Attempt 1

What is the core?  Who is at the center?  I can't be so simply defined, can I?  Do I really have to ask others who I am, or even how I am, to know myself?

When it comes to knowing myself it all just seems so superficial.
I like orange.  Meaningful lyrics.  Designing.  Building Relationships.  People.  Relaxing?  Engaging conversation.  What is this a sad excuse for a dating profile?  Get me out of here!  I don't want to hear about myself from my flimsy fingers!

Safety from False Security

Would you rather be complacent or compliant?  Would you rather someone speak for you in moments of silence or be lost in the shadows?

There is darkness in this world but we're not made of shadowy figures.  No one is all absence and we cannot be completely present.  I don't know everything and neither do you.  I'm trying to practice compassion but when I hear you saying it's one way or the other my ears become clouded.  I'm trying to practice grace and mercy, but I don't hear it in your tone.

I'm trying to practice unification though I know He said He said he came as a servant's sword.  Family values is not the gospel that I follow.  Though I may often travel the way of least resistance, I am not seeking to walk down padded hallways during my stay on this planet.  I just haven't figured out how to be vocal without being a condemning voice.  I am trying to be the incarnation of the Incarnate Word and it's not an easy task.  I am seeking to be hands and feet but I recognize my heart is flawed.

You may say we make mistakes but I know the truth.  I do more than make mistakes, sometimes I'm just downright hurtful.  The pain I've caused isn't always inadvertent; sometimes I'm transferring the bloodstained message of death.  Sometimes I'm ugly there is no excuse but sin and selfishness.  To say that I've made mistakes is a vast understatement.  In the moment sin doesn't feel like a misstep or a stubbed toe.  Rather, it is a moment of temporal self-gratification that I must recognize as the ugliness within me.  It is not something imposed from the outside, nor is it something that I can wash clean myself.

Granted, I do make mistakes, but to say all of my sin is just like stumbling over rocks while walking a freshly paved highway is to detract personal responsibility.  Sometimes my sin deceives me and I think I'm doing okay.  Sometimes I've convinced myself (and perhaps others) that what I do is less concerning than the (in)action of others and that is false.  Sin is sin and it is self seeking at it's most basic form.  I do not wish to avoid personal responsibility and so subtly damn myself and others in the process.  Instead, I would rather take full responsibility for my actions and turn toward a Savior that says He is more than I ever can imagine to be.

Not Quite Three Years

I fled my comfort
zone for a complacent
home.  A place where
an oasis is a hand
to have and
to hold.

I fell
asleep in Your arms
and woke up to
silent alarms.  My heart
rate slowed as
I managed to crawl
into adolescence and
saw signs painted
with the words
"arrested development."

I wish
I could understand

                              what

they mean but
my brain lay
incomplete,
undeveloped, and
immature.

So instead I fall
asleep and   dream
my courage to speak
                       and adventure
will return when I awake.

I dreamt of cityscapes
and arrived at
off-white
walls laced with personal histories.
Outside faces and names
mingle like dyes
on a gray t-shirt,
while inside my cinder
block shoes hold me
down instead of
arms reaching out
to hold me,
to carry me.

A Hastening and Hushed Heartbeat

I wish.

I wish I could tell you I was in love.  I wish I could let our dreams implode and the words in my heart met your ears like a soothing flood.  I wish there was a chance to connect the dots in our minds.  Tie our strings together.  I feel you light as a feather.  A dancing marionette doll that's cut it's strings.  I wish you knew me like these four walls.

Nestled in the distant clouds lies a once forgotten heart.  She told me she'd wait for me and I let her down.  Any words I could think to say just fall from who I am and fade into the distant past of who I've been.  No one hears me anymore except the echoes of the therapist's feathered pillows.  My voice echoes forth and back again and nothing visceral stays within me long enough to plant a seed.  Every seed dies before it grows.

She spoke softly to me so as not to hurt my healing heart.  "You've said too much; hold your tongue before it's bruised by your chattering teeth."  And yet I hadn't said enough.  The problem wasn't too much, it was the distance between words.  Why can't I speak more before the dam is constructed?  All the feelings, dreams, and wonderings become damed behind the structure within my head.  I wish I could tell you more sooner but I'm afraid it's untrue or inadequate.  I feel I have to wait until I'm cool and collected.  I try to fully understand a vaporous string that is constantly whisking with the wind from one soul to a shuttered song emerging from the shadows.

And my life as poetry is more narrative than rhyme scheme and rhythm.  It's more faint whispers in the distance rising from my heart's ashes.  I'm a blowing breeze and she'll never see me the same.  I'm a wandering soul and she sees my chains.  Falling down slowly is a miserable fate.  She found me in an unlocked prison and was too afraid of losing her wings to pull me out.  As I was too afraid of the world outside, I could not let her set me free.  My caged comfort feels like freedom so I lie awake with the weight of my mind's eye rising quickly while my heart's eyes run circles in the storm.