Good morning 2016

"Open hands are hard to hold onto anyway"

Just a few thoughts

Peace is such a lost art these days. Maybe it's a loss of hope. We say, the pen is mightier than the sword, but we hand our children guns and tell them to defend themselves. As if the world cannot be changed and all we can do is fight for our very lives. 

I can't let myself be trampled upon by others. But there is a strange sort of strength in turning the other cheek, something I haven't yet learned for myself. It's peace. 

I see it in Nana when she gently reminds me to choose my battles. I see it in Hope. In a world where we are so quick to win our wars with bloody battles and glorious murder, I see this beautiful peace in a rare few. It is different, strikingly unique. The kind of beauty that makes news headlines, the kind of love that speaks louder than dozens of battle cries. 

I realize, a battle won in ink is much more beautiful than a battle won in blood. The whisper of a child is often more powerful than the shout of an adult. We search for peace, talk about peace as if we know just what it is, but the headlines are crowded with cruelty and we pick up our swords. 

Tell me, what on earth is keeping us from destroying ourselves? We are innately stupid. We fight any idiots battle we can get our fingers on, get heated over petty politics and world issues as if our screams would fix the planet and cure world hunger. 

What on earth? Only the grace of God, and people like Hope. 

She teaches me, every time she refuses to kill an insect, that peace is most important. 

Walt Whitman

"I believe a leaf of grass is no less than the journeywork of the stars,"

Repeat

And all life becomes is a repeat
A constant cycle of pain regurgitated
Over and over
And over again

She gets better, she gets stronger
Until the swelling returns worse
Over and over
And over again

I tell them I'm okay
I don't want to explain
Over and over
And over again

Bring her back, heal her someday
I cringe with bruised knees and pray
Over and over
And over again

I'm only just a stray girl
Caught up in your magic
They say it's a crime to fall in love
But they wonder why I haven't
Lilies grow on the outside
An infected wound within
They tell me to be happier
I'm choked up over this
If happy is found solely in You
Must I leave this table for two
I'm finding that life is beautiful
Yet I'm finding it is cruel
I just want to be something worthy
And in that I am a fool

I like you, I will scream

Along with other useless things

Tangled up in facial expressions 

And your wordless poetry 

But as many metaphors as you speak

You'll fail to see through mine

You won't hear me, you won't hear me

What I say is my disguise

Habakkuk

"For as the waters fill the sea, the earth will be filled with an awareness of the glory of the Lord."

"The Lord replied, Look around at the nations; look and be amazed! For I am doing something in your own day, something you wouldn't believe even if someone told you about it." 

Lang leav

"...the world has given you poetry and now you must give it back."

I write about my love

Like I'm running a marathon

Like I'm trying harder

Than everyone else

To get to you

I don't know how yet

But I'm writing 

Till my love has a face 

Till I finish my race

I'm unprepared,

As you're aware

To handle all of this

If I could speak

Or spend time with you

Would you listen to common sense

I will, tonight

"The only trouble is

You're getting hard to resist"

10:36

I just want to mend

All of her sorrows, all of the doubt

The syllables that painstakingly

Keep falling out

She writes about struggles

I don't know much about

She's a beauty, and I'm sorry

She doesn't deserve 

To be simply "fine"

And I am scared I will one day have a list of names instead of a list of things I did with you. I am scared of a life of regretting every time I opened up to an idiot. I will tattoo the regret to my wrists, defile any dainty thing about me with the sting of "I told you so". 

But, the good thing about pen tattoos is they always seem to rub off. 

over coffee

Over coffee in the evening blue

Our sad thoughts dissolve into steaming talk

And discussing trials we've made it through

We're nostalgic for pasts that were all our fault

"Yeah, it's not healthy to want to go back

To change how things went and to stop myself

But now I'm haunted by this ghostly past

Guided solely by him and how I felt"

Our well known tales cool the coffee with time

The shop slowly begins to close us in

Is forever such a disturbing crime

That I can't keep close a beautiful friend?

Though the future we have always fought

When the time comes, please forget me not

You're the line I've got to cross

I'm forever breaking down your walls

Tell me, tell me

I'll scream through a smile

When will I ever be able to stop

My hurt is a birthmark that won't wash off

magician

You're the trick up someone's sleeve

Magic is always fooling me

We're fools in love, but I've been too smart

Thinking I could see through the games of my heart

I'm my own magician, do I really need you?

To screw up a life I've already ruined

I try my best to make things up

Conjure up unrequited and call it true love

I'll sing a little louder
To a happy song
Forget the soul I fed to
My sorrows last night

"It will all be alright"
That's all I can hope
Save me--
I can't do it on my own
You've overcome the world
Please tear mine apart
Before I ruin myself
Or he breaks my paper heart

Life

Pros:

-hellos

-true love

-coffee shops 

-unlikely friends

-little gifts

-great grandmothers

-rainbows

Cons:

-goodbyes

-unrequited love

-fires

-family fights 

-silent tears

-gravestones

-rainbows

a promise

"Everything is going to be okay," she told the little girl, cupping her tiny face in her hand and kissing her goodnight. 

She lived for the day when she could say that with honesty. 

"True friends stab you in the front"

where's the middle ground

I'm sorry I ruin everything I touch

Good intentions spill over into fallen love

I'm sorry my mouth is filled with weeds

And I spout off things I might not mean

When I wake up again it will all be alright

Just give me a chance to say goodnight

I'm tired of lost ambition

And yet caring too much

please

Someday soon I'll find a way

To make the hurt disappear

I'm no magician but I am your friend

I'd take a bullet to mend your pain 

I guess backing down would've been kind

But pushing a solution was right

And in a conversation meant way too well

You've fallen to the wayside

I wasn't right this time

She told me to choose my battles

And I chose the right side

But the battle wasn't one you wanted to fight

If I could manage eloquence for once

I would paint it pretty on my blog

But I'm sorry, so terribly sorry

My words are very long gone

black

What is there left for me to say
When all my attempts have crumbled away
Scraped raw to the bone, this is all I have left
A mangled confession and a tattered fist
They ask for mercy, they beg for a kiss
But the time for kind words is sorely missed
I seem to be looking only for this

If I am destined to wait, how much longer, might I ask?
If I am destined for death, can he come quicker to the task?

What is there left for me to say
You overtake me with every melancholy day
I want what I can't have, I'm trying to be something I'm not
If I could only be someone that He could be proud of
If I could only be someone that they aren't ashamed of
Mend me, I pray on the edge of an exhausting morning
Fix me, just like you're fixing her
Maybe the problem is I have faith in His power in her
But I can't bring myself to be confident in personal prospect

If I am destined to wait, how much longer, might I ask?
If I am destined for death, can he come quicker to the task?
If this all is my fate, just give me strength to last
My words are fading, my heart is straying, my sins are bottled up black

(paul, he gets it)

"I don't really understand myself, for I want to do what is right, but I don't do it. Instead, I do what I hate… I want to do what is right, but I can't. I want to do what is good, but I don't. I don't want to do what is wrong, but I do it anyway… Oh what a miserable person I am! Who will free me from this life that is dominated by sin and death? Thank God! The answer is in Jesus Christ our Lord."

The scars

It never quite leaves

So I live with the sting

The aftermath of something

That crumbled into nothing

And I live with the scars

That just won't wash off

They hold me back from the future

Keep me planted in my own quicksand 

But love isn't what hurts

It's the nostalgia's steady burn

Yeah, I used to be innocent

I used to speak without regret 

Okay is just a lie

Just let me tell you I'm fine

Some things are meant to be

While others are deprived

And I can't shut my mind off

Like I can tune out the Christmas carols

Forced down my throat

Cheer up, cheer up

Well I'm too screwed up

the angel

Everything seems to die these days

My mother's ever faithful face

My father's facade of being okay

The thought that tomorrow is always a new day

Everything blends together this time

Everything feels strangely like the very first time

They tell me to trust

I don't really know how

My strength is in questioning

Yet this shit could be real now

Something tells me her time is running low

She's done what she was here for, she'd go to a better place

But maybe I need her

That's what my selfishness states

Maybe she's the one person that couldn't be replaced

And I wish I could fix all her gnawed down bones

I wish I could remedy the tumors that grow

I tried my best to be perfect and only for her

She says she ruined my precious world

But now precious is her

And she doesn't deserve

To exist on my same earth

But the angel sleeps in the next room

Beside the failure all but doomed

To cry tears that won't come

For a life almost done

coldplay

Oh, what I would give for just a moment to know
Yeah, I live for this feeling, it’s everglow
So if you love someone, you should let them know
Oh, the light that you left me will everglow...

Please choose what to do:

1. Be okay

2. Be okay

3. Be okay

The ride home

The Lord didn't die

So I could be afraid

Crippled by regret

And bound up with pain

But how do I escape

When he orders her fries

And she's trying to speak to me

They don't notice

The fear lodged in my eyes

He sits off to the side

And one's in my place

I'm only my facade

Another person and me are having a race

But it's a waste

I don't really know how

But my sarcastic remarks

Are more meaningful than ever

I don't mean for my words to be sharp

But his existence strikes my heart

She's trying to talk to me again

I'm wanting not to listen

But now I'm riding home in the car

We haven't gotten very far

I went to sleep fully dressed

In yesterday's clothes

Things like that happen

When your mind explodes

Today I wear the scars

Of last night's heavy thoughts 

In a lighthearted Christmas t-shirt

I was too tired to take off

choked up

"…And the hardest part of losing you
Is you're okay to lose me
That's why when I wake up
I'm choked up, baby

So leave me alone to sink
In the floodwaters of my ink
I'm afraid if I speak up
I'll get choked up, baby"