering coffee to anyone who visited his
Office at a time when coffee was a luxury). That was enough to stop anyone
Seeking to gain an unfair advantage from dad’s youth and inexperience.

Once in Buenos Aires, though, you were a small fish in a very big pond,
Or, more accurately, a fish on dry land; nobody was impressed by your name,
Your pedigree, your reputation or your way of doing business. You were probably
Mocked for your Galician accent and few listened or cared when you spoke.

You lived in a small room that shared a patio with a little schoolhouse.
You worked nights as a watchman, and tried to sleep during the day while
Children played noisily next door. You made little money since your trade was
Useless in a modern city where trust was a highly devalued currency.

You were an anachronistic curiosity. And you could not return home.
When your son followed you there, he must have broken your heart;
You had expected that he would run your business until your return; but he
Quit school, tired of being called roxo (red) by his military instructors.

It must have been excruciatingly difficult for you.  Dad never got your pain.
Ironically, I think I do, but much too late. Eventually you returned to Spain to
A wife who had faithfully raised your children alone for more than ten years and was
No longer predisposed to unquestioningly view your will as her duty.

Doubtless, you could no more understand that than dad could understand
You. Too much Pain. Too many dreams deferred, mourned, buried and forgotten.
You returned to your beloved Galicia when it was clear you would not be
Persecuted after Generalisimo Franco had mellowed into a relatively benign tyrant.

People were no longer found shot or beaten to death in ditches by the
Side of the road. So you returned home to live out the remainder of your
Days out of place, a caricature of your former self, resting on the brittle,
Crumbling laurels of your pre Civil War self, not broken, but forever bent.

You found a world very different from the one you had built through your
Decency, cunning, and entrepreneurship. And you learned to look around
Before speaking your mind, and spent your remaining days reined in far more
Closely than your old steed, and with no polished silver bit to bite upon.

I want to forget
Not have to worry about
What was just forgotten
From a mere 10 seconds ago

The time involved is an
Excruciatingly long prospect
Minutes being not finite
Measurements any longer

I'll refuse to leave this place
This room, much less
For at least two days
Nothing but hydration and cigarettes

Wonder aloud about anomie
And if I'm afflicted
A ridiculous thought
Of course I am

The benefit
of challenging anything
too comfortably established
isn’t so much
some clichéd grand expansion
of one’s worldview, but rather
a well-warranted reminder
that anyone claiming to have found
any conclusions is very likely
full of ****.

I love you dearly, humanity, but
you discover the world
like a toddler discovers his own foot,
and cling
to obsolete sensibilities
like trying to justify your belief in Santa Claus.

And you hate what you find
when you look too long,
because
you say that you discover the world
but what you so stupidly, so humanly
overlook is that the world bears herself
with no inhibitions, and even though
you can’t see everything immediately,
it’s all there; she has
nothing to prove to you. Yet the mystery
you so excruciatingly choose to maintain
is that even though the earth bares her skin
unashamed, you find her ****** absurd and
clothe her blatant body
in preconception, tragically dedicating
the decoding of your existence
to finding out
what truly lies beneath.

So perhaps, humanity, you should
embrace those who **** you off,
because you cushion your soul
with every reason to distance yourself
from any realization
that there is no inherent parallel
between every finite question
and the eternal answer,
unsatisfied with
the tantalizing ellipsis
the universe leaves you, and that the very fact
I even formed a sentence
is punctuated
by my mortality.

You're the sun.

So beautifully bright that I have to stare, even though it hurts horribly.

I live in Antarctica, where you only light up my world half of the time and then leave me to suffocate in darkness for months on end.



You're a deer.

Unaware of me observing your adroitness from the dark depths of this brazen bracken which conceals me.

If I make any sort of sudden movement, I know you will sprint away into the trees because you're so afraid of letting anyone get close to you.



You're a puppetmaster.

Pulling at my oh-so-vulnerable heartstrings in the most musical way while creating the most fantastic and addictive art.

Your fingers are magic to me, and their slightest movement can either plunge me into endless despair or **** me up to the most heavenly of all cloud nines.



You're a siren.

Drawing me in with your sweet song only to ultimately unravel me.

You taunt me with colorful hints of false hope, making me wonder if you're really that cruel, or if you're merely  unstable.



You're a child.

So oblivious to the obvious, yet incredibly innocent.

You brighten my day with your silly antics and sweet gestures alike, but you're too enthralled in your own little world to ever notice.



You're Doctor Jekyll.

Always changing your face from friendly to arrogant and asinine, then right back again.

Sometimes I wonder how I could love someone like Mister Hyde, until you turn into the nice guy again and remind me.



You're a weaver.

Excruciatingly twisting the threads of me into the fabric of my being, leaving little streaks of sorrow and joy.

You have shaped this tapestry in the most painful and beautiful way, and without your unknowing influence, it would surely be unrecognizable from its current battered, but unique, condition.





You're a thorny rose I keep trying to pick.



Sending me away ******, bleary-eyed, and smelling sweet.



I wish you could understand how much I need to carry you home.

I had woken up to a text from the boy that morning, something that rarely happened. We decided when this started, months ago, that it wasn’t a relationship, just...well, I didn’t know anymore. I knew that when I looked at him the back of my throat felt swollen and when his eyelashes brushed my cheek it hurt deep inside my chest but I also knew that his eyes wandered to half the girls he knew and that he had a reputation of being a boy you couldn’t get to stay but did any of that matter? I hadn’t read the text yet and I didn’t know if I should.

His name was Josh and his hands were calloused and he liked bitter wines and reading, which makes him sound soft, but he wasn’t or at least that’s not how I saw him. We had met in the basement of a party two years ago, when I was sixteen and afraid of boys when they had too much to drink and he was seventeen and had promised to be a designated driver. Being the only two sober people at a party felt like being in our own little bubble, our own world, and I liked it. I liked him right away, not in a romantic way, just in a friend way and if that sounds childish then it’s because I am. We went for a walk that night because I like being outside more than anything and I liked the way he agreed to it and I liked the way his arms looked in his faded blue t-shirt and I liked that he laughed easily and openly and I liked that he made me want to smile too.

I guess I should admit that part of the reason I wasn’t drinking was that I knew the calorie count of every single bottle of alcohol and I knew that some drugs would make me hungry and food wasn’t something that I wanted to be part of my life at that time and smiling was a rare thing then. But he made my cheeks perk up and things felt a little better than okay for the first time in months, maybe years, and that night was the first time we kissed even though it didn’t really mean anything because despite my attraction to him and despite the way his hands wandered almost immediately, we were still strangers to one another and we were just teenagers. After the kiss, which was only a few seconds and didn’t actually elicit a huge amount of excitement for either of us, he leaned his forehead against mine and squeezed my shoulders in a way that felt strangely intimate and encouraging. I didn’t know how to react to this so I laughed awkwardly and we walked back to the party with folded arms so that our hands couldn’t brush.

Within a few weeks I met his soft-cheeked little brother who had chubby hands that gripped my fingers with the tight urgency of a kid who can’t talk yet and I met his mother who had the same dark eyes and olive skin as Josh and I could see the resemblance right away and she hugged me right he introduced us. His house became my second home; mine was always cold and empty and I was never really happy being there-- and my skin began to smell like his. We never went to his room and the three times he came to my house, he never saw mine. There were no rules for this, it just didn’t feel like the thing to do. There was no real romance between us, even though we did have a connection that was almost palpable and he had a few girlfriends and I had a few boyfriends and two girlfriends and we cried on eachother more nights than either of us would like to admit.  In May, he graduated and I watched quietly as a swarm of girls hugged him and kissed his cheek and posed for photos with him and I realized that it was jealousy that I felt, growing inside of me and wrapping itself around my windpipe and I was surprised. He smiled sheepishly at me from across the gym and I gave a little wave and when he looked away I ran to the bathroom and vomited  up the clementine and toast I had eaten for breakfast. Josh was waiting for me when I got back and I was embarrassed but he smiled just like he always had and we went home together. That night, when everyone else had left, we sat in his basement where we spent so much time together and his hand found mine and I felt all the blood rush out my body and every single nerve of my body was tense and within a few minutes we were kissing, for the second time, and I straddled him on the couch and we made out until my body felt like it was melting into nothing and when we finally stopped I leaned against him and when I looked into his face his eyes were shining more than usual. I realized he was crying and just like a year ago, I was deeply uncomfortable and I picked up my shirt from the floor and pulled it on and went upstairs and left him with tears streaking down his cheeks.

Nothing was the same after that and sometimes I thought this was good but some of the time, most of the time, it felt bad. That summer we avoided eachother and when I saw his mom she tucked my hair behind my ear and said she missed me and I would smile and tell her how busy I was and I could tell from the crinkling of her eyes that she didn’t believe me. She had Josh when she was only 15 and I felt close to her because of this; she was very young and very beautiful and she was a good mother. Maria, that was her name, which I thought felt nice in my mouth and she was the first to notice that I always finished dinner with plate more full than empty and she would sometimes slip a piece of gum into my hand when I ate too much and had to slip away to the bathroom with the water running and stick my head in the toilet like I taught myself to when I was far too young.

Anyway, in late September I was walking to the park a few miles from my house and there was Josh, perched on the fence, smiling at me and with no explanation we fell back into things all over again and he took me in his arms and pulled me in close. I realized that the other half of my heart was back and I had felt empty for the past few months and that’s when our relationship limbo started. We slept together for the first time later that week, and walking into his room for the first time was like breaking a spell. I felt a little chill pass through me and I realized that nothing could ever go back to the way it was before because I had a ****** in my hand and seeing his room was like seeing a little bit into him and as he tugged at my hand I was suddenly unsure of what we were about to do but I silenced those thoughts and allowed him to push me back onto his bed. Unlike the night of his graduation he was on top this time, and it was different from the other times I had been with other boys because it was like he was a part of me, and maybe this isn’t something you share but he was the first boy to make me *** and it felt fitting that he made me feel alive in so many ways, this being the most physically apparent. I lay on his chest afterwards and stroked the chest that I had cried on too many times and everything felt utterly right and I hoped that he felt it too. He fell asleep quickly like boys always do and his eyelids were delicately purple in a way that reminded me of eggshells and bruises and he was attractive in a way that made me a little sad. I kissed his silky eyelids right then, impulsively. He woke up for a moment and he smiled at me but he drifted off again and I was excruciatingly happy and that’s when Maria opened the door.

Yes, sir, I kissed her
On the mouth in the back of the bus
It was dark so I reached over and touched her
In a place where my fingers had never felt before
You bet your life, I kissed her
And guess what? She kissed me back
I 'bout had me a heart attack
When I felt her tongue on mine

She always has your eyes, darling one
It's how I know it's true
That there will never be another one
Who can do the things you do
No matter who she is
My, love, she always has your eyes
For your eyes are her eyes
It's not a surprise

Yes, sir, it hurt when she left me
I ain't ashamed to admit
Wonderin' how long until she'd forget me
You're ******* right she'll forget
You're best served with the truth, my foe
There's a lot you'll never know
So much I'll never tell you
For now it's time to go...

...go along, little dove, move along the straight and narrow. Bring along your bow and arrow. It's a small gate and few are the wasted who have tasted it's taste then wasted it's a band of jobless ruffians walking in a straight line, eyes locked straight ahead and determined to arrive at their destination. Dressed in monk's robes, their attire was not the only thing about them which conjured the appearance of a band of Tibetan's finest.
     Make haste! Go along, sweet caterpillar of the dawn. Gather your spawn and meet us on the backyard lawn. Make it quick, make your move, make every guitar pickin' note count. This is your time, La Penguin, it is the dawn of your destiny. The pawn of the mystic's I have placed upon a square I am not legally entitled to inhabit, figuring you would not notice it and even if you did you might not realize I was playing the match illegally. Royal eggs hatch regally, they are a meal of value and worth.
     Plath's dead voice recites her own poetry in the 74th century throught the medium of streaming music, which is every man's birthright. The inhabitants of this far off century are each and every soul well versed in song and voice, rythmn and melody, the poignant lyric in the third verse or during the chorus, their collective history was the culmination of thousands upon thousands of years totally absorbed in every aspect of MUSIC. To say they worshipped music would be to stop somewhat short of being the absolute truth but we listen anyway, we always do, good morning, I am the voice in your head. Have you finally befriended me? Finally accepted me and maybe even appreciated me? Regardless. I am the voice in your head. Do you want to know whose voice is in MY head? That's right: YOURS! Do you think this makes me any happier than the prospect of my being the voice in your head it's complicated, I'll grant that. But now that you're on a roll, what say we write some more crap poetry?

Try not to rhyme
No one does that anymore, that's reason enough
Yes, there is a secret meaning behind all this
You were not on my mind when I wrote this crap
If things had gone my way I could be making excruciatingly
Joe, where you going with that gun in your hand?
I love all you *******, I really do
Some of you are genuine artists
Some of you can't write for ****
But that don't make it bad, does it?

Who is she?
She was a worm that crawled in your ear
One summer night while you slept in bed
Dreaming of the day your son
Shot you in the head
Then left you for dead
Wake up, David, wake up!
Fear not the tarantula, David, wake up!
For his bite doth not ****

...go along, feline substitute, your portmanteau is waiting. where are those people now who were so recently uncharitable? They've all been little boys before, every soldier in the field, every face behind bars, they've all had baths and someone to dry them off. Surely this must be? I am too wasted to go on.

Naya kudro. Reo o hart bonite. Rega in gavida, gavida. E qualid plea, senior away cast them in fee, el mquee.
Hula sona karay. Shis attune heh, hey hey, the grinavorte, honeas delong. O, fate be a queen. Allah's mortal today. The name. I don't want a name. Oh, no. The glad. Uh, uhhhhhhhh, uh, I'm madalam...you know....it's grand.......these sandwiches, they're grand.........beam me up, Scotty, you know the rest of the joke........Just like drums in an African rainforest, glistening with moisture, the rain mixing up the rythmns as drops make contact with skin. .........holding in past for the trial........coming in a car.........what a................you run, you running so much higher, climbing on a wire, you know..........you run, you running so much faster and now you're...........holding in past for the time......holding and caring for strange..........what catches your eye.........

I only thought I was too wasted to go on.
But this time
It's a for sure deal
I
am
too
wasted
to
continue

...to be continued

I can't write anything
    that doesn't sound slightly stupid
            anymore
                    my words haven't kept up
with my maturing. Or so it seems.

         maybe I'm just outgrowing
   the stupid words I used to use to describe
things. but maybe is also another stupid word.

maybe maybe maybe
          the word dances off my tongue. which is totally
(completely) repulsive.
        why should a word
that sits on the top of everyone's
        tongue
               waiting to strike
dance. it's a drug they don't warn you about
     ****** if you use it ****** if you don't.
        
the next best excuse
                     to 'I don't know'-- couldn't tell you how many times
i've held back because i clutched that word
     like it was a part of me.

maybe. here it is again. maybe, I thought that "maybe"
     really was a part of me. it's hard to distance yourself
from something so excruciatingly
     fitting.
there was something about "maybe" that just felt
necessary. as though certainty never stood a chance.

the worst of things being that we were all defined by our cowardice and that we couldn't stand
       the thought of being wrong (not even once.)

nobody  saying anything
with any certainty. they knew how fragile
the world was. none of us were
strong enough to deal with being any shade of WRONG.
we're all too insecure to be throwing around words like that anyways.

Just like every other day
She comes home to face her misery,
Numb from the daily horrors
Of the excruciatingly long day.
She gazes at at the picture
of her baby brother and sister,
With whom she never got to meet.
She begins to cry out
"Why me, and not them;
This useless waste of a life?"
Ready to join them on the other side,
She raises the pills to her mouth,
With the alcohol ready to force them down.
Suddenly she hears a whisper
Calling softly but strongly, saying
"Do it for us. Be strong for those who cannot,
and we promise we will do the same for you!"
she lowered the pills away from her mouth,
and dumped out every last drop of alcohol.
And with that , her strength was restored,
And lived on on honor of those who couldn't