To My Poetry Workshop

9:01 AM Posted In , Edit This 2 Comments »
I want to write a happy poem and not be the only one doing it.

vent on.

I'm tired of a class where everyone comes in with their newly penned suicide. I want a poem that doesn't scream I want to die. I want a poem that screams, live! live! live! I don't want another poem about how your wrists are paintbrushes, all you need to do is cut them and let the masterpiece unfold. Let someone else find you in the bathroom your work unveiled. I want a poem about soccer games, singing in the rain, dinner parties and birthday cakes. The wish you made on your 7th birthday.

I want a poem that reminds you how much you want to live you forget you ever felt any pain. I am tired of reading your suicide notes. Your one night stands. You wrists cut like wedding bands the night after you find your husband cheating. I am tired of people saying I want out of this life. I'm tired of hearing that you want to die. Because so and so doesn't love you. I'm tired of the poems about drugs. I'm tired of the poems about sex. I'm tired of the poems with endings that leave me depressed. I want a poem to read that makes me feel inspired. Makes me freel on fire. Makes me want to go find a stranger and say, You should read this, It'll improve your day. I want a poem that doesn't scream I feel alone but scream here I am! Here I am! And we can all be together.

I want a poem that doesn't feel like a hundred days of shit weather. I want a day that feels like a volcano. Bursting forth with fire. I want to feel that alive when I read what's inside of your soul. I don't want the drum of your heart to be faintly pulsing, I want to hear it rushing. I'm tired of suicide. I'm tired of poems that are screaming for endings.

I want a poem written entirely with beginnings. I want poems that make me feel like I'm swimming inside of God. I want a poem that doesn't leave a stain on my heart but says, go on, do it, reach for the moon you'll find yourself there sooner or later but if you don't reach, you won't grab it.

I'm tired of suicides. I'm so tired of dead bodies lining up pages. I'm so tired of seeing your unashamed faces when you pen another one night stand. I'm so tired of seeing you feel so uninspired by the blood that's flowing through your veins.

So stop harping on sadness and start signing your name with hearts and stars. If that's what it takes to break your suicide streak than do it. Or sing yourself a song at the top of your lungs running down Columbus. I'm tired of living in a city of frowns.

I just want to see else somebody smile.
I'm tired of having to go back to the mirror and say,
Hey, put on your armor, put on your strong heart
Cause you have to go make ten thousands people day
Because they don't know how to do it themselves.

And yes, you may think that's selfish of me. But twist my words around and you'll see - all I really want is for you to be happy.

vent off.

Love Covers All Things

9:39 AM Posted In , , , , , , Edit This 0 Comments »
Running on sideways thoughts. They take you on an incredible journey around the bend, unfortunately you never really end up that much further off than where you started.

I've been pouring through pages highlighting phrases that make me heart think, make my head sink. Sometimes the best ideas are the ones you slowly figure out, unsure if they're right or wrong or neither. The best ones have no answer and just force you to try on another pair of shoes. See the world from a whole different point of view.

O me! What fray was here?
Yet tell me not, for I have heard it all.
Here's much to do with hate, but more with love.
Why, then, O brawling love! O loving hate!
O any thing, of nothing first create!
O heavy lightness! serious vanity!
Mis-shapen chaos of well-seeming forms!
Feather of lead, bright smoke, cold fire, sick health!
Still-waking sleep, that is not what it is!
This love feel I, that feel no love in this.
Romeo and Juliet I.i173-182

And it wasn't this that spurred on my thoughts rather just expressed them. And it isn't a revolutionary thought, in fact it's been stated pretty much since...well the beginning.

What if love is the cause of everything. What if love is "the root of the root and the bud of the bud / and the sky of the sky of a tree called life; which grows / higher than the soul can hope or mind can hide..." (E.E. Cummings)

What if love had not opposite? Maybe hate, is not the opposite of love, so much as it is the absence of love. This is where the problem in my arithmetic begins to confuse me.

Hate isn't even so much an absence of love so much as it is too much love being applied to one thing, typically oneself. Love of self tends to overshadow our lives. It's not that we don't love other people we just tend to put ourselves first. Maybe fear is a more appropriate opposite to love than hate, although I don't think it is love's opposite so much as a roadblock. In perfect love, there are no such things as rankings. The question is, what does perfect love look like?

And honestly, I think this does it the best:

Perfect love is patient, perfect love is kind. Perfect love does not envy, perfect love does not boast, perfect love is not proud.
Perfect love is not rude, perfect love is not self-seeking, perfect love is not easily angered, perfect love keeps no record of wrongs.
Perfect love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth.
Perfect love always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.
Perfect love never fails.
- 1 Corinthians 13:4-8

I find the whole idea of everything being born from Love somewhat comforting, somewhat terrifying.
And God is synonymous with Love. Throws another whole wrench in the system.
The scary thing is if you read about Jesus's works, he pretty much fits that bill.
Granted Corinthians was written after him, but regardless.

The whole God issue is a little too big for me to wrap my mind around.

I don't know. I walked myself in circles and spun myself a bit too much on this one. I think I even lost myself. I've got question marks floating throw my head like balloons at a birthday party. I'll keep thinking on this. Although I think this works better as a discussion outside of my head then in it.

In the end, I just want to love people, all of us.

Love is not a commodity. It is the only resource which is infinite. So why hold back?

XO

Turn Yourself Around

6:43 PM Posted In , , , , , , Edit This 0 Comments »
Our greatest tragedies are our biggest medals. We like to wear them as scars and souvenirs, showing them off to everyone we meet. See, what happened to me? See? And look, I'm still ok. Don't you get it. I'm fine. Have faith in me!

We're so fast to show our scars.
So quick to show the bruise.
Slower to show the blood
Slowest to show the wound.

Everyone loves a tragedy. We're all Shakespearean actors: To be or not to be?

Or worse. Our friends. The ones we lose or who get lost. Our bragging rights. Their pain, our momentary glory.

My friend had cancer.
My friend shot up with dirty needles.
My friend's mom died.

Conversation starters and stoppers. Do we ever stop to think what it is we're saying. The lives we trivialize for the moment's passion, that tiny spotlight on us.

If the game of life is a card game, don't deal me in. I don't want to win.
I'm tired of trumping around tragedies, masquerading them as achievements.

I'm tired of people harping on sadness.
That long wailing note.
The bell toll.
That empty chime.
Finished.
Done.
Dead.

In the silence, people think they know what you are thinking. I get annoyed whenever anyone thinks they have my riddled solved because hell, even I haven't gotten that far.

I get so frustrated some times.

People not understanding compassion, or just lacking it.
People not getting my goodwill or hijacking it.

And all that time people saying, here's my tragedy, look at it. Here's a microscope dissolve it under your lens.
I am tired of being the fucking hero. I am tired of untangling the strings in other people's lives then being left with nothing in my hands except the callouses I gained from working out the knots.

Do you know how it feels to be the one they forgot?

The thing is this. I'm not saying "dissect this." I'm just saying listen. "I'm here." Sometimes I put my thumbs on the keyboard and hit go on my brain. Sometimes I just start writing so you'd know I wasn't going insane. Letters are the blood cells of my brain. All they do is nourish me and reproduce.

What's this creature I'm creating?

I am not sure why I do what I do. Really, I just want to love God, but I don't even know how to. At night I don't sleep thinking I've missed the message or am failing to live it out - when I talk about the people I knew and loved and lost. Or the things I did or worse, the ones I failed to. When my life becomes more about me than everyone else.

I don't want to live with the spotlight on me. I want to live in the shadows. The man behind the curtain hoisting up others to fly. My biggest blasphemy, sometimes I think I could do what Jesus did. If I really tried hard. Sometimes I wonder if that's what we're supposed to. Just try really hard and fail by a lot.

I want to hold faith in the palms of my hands and say here, friends, examine.

I'm tired of highlighting tragedy.
Our lives are more than a list of failures.
Our songs more than low notes and minor keys.
I want to write symphonies that say "you are ok" and "you are loved."

I want to give hugs when I speak.
Wrap my words around souls so hard they can feel
The life seeping back into their bones.

I want to walk with a rhythm that says listen
You are a star that can glisten

Someday I hum hallelujahs and love poems
That flow out so far they hit the ocean
Evaporate by the sun then
Dissipate on everyone
A thousand I love you's a minute.

It's pretty beautiful you know
Love that melts the moon.

I want to stop lying. I want to stop saying I know so-and-so or this-and-such happened to me. If I could, I'd speak only of others. I want to mother the world. Say Baby girl, keep walking. Or better yet, keep talking. You're almost there.

You're almost there
You're almost there
You're almost there

But really,
Where is it that we're going.

And why are we in such a rush?
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