3:57 AM

I crawled underneath my covers
Just as birds heralded another rotation of this world
Premonitions that should weigh no more than feathers
Are the hardest, heaviest of masters

"The tyranny of the shoulds,"
Bending my body and soul
Soul and body, no dualism here,
Upon my sheets like a vice
Perhaps I may yet wring a drop of wisdom out of the down

"I am who the Lord has made me."

Mantras to wash my trembling mind in truths
Too bland, too dense for me to palate.

Words do not breathe deeply upon my chest
Ideas are not soft upon my skin
The weights of balancing paradox, treading the gray,
Scrambling to hold both story and reality in my embrace...

Warmth is found in your flesh, flushed with life
And the ever haunting holy ghost.

Visions, thus, not so easily forgotten.

For Gabe

A bit of scoff blows through my nostrils
At those who insinuate or aver,
“Here, spoken in my syllables
Printed upon this page,
Measured by the electrochemical activity in my frontal lobes,
I, we, us,
Possess, here, now,
Answers.”

What secret have you unearthed,
That which has eluded the likes of
Socrates, Augustine, Nietzsche, Freud

Answer
The demands of the scars upon my knuckles
Patches of hardened, darkened skin as reminders of
A joke you no longer share with us.
We no longer hear.
Cracked in your name.

You too had a patch.
A laugh, a swagger in your stride,
But no answers for fools like us.

Thoughts After a Play

How is it that love can simultaneously be the most potent, reality changing, existence affirming "force," yet so often be misguided, hollow, ephemeral, and that which has the capacity to cause or receive the greatest suffering all in one breath? How can something so good, only conceptually touched upon in its purest form, be so corrupt and twisted? How can it simultaneously be more real then the floor I sit on, yet be as intangible as the shadow of a lifting fog?

... And why can't we turn it all off when we so desperately need a breath?

The week from hell has turned into merely the week from the intermediary state (or the week from purgatory, if you're Catholic)

I've decided that if ever there was a day to be thankful, today is it, for the following reasons:

1. Feeling grass, pebbles, and warm concrete underneath my toes.
2. A neuroscience brain lab test that got moved to next week.
3. Buying lemonade from little kids for .25 cents.
4. A warm wind.

If I cannot be thankful today, I'm hopeless.

Sur le fil et Comptine D'un Autre Ete-L'Apre

At 3 in the morning when the really early birds are already singing and night owl friends are hardly sleeping, the word "hope" sounds strangely bright, anachronistic and misplaced amidst an emotional landscape that feels and smells like a monochrome portrait of New Orleans after Katrina.

We do not hope in ourselves, because one cannot hope in the death within, but must hope in life from without. We cannot hope in our contortions of dreams because they lack the substance to support reality. We cannot hope in the past because hope yearns forward by definition. We do not even hope in hope itself, because unless the object of hope cannot disappoint, we will be left again with our empty hands trying to cover our naked hearts.

And though we dirty our knees with our nose in the dirt and eyes out of focus, rolling the Kyrie off our tongue like the tears that follow gravity down interesting lines of our face, we cling, like the bleeding woman for what seems like 12 broken years, to the frayed edges of Hope hoping... hoping against hope that if we don't let go, He will say, "Child, your faith has healed you."

In whom shall I trust? In whom shall I hope?

4/6/08

"I want to say that this was a mistake... The hurt of right now wants to blame everything on mistakes.. on foolishness.. on selfishness... but I know I shouldn’t be so hard on myself... I really did try the best that I could, even if they were mistakes. I have to keep telling myself that it’s not so wrong to hurt so much, that this is part of the process of things, and that the Lord has taught me a lot. And I have to hold on to the fact that there will be a better day... one in which I am not so broken... one in which I will be able to smile. It’s really hard believing that, especially since I’m so uncertain about the things that I used to be so sure about... things that I looked forward to, my motivation for pressing on.

Please Jesus, keep my eyes on You... even if all my other ideas and constructs fall, never let me go, because I’m terrified of where that leads... Please be my rock. If You strip me of all I have, please remain the rock upon which I am broken. May every one of my tears fall on you..."

The heaviness of the heart
finds its manifestation as the weights
that drag the soles of our feet…
How we sink.
Oh, we are broke.