we are fire inside.

"John."

2010-06-18T23:23:00.001-07:00

We call it talking shop.
My parents both have their PhDs,
and I?
Well,
I work fast food.
So while I explain that the milkshake machine
is broken
for the fourth fuckin’ day in a row
and I’ve been called in to cover
three six hour shifts
this week, already,
my mom details her latest case.

See, they’re psychologists,
doctors with less respect
lifesavers of the sanity
we all pretend
isn’t important
some say therapy is for
the weak.
But listen to the story
I’m about to tell you:

they’ve been doing this
for just over two decades now
and I’ve never heard of abuse
this bad,
she says.

Confidentiality laws file-cabinet his name away from us,
so I’ll title this story John.
His namesake, John, called himself
the disciple Jesus loved the most.
If God is merciful, then,
why wasn’t he the first to die?
Instead, made spectator to the cross-hung
nailed-wrist blood-bath drowning
of every person he had ever loved,
and I wonder if dying didn’t sometimes
sound a lot more like hope
than every step
he had to take after that
but he kept walking,
believer in somedays and better things.
Just like

the John in my mother’s office
isn't angry
no matter how many

concentration camp families
incest slave trades
sensory deprivation bedtime stories
foster care put him through
his family sold him to

and I know life is warfare
no matter what your name happens to be
but John’s had steel-toed boots
kicked into his skull
since he was three years old

my little’s brother’s best friend
has him manipulated on a leash like a dog
and I’m sorry for that.
I’m sorry your ex-boyfriend’s an asshole
I’m sorry you don’t have
money for college
I’m sorry for all the things I’ve left behind
and this poem makes me a hypocrite
for the things I complained of
in every poem before this, so

I’ll be the first
but take a hard look
at all the things you’ve lived through
and how they’ve made you who you are
then take a harder look
at all the things you haven’t lived through
and we think we’ve done things
to deserve brighter skies than these?

But the John in my mother’s office
isn’t angry
so what kind of soldiers are we?

And are we waging war against things
that should not have made us so weak?

2010-04-20T22:50:00.001-07:00

i'm going to run away to the orphanage. that's all there is to it.

what i put my mother through.

2010-04-12T21:49:00.000-07:00

I.

This is an airplane.
It’s three a.m.
and the fasten seatbelt noise
is polite like a fire alarm
neatly placed on my eardrum;
I am screaming
like two-year-old tantrum.
I am 14.
This is an airplane.
I swear the walls are closing in
like a fist clenching neatly
around my body
thickly coated in perspiring and dry throat
pounding the floor
with the might of my feet
like it will time-travel me forward
through the hours
between now and baggage claim,
this is an airplane
this is an airplane
this is an

II.

80 passenger athletic education expense.
Post-cross-country return voyage
dark like the highway fading too fast,
being eaten by the wheels,
I am being eaten by the wheels,
watching the windows compress
stove-topping my breath
blood-boiling me alive like
my panic attack on the brink
breathe in
breathe out
breathe in
breathe

III.

like coming up for air,
ration is slowly
lest your lack of tolerance
drown you in oxygen,
but it’s hot in here.
The excuse for an air conditioner
mocking me for the stomach ache,
and anxiety.
This is an airplane.
Again.
Now, I am not afraid of the sky
or horizon,
in fact,
it’s the walls barred between us
that claustrophobia me
into hysteric chains
breathe in
breathe out
don’t let the head
tidal wave over you just yet,
this is an airplane
with wheels
are those clouds
or the highway being swallowed
because

IV.

These heatstroke manias
all seem to blur themselves
into one giant of an overreaction.
Dear Mom,
I’m sorry about the way back when
I didn’t mean to be so much
lack of control
but even now,
I sometimes see walls
as collapsing cement boxes
wrapping themselves around my consciousness,
waiting for me to choke.

dear sean's girlfriend, you are amazing. love, danielle

2010-04-11T20:34:00.000-07:00

the orphanage hogar de los ninos, that's jordan walking at the bottom.

april means napowrimo...

2010-04-09T08:32:00.000-07:00

mostly just weird freewrites for now.

#4

Hello tornado.
Wicked witch am I?
There are rainstorms in my joints,
spine,
and heart valves
or I'd dry up
maybe it's the diagnosis
to why I waterfall
so much,
but, personally,
I'd rather be buried
in a river
than a desert.

#5

It was one of those
I-know-this-won't-work-out
but-let's-play-anyway
(like we hadn't been
since my playgrounds)
I figured,
the inexperience was getting old
so we pretended to shallow away,
you were all inkwells
and microphones
and oops -
I pretended like giving a damn was
extra extra
read all about it,
that's just it, though.
Read
all
about
it.
Like how I'm too honest
with every soul
but my own.
See,
we both know this didn't start
when I learned how to line-break.
That I've been writing you
on my heart
since I could twirl pens like batons
the way some children
have friendship,
and I'm supposed to
freeze-tag a name on your collar
I'll settle for
lifeline.
You're the way I understand.
The way I learned to pray.
How to stand up for myself.
The fire to my winter solstice.
Language, you.

#6

The lines in your brow
matched the crevices
in your knuckles.
In a way,
you almost looked like the rarity
of an honest chapel,
so were you praying?
Were you panhandling for grace?
Or were you preparing
to stand and tumble-kick-fight
like wolves in my spirit.
Trust me,
I don't know what leprosy
is etched in the tiny canyons
of your portrait
but I hope you are not so strong
as to believe
(like I usually do)
that you're chasmed alone.

coping mechanism?

2010-04-05T12:23:00.000-07:00

When they asked me to leave the orphanage,
I started crying like
whatever home I had ever built
inside my chest
had just been burned alive
and yes I am exhausted
and yes this is typical
and yes I am always
emotional instability

but, Tijuana, you don’t look like much
worth crying over
the way people talk about you
had got me thinking of home
as looking like a war zone
so a week ago
when the airplane landed
I was almost surprised
that you still smelled like things
I had always meant to learn

like poverty is not a noun
like she always has a name
this time, it was Maria.
And Pablo, Natalia, Anna, and Manuel
like love is not red cardstock
heart-shaped valentines
like they teach Americans in elementary school
it is 10 high school students
who otherwise would probably avoid eye contact
like adolescent class systems
actually mean something

it is those 10
learning how to hammer
and lay cement
and the pain of straddling rafter beams
at the exact same time

nowhere else is soccer like an orchestra
nowhere else are packed lunches like
Jesus feeding five thousand
nowhere else can dirt feel so much
like perfume and clean sheets
we built a house
and to the day I die
I will never cease
to almost believe it was a dream

Jordan gave me the keys
Jordan is my older brother’s twin
become God’s voice to remind me
that sometimes when I burn inside
it’s what makes me who I am
Jordan gave me the keys
told me it was my job
to hand them to the family
and I didn’t cry, yet.

I didn’t believe that I would ever have to fly away
just like I don’t believe
that we really built a house

from the roof of the orphanage,
the horizon is the crooked teeth
of a girl who could never win the pageant
because she couldn’t afford dentistry
but she has eyes
like you and I can’t imagine
so thank God I can call her home

the chaos here is being clean after a thunderstorm
the chaos here is not being afraid of the truth
nowhere else are dirt roads
paved with diamond memories
nowhere else have I cried for understanding too much
but everywhere else there is chaos
and everywhere else there are houses to be built
because everyone burns inside
just like me

when they asked me to leave the orphanage
I started crying like
I would never see you again, Tijuana,
maybe I will come back,
but I was wrong
when I thought
that I had not done enough here for now
because Maria has a ceiling
and a real floor
and so do Pablo, Natalia, Anna, and Manuel
I try not to cry too much anymore
I don’t want to extinguish
the firefight someone started in me
because there is chaos everywhere
but like orphans who know your name
sometimes heaven and home
both have to be a little broken
to believe in them.

to be honest.

2010-04-05T06:52:00.000-07:00

it sucks to be home.

lord i'm tired so tired from walking
and lord i'm so alone
and lord the dark is creeping in is creeping up
to swallow me
i think i'll stop
and rest here a while

and this is all that i can say right now
i know it's not much
and this is all that i can give
that's my everything

well didn't you see me crying?
oh and didn't you hear me call your name?
wasn't it you i gave my heart to?
i wish you'd remember where you set it down

and this is all that i can say right now
i know it's not much
this is all that i can give
that's my everything

this is all that i can say right now
i know it's not much
this is all that i can give
that's my everything

i didn't notice you were standing here
i didn't know that was you holding me
i didn't notice you were cryin' too
i didn't know that was you washing my feet

and this is all that i can say right now
i know it's not much
this is all that i can give
that's my everything
this is all that i can say right now
i know it's not much
this is all that i can give
that's my everything yeah that's my everything

yeah that's my everything

some things from some smart people.

2010-04-04T07:52:00.000-07:00

"yeah, in English, we put the adjectives first, because something's characteristics are more important than what it actually is, but in Spanish, the thing comes first, because that's more important. in English, what's important is a person's characteristics, but in Spanish, the fact that they're a person is paramount, and the description is secondary."
-justin bockstruck

"it's amazing that when we are in a place and have nothing, we are full of joy and peace, but when we're here and have everything, we are empty."
-jordan knox

"we have history for a past, assurance for the future, and Good News for the present."
-brad hauge

"now, it's time to go back home to where it's easy to fall back into unreality, but i want to continually live in the overlay there too."
-gabe knox

"it's only the end if you want it to be."
-julie kimball

2010-03-26T07:57:00.000-07:00

un día más!

my nightmare last night was actually every person i love burning to death in a giant white building. (not done)

2010-03-21T19:29:00.000-07:00

Last night every person I love
was painted whitewash
and burned to screaming ashes,
while I sat stock-still spellbound.
If helplessness had only one name
I would call him nightmare
and kiss him
for only being my reflection
and not actually something
to bind my hands
like a chainsaw switchblade ransom.
My deer in headlights did its stereotype
one better,
ran like fireballs
were pulling at my toes
I had the audacity to look back,
and then keep burrowing towards cowardice.
So call me survivor’s guilt,
then try me for treason
against God’s grace.
If I let you burn down,
I will have annihilated
the way I unwrap my salvation.
I’m sorry I couldn’t save you
I’m sorry I didn’t try
I know I was sleeping
but that should really tell you
it probably was what I actually wanted
now I’m living with a building
on my conscience
now I’m running out of foundations
because I can’t remember
which one is reality
I’m sorry that I don’t know
how to save you
but don’t believe in my martyr complex
she’s conceit in disguise
she thinks she’s better than you
she and helpless have been sleeping together
for years,
but she’s stupid
so she doesn’t know it,
because he changes his name
every night
do shadows disappear
when you turn out the light,
or do they rather simply envelop
all of the air around them?
Is that a riddle
or my return address?

luke 20.19b - in rememberance.

2010-03-18T21:50:00.000-07:00

father, forgive me
for i know not what i do
when i
forget
that this is a gift
not a right
not a pedestal
not something for mine glory
i didn't remember those days
when the words you put
inside me
were the only things
that made sense
the way now
the feet below my ankles
are the only things i can fight with
i promise,
i know what beauty is
so please open my eyes
to see it again
i am looking in all the
wrong places.
i am searching for self-fulfillment
coming up empty handed
(with despair)
crucify my lack of humility.
it's true,
it was my culture that taught me
to be angry
like i am
but we are all responsible.
you put art inside my eardrums
that's why i started doing this
word-order-search-hunt-scavenger-the-thrill-of

this
is my music.

this is how i sing
you gave me this song so long ago
to have and to hold
until my mental faculties
do us part
but i lost my eyesight on purpose,
abandoned the fight
for damascus
long ago
in hopes of finding autonomy
but i miss the sunset.
so where's the angel on the road?
can you tell him that i'm lost, again?
that i've forgotten
what my footprints look like
and thus
how to listen
for my name

but you are good
and you are bigger than all these
falls from grace
and my truancies from truth
you are good
to me.

genius kierkegaard.

2010-03-11T13:21:00.000-08:00

"To want to admire, instead of follow, Christ is not an invention of bad people; no it is more an invention of those who spinelessly want to keep themselves detached at a safe distance from Jesus."

thank you, dostoevsky.

2010-03-02T23:04:00.000-08:00

these are the days i throw up my hands
curse someone else for my intelligence
because i want absolution
from this freedom of choice
you can't understand
what's it like.
that belief hurts;
that i knife fight my reflection
with the thorns from jesus' head
oh yes
i would die for this
but i want
i want
TO DOUBT
and i don't.
never have.
but i too am terrified,
for if i am wrong
to what purpose is this trajectory?
i throw up my hands
curse my intuition, and convictions
they do nothing but make me feel foolish
and break my heart with what i have not done.
i have now shown god to anyone.
i am not the image
of everything i believe in so hard
so why am i not different?
i am supposed to be different.
jesus jesus how i trust you
how i've proved you o'er and o'er
but only for me.
so what is a missionary, anyway?
and are they ever full of thrown out papers
like my heart
because i'd just like to throw
the theology down the disposal
but i can't
and neither will i help anyone else
to where i am today
so
maybe this'll recycle itself
into something worth saying someday
but for now
i throw up my hands
curse the god of redemption
for creating me the antithesis to Thomas.

before i decide to delete it, i guess.

2010-03-01T00:01:00.001-08:00

Here I am,
a junior in high school on a Thursday
driving my car down the freeway
from my house
to the small outskirt attempt at a college town
that is Cheney, Washington,
it’s evening in November.
And my brights are on
like foghorns in a library
every car I’ve blinded has informed me
of my lack of driving etiquette
and here I am,
without a clue in hell
how to turn them off.
This is a drive as familiar to me
as the soles of my feet,
this is a drive I never talk about
to much of anyone,
so,
you think I don’t have my secrets?

very bad freewrite about more death i had to watch second hand.

2010-02-25T00:32:00.000-08:00

church preschool libraries never could
hold hearts this big, and heavy,
i don't respect people
nearly as much as i should
it's too bad i always wait
until things like tragedy
strike the people around me,
it's like learning about war
from the safety of a television set.
i seem to get lessons the hard way
OR
second-hand.
we call this a high school small group
we pretend we talk about jesus
really just not saying,
that we are all trying to fight
impending adulthood
but Libby's dam has just burst.
my high school has seen
too many deaths this year -
7, at last count -
this one was drunk driving.
with sirens like symphonies
irresponsibility randomizes its victims.
so when the media tries to bully
"us kids"
into submission
with Libby's best friend's dead body
i want to throw tombstone missiles
at who's in charge?
she is sobbing,
for a girl whose reputation
can't quite rest in peace
why are we left to apologize
for an execution that didn't
fit the crime?
why can't we just mourn
with the respect i'm learning to have?
we're being taught to behave
at the expense of the ones who have lost
just about everything,
and Libby stopped drinking a long time ago,
but she feels guilty
for things she thinks she could have stopped.
and i'm stock-still, again,
just able to watch,
not even able to comfort.
i have nothing to grieve.
so what is this poem about, anyway?

therefore do not worry.

2010-02-17T23:31:00.000-08:00

Más bien, buscad primeramente el reino de Dios y su justicia, y todas estas cosas os Serán añadidas.

alellu, alleluia.

not done.

2010-02-13T08:33:00.001-08:00

We’re driving towards my house,
and away from the ocean
I like to call my home.
This is the second family vacation
in two weeks;
my parents are in the front seat,
fighting.
For them,
it is voices hushed
like a closed chimney
or fountains shut off
for the winter
my dad is speeding.
He and I get angry
in the same way
we begin to stop moving
and start accelerating
everything we can,
so we can pretend
that we are really in control.
This is the first disagreement
they’ve let us see in months,
and I am crying,
first, because I am sensitive
as the inside of a clam
and, congruent with my egocentrism,
I believe only I
have the right to be angry,
not remembering that one day
I will most likely
time-bomb off my emotions
in front of my own children.
I am crying
second, because I am terrified,
of what other children’s families face
when their authorities
start smoldering.
My parents love each other,
and their children,
they do not open fire
on one another, or anyone else, for that matter,
so what of those
whose parents shoot cannons
of words
or fists
or abandonment
on everyone in sight
I would not have survived
any other kind of parent than my own
I am not
any kind of soldier,
so I apologize
to anyone
whose parents have less patience
and more battlefields than mine
which has to be
pretty much anyone.

a.r.h.

2010-02-12T23:05:00.000-08:00

for my birthday,
you and your four best friends
beat the living shit out of me
with water balloons, volleyballs, and a garden hose,
all in the good name of the construction
of my self-defense abilities.
a year later,
for my birthday,
you and your four best friends
threw me into a lake, fully clothed,
the previous year's mission apparently unaccomplished.
i don't quite remember
at what point
we became each other's record-holders,
and secret keepers,
but we always did listen
with tape recorders in our ears.
this was children's trust,
as we were quitting childhood
more quickly than we wanted,
something sacred,
found nowhere else in junior high.
there was one trust
you never extended to me
but i wasn't hurt
the night you called from outside
the interrogation room,
because no one deserves to remember that shit.
shame as sharp as it was helpless
you said you couldn't hate him
no matter what he had done to you,
he was still
your family,
you know, danielle, you said,
you really can't see through the one-way glass
it's just like the movies
but this one isn't worth its ticket stub,
it just hurts.
with courtrooms like war zones,
like finding justice
down the barrel of a gun
these were your secrets,
pedestaled like a lynching
for all to see,
a mother's instrusion:
you didn't dare trust written records
for years after that,
a brother's conviction:
a restraining order
twelve years too late.
you wanted to run from it
like you were the one betraying someone
like you were the one laying landmines,
i don't quite remember
if this was between the reign of
father number two, or father number three
but no one deserves
to be dragged back through that.
it was just a journal, you said.
it was just your way of forgetting.
so when it came time,
when i had grown enough history of my own
to jail up and forget
i knew to tie it with a bow.
they call this voice a gift,
but there are arrows
i aimed at my heart.
maybe this is why we both write so hard.
your brother
taught me how to be angry
for the people i love
and
your mother
taught me to never say things outright
so i can thank them
for my loyalty
and this stage, respectively,
but you,
despite all that had happened,
hadn't outgrown your innocence yet
and to me
it would be worth it
if i could take back all those lessons
i gained at your expense
because no one,
especially not you,
deserves to have to remember that.

2010-02-10T02:04:00.001-08:00

dear life,
i would appreciate simplicity and food in the form of chili cheese fries.
very sincerely,
danielle
ps - also sleep.

it's four a.m.!

2010-02-04T04:03:00.000-08:00

the road has always
risen to meet me
my feet have never betrayed me
even though my heart
still sometimes does
i am in love
with the ground
and how very soft
her stability is,
i know i look like
a crucified kamikaze sometimes
and i've buried myself alive
one too many times
but my walk has always marched
like she knows nothing
except that tomorrow's coming
i don't know
what footprint look like,
even the ones behind me
because if there's one thing
this life has taught me,
it's to never
look back.

a freewrite for jesus people.

2010-02-01T14:55:00.000-08:00

this poem is for those who have drank water
like it was a wishing well
and who have no reason
to fear lions in the dark
we ought to be infected
like light
but instead,
we live like this life
is an unfortunate overlap, interlude,
like it is not birthed from the same
who bled the sky
what does lightning look like?
precise as a pianist
with erraticism like
a ripple in our wishing well
we are small dreamers,
swimming, most days,
against all the things
we say we believe in.
mercy is not a bandage
it is not reinforcements
it is not the hammer we have
weaponized it to be.

uhhh. that's all i got. i don't think erraticism is a word.

yay buddy wakefield.

2010-01-24T15:20:00.001-08:00

forgiveness is the release of all hope for a better past.

a jesus story that happened when a refugee went to court for something he didn't do.

2010-01-23T21:06:00.000-08:00

i wrote this a million years ago - when all i wrote were stories. a refugee named ceu ling was charged with 'child luring' for speaking to a child in a park. the day of the trial he was let go with a fine. about four months ago he was absolved from it entirely. about 300 of us came to courthouse and sat in the hallway outside of the trial. we were almost completely silent. apparently they called the cops because they thought we were going to riot. anyway. here it is. it's lamely written, but who cares.

friday, april 25, 2008. 4.30pm.

this is perhaps historic.

if i could describe to you what this is...

i certainly would.

as we sat in the church christ the redeemer, i laid my head barely touching the shoulder of a man whose name i had just learned, but feeling close, as though i'd known him for years, maybe simply because we were praying; no, surely because we were praying. we prayed for justice and courage and will and power, and i almost hope that this man is in that courtroom, hearing what i cannot.

here, in a hallway of the courthouse...

here is god.

in the sterile wooden carpet on the floor, the lights are ugly and fluorescent, there's a silver clock that's far too old hanging from the ceiling, the fire escape routes seek to be the solitary wall adornments...

and there are angels here.

we are angels here.

we are not littered here or there as so often we find ourselves to be. no. we are together, we are bound, we are praying, we are powerful, we are strong, we are steady.

in the silence we're singing.

here is our King.

i didn't even know the defendant's name until last night, but now i feel as though i'm sitting on needles, just waiting to know what will happen to him.

the weight of it is staggering.

the unspeakable power and ability of the lord to raise in us this kind of power.

i am standing up because i must watch i must see this record this burn this into my memory so that i will never forget that the lord can and does do.

this must be historic.

uhhhh i can't sleep.

2010-01-22T02:30:00.001-08:00

i'm not who i want to be, yet.
but i've come along way
and even though most days
i feel like stability inverted,
all backwards twisted,
i've found happiness
and, less often, but more groundbreaking,
freedom
from all the things i thought
i needed to trust in.
you know,
we aren't there yet.
the things i believe in tell me
that in this life
we never will be.
but when the sunset swallows us
like the golden plums
we pretend we aren't,
we will burn like silver flags
and typewriters that function.
we come from stuff that makes
the wars that kill our children,
but i spent so long
trying to hide my limp
i almost forgot how to run
like fire wings hold my feet
and they do,
so i get burned sometimes
when i slow down too much
but the things i believe in
like liberty
and god
tell me sea salt clears the head
so let's fly
like we never want the oceans to dry up
and they will without our guard
so we'll keep flying
like watchmen,
drunk on honey.

the most retarded freewrite ever. i'm not actually that upset with the world. just a little.

2010-01-21T00:07:00.000-08:00

dear world,
i am going to
punch you in the face.
it will make a sound like
breaking into a glass pond.
but you are not full of fish,
and pleasantries,
instead,
you hold minotaurs
and sharks
posing as people who care.
but you know what, world?
you are a glass pond.
so i see right through you.
sincerely,
danielle

in loving memory of Denise Brothers, not finished.

2010-01-12T23:29:00.000-08:00

“Her favorite holiday is Halloween,”
he says.
“Her favorite color is orange,”
he says.
“Doesn’t that make this fitting?
Doesn’t that make this perfect,”
he chokes.
Dated: October 31, 2009
Today I watched a man
flood his soul on the shoes
of people who believe
they can know what this feels like,
as though death were understandable,
and reasonable;
but he’s 53.
His oldest daughter is only 22,
he’s just watched the love of his life
slip away like fog burnt off
she’s just seen her mother
crumble beneath the embraces,
what tidal wave is this?
What test is this, he asks us from the front?
Do we claim to know,
he begs,
do not claim to know.
And I cannot.
I cannot imagine:
a diagnosis of
1 week left.
There is no ‘reasonable’ to cancer.
There is no understanding to be had in death.

this is me, not working on my senior project like i should be.

2009-12-26T10:44:00.000-08:00

When I walked out the door,
you said,
good luck.
Just remember,
the road to hell is paved
with those good intentions of yours,
so, sir, I will reach your
well paved hell, gladly,
and with singing,
much sooner than meet
whatever appropriate alternative you would have me
pointed towards
and you should know,
a wiser man than you once told me
there is no compass to this,
I spent the first 15 years of my life,
in a school
learning to pray like porcelain
to speak proper and softly
"like a woman should"
to respect the powerful
like they could nail
through my hands
it’s not to say
it didn’t make me who I am
just that it also grew
forest fires between my joints
and I am still burning.
I was brought up by the righteous
the standards,
those guardians of redemption
acting as though beyond earshot of the steeple
the sinners
are lying in ambush
ready to jump,
take by force these castles
of judgments,
but we wayside have no use
for blinded fortresses,
does your holiness burn?
Does it look like steam,
my smoke is not that clean,
it’s too busy
turning me inside out
finding inadequacy beneath each new vein
between fire-fights I remind myself
that your God doesn’t listen
when I sing
but somehow, it’s still my job
to answer
when they ask me if my God has a heart
or a heart of stone
I wish I knew how to sew up
the wrists slit open
by your stained glass
but I’m not a medic,
or a saint,
and words heal like bandages
wrapped around the foot
when it’s the hand that’s been cut off,
when I walked out the door,
you denounced my potential
as something becoming an angel,
less potent,
because I don’t burn with my faith,
like you
but, sir, you’ve tied us at the stake,
walked backwards
away, dredging the path from your toes
with catechisms like gasoline
your God might even
strike the ground to light a fuse,
I wouldn’t know:
because my God is tied to the same splinters
as my ankle
like some three-legged race
and we’re both praying
hard as hell
for blasphemy.
I don’t burn with my faith,
but when the thunderstorms
brew in my stomach
the leaves start roasting up in my throat
trying to get up and out
like the innocent on death row
we wayside,
we have no use for blindness.
We already know
that we can’t walk.
So please, all this business
about the road to heaven
or the road to hell
is doing us no use.
It’s ok if the forest chimney-smoked down,
so long as we find some water,
my throat made itself sandpaper
from all the leaves,
and God,
he’s burning around the edges,
like the compass you gave me
that I am still learning
not to use.

girl please.

2009-12-16T00:38:00.000-08:00

We’re sitting in my car.
The freeway above us
is roaring like man-made thunder
because trains went out of style
with handwritten letters
and high school sweethearts,
and she tells me,
they don’t believe her.
We’re seniors in high school,
and we both know,
that’s just another word for
broken-record questions
of college-bound degree-expectant
salary-hungry achievement-bullshit,
like,
“why don’t you have your life
figured out like algebra?
Why aren’t you fitting
your hearts for the boxes yet?”
This poem is dedicated to many things,
among them,
finals week.
Shrunken behind stacks of
information I didn’t learn
God knows when I should have,
we begin to ask ourselves
why we signed up for us,
and they continue interrogating,
“Why do you dance like Armageddon is coming?
You’ll know, soon enough,
stupid kids,
you’ll have bills to unwrap
you’ll have shoes to fill, big shoes,
and they are stiff,
so iron your face to match.
Be an adult.”
This is dedicated to childhood,
and I don’t remember mine
so forgive me
for making one now,
she wants to be a screenwriter.
She wants to save Africa.
She wants to build a homeless shelter
to keep out the winter
faces kept strong fighting things like
cold and poverty
don’t have need for reshaping,
yet they have the nerve to continue,
“You’ll never change the world.
Stupid kids,
stop wasting all your sparkle.
Stop playing pretend,” they say,
like childhood doesn’t have
life measured out like sugar cookies,
like birthday candles should never
have been wished on in the first place,
successful lives are bred
in library halls
that laugh at the thought
of ever housing a fairytale,
you’ll thank us,
they say.
We build you these libraries,
these playgrounds for
economic stability,
we built this freeway
that your dreams are parked beneath,
we pragmatists,
with our suit jackets
with our ironed faces
and box-fitted hearts,
not the travels
we forgot to map
when graduate school came knocking,
nobody flies.
Nobody sings.
These are the things they tell us.
This is dedicated to the girl who let me know
that these things they tell us
are lies.
Libraries aren’t libraries
without a little bit of impossibility,
and she reminds me,
they are wrong about the sparkle.
Maybe she'll never be a screenwriter.
Maybe I’ll never write
myself into those libraries,
but it won’t be for lack of believing,
see,
the stars in the skies,
are really already gone,
but their legacies have outlived them
light-years still channeling their
mysteries our way,
so, Emilie, I don’t wish
on falling stars anymore
I just keep stacking up doubts
you've helped me displace,
naming all the possibilities left over
in your honor.

fuck you finals week!

2009-12-08T22:20:00.001-08:00

poem 2 done
TAKE THAT SCHOOL.
but unedited and unposted :) mwhahaha.

a beginning, dedicated to fundamentalism.

2009-12-01T17:00:00.000-08:00

When I walked out the door,
he said,
good luck.
Just remember,
the road to hell is paved
with good intentions,
but, sir,
I meant to say,
I will reach a well-paved hell
gladly
and with signing
sooner than meet
whatever alternative you would have me
pointed towards
and you should know,
a wiser man than you once told me
there is no compass to this,
I spent the first 15 years of my life,
in a school
learning to pray like porcelain
to speak proper and softly
like a woman
to respect the powerful
like they could nail
through my wrist
it’s not to say
it didn’t make me who I am
just that it also grew
forest fires between my joints
and I am still burning.

almostoveralmostoverquarter'salmostover

2009-11-18T15:13:00.000-08:00

this is a freewrite

the mirror is getting loud
and there is snow in the forecast,
so please,
stop reminding me
that i've had to do this
a hundred times before
she'll explain
from the vanity
we've had more than our
fair share of
"mature decisions,"
i don't remember
being a child.
i don't remember balloons
or streamers,
or bedtime stories,
and i want it back.
i'm tired of growing up,
and i'm sorry
it was at your expense.
i'm not a kid.
i can't fly.
i always knew that:
it's why i run so fast,
and soon enough,
when the chill gets stern,
i'll yardstick the winter
with my shins,
and we'll see how much taller
my endurance gets
this time.

surrealism. freewrite.

2009-11-02T15:15:00.000-08:00

I cannot sleep.
These are not my dreams,
but I see them,
like orphans:
all the things we’ll never be.
The wedding bells and the coffee pot
and laughter as resident;
this is where I want to be buried.
In the knowledge that you, too,
dream of the lost,
that we grieve together,
like the separation that we are.
I have never prayed harder for winter.
If I see a rose
there will be a child’s eye in it
and I can’t bear to see you.
The sun,
she likes to mock me,
or, like Christ,
is not fond of work like listening
she’s still shining,
the world is still turning,
we are stopped,
so suddenly,
like light bulbs
about to accept peace
or the blankets
that wanted to coat us like warm snow

I hope you forget me someday.
I hope I cannot remember
what our future would have smiled like:
coloring book perfume,
teapot symphony,
the home we will never find.

unedited.

2009-11-01T09:22:00.000-08:00

He is the candlestick three-fourths down
with wax cement-staining his feet
like too much ballast.
He calls himself mister Easter
and little girl, he told me,
someday you’ll have to remember
you don’t always
get what you want,
I was 14,
so I had only learned the flood’s face,
not his name, yet,
it’s what makes the young foolish
we cannot address the things we see
like we cannot tame the things we feel
he played the ukulele
like Lucifer in the face of redemption,
laughing,
four strings and a slab of cardboard
to his name,
San Francisco street hunger
who does not care if the people hear
when he hallelujahs to the wind,
when I sing,
there are mostly churches in my voice
instead of hymns
we gave him a sandwich -
me and Curran -
who I saw marry the love of his life
two weeks ago,
people like us don’t understand
thankfulness for safety,
and blindness
But mister Easter does
by right of spectatorship.
He ate,
while we two sat like wrapped miracles,
quiet and impatient
as though songs would simply
blossom out like the fog here.
California is cold in places,
I wouldn’t have told you
that makes it like my heart
but it does,
demons don’t knock on the doors
of the mature, always,
so he handed me the ukulele
said,
music will save you someday,
you know.
A year and six months ago
my parents bought me my guitar,
since then,
there is too much darkness
I would not like to own up to,
little girl,
you won’t always get what you want,
I don’t remember what he taught me to play
like I cannot remember
the size of his voice
but it was shaped like my hands
restringing an E for the first time,
gentle, and determined
when Curran and I walked away,
he told me I would forget
what he had taught me
and that I’d forget him too,
but when you are sad, he said,
always remember,
you won’t always get what you want;
that doesn’t mean,
that someone is keeping you from singing.
I never asked why
he called himself Easter,
these days I like to believe
he was angry and laughing
that angels had to play harps,
so instead he played the ukulele
like Lucifer in the face of redemption,
singing,
four strings and a slab of cardboard to his name,
the sign reads,
heaven is pretty
like me.

districts.

2009-10-21T12:33:00.000-07:00

failure is simply not an option.

2009-10-06T12:51:00.000-07:00

boo college applications. boooooooo.

jefferson and sprague.

2009-09-29T14:43:00.000-07:00

Like touching an electric fence without crying
the officer tells me too calmly to speak up,
he can’t hear the address I’ve just given him.
There is an earthquake
racking my body and I don’t know why,
the van is stopped a block and a half behind me
hazards blinking like hell’s gate,
there are children in the backseat, I hear.
My suburban-raised instinct tells me that
like the rabbit I am
it’s safer to walk on by,
but the phone in my hand doesn’t make me
a Good Samaritan,
I just wanted to be able
to sleep that night
the driver’s seat is clutching the woman, but barely
I choose not to listen to what they both are saying,
but silently wonder if
he had ever sent her flowers,
if she ever gently kissed him on the forehead,
I always imagined that dialing 911
would feel much more like strength
than these bricks on my chest
it’s in every word they yell
that I can’t quite block out,
a passerby made of stronger mettle than I
calls him disrespectful,
he replies like a wolf
interrupted while eating
that disrespectful means nothing
because she is his wife,
“Do you see any weapons, ma’am?”
I should have said yes
From here, rage looks like land mines
beneath the car-seats I can’t see
but know are there
the way I know my shadow in the midnight
it’s in the way that none of them cry
while she yells at a stranger
to call the police,
it’s been eternity fifteen minutes long
the officer is still asking me
how old and how tall they are,
what color their van is,
I tear my throat open not screaming,
come see for yourself,
my friends are standing at the intersection
not sure if they should watch
the way I feel like a hypocrite
every winter I watch snow fall
we never see the police arrive,
never hear the sirens promising safety
when it was done shaking me,
the adrenaline rested
at the bottom of my stomach
and the ceiling of my spinal cord,
even when I began
speaking with the law enforcement,
he could see only
something in front of him to be tamed
I bet she wore a wedding dress once,
I bet they used to say I love you
like promising safety to a bookshelf
in a burning building,
from a block and a half away,
her hair smells like an incinerator
there are melted letters
smoking on his fingertips
I don’t know who is holding the keys right now
who is feeling like the alpha
at this particular standstill
but the children are still not crying,
and the sirens
haven’t even started their empty promises yet.

also.

2009-09-23T23:10:00.001-07:00

i am three days into the quarter, and already using sparknotes and wanting to shoot myself. daaaaamn.

we won.

2009-09-23T22:08:00.000-07:00

told em we'd get it back.

photo by maddie koffel

one reason i work for global neighborhood.

2009-09-17T08:48:00.000-07:00

Courtroom hallways always smell
like ship hulls,
the sky above them somewhere,
no matter what color it is
always holds a sea monster waiting in ambush
where I come from
the building is large, and beautiful
but inside fluorescent burned above us
like an acid candle
the prayers were Styrofoam coffee cups
the wait was five hours tense,
his name was C-e-u, Ceu,
a Chinese refugee
less than six months into the American Dream.
I don’t think he had ever worn a suit
before that day;
there was no translator for his trial.

rain rain go away

2009-09-17T08:45:00.000-07:00

Do not be surprised when
you meet people
carrying crystal paper Bibles
like snow globes with plastic autumns
instead of Santa.
These are the same who say that
once you wear the first hole
in your first pair of shoes
you’ve gone too far,
like we should be afraid
of the day after Christmas
or shorelines we are not sure
we should reach towards,
and we should be.
There are hieroglyphic runes
holding up our cheekbones
like the moon over the Atlantic
where boats don’t dare cross,
Bermuda is lonely.
But they will teach you
to inhabit someplace friendly,
someplace where you
cannot see your shadow
or remember what
a fever tastes like
there are demons in our marrow
and storms between our joints
it’s why the rain can’t melt us.

from the other end of the phone,

2009-09-06T00:52:00.001-07:00

the officer tells me to speak up,
he can't hear the address i've just given him.

i saw this before i knelt, then forgot to pray.

2009-08-27T23:17:00.000-07:00

A girl stands on a rooftop made of midnight
I am below her like the day after fever
the air is too still to breathe properly
she is the shape of fear, and delicacy
but we do not take pictures of souls that would rather not
hover over the water,
she whispers how afraid she is
of the ground, and not falling,
and the stars shrieking warnings from behind her
the way I bend my voice
when trying to explain
my heartbeat during a thunderstorm
I do not tell her what interpretations
we were not meant understand,
and which runes we hold in our palms
like lanterns we should not be blind to

we are silhouettes in the dark,
spilt ink on velvet,
black curtains we do not
dare to open,
or the separation between raindrops and sea spray
and I know this is what we must look like.
When my attic flooded, I escaped to the basement
I only keep candles when there are not stars,
from here,
the things she asks for sound like glass shards,
and a book no one has ever translated,
though I know these things are only different words
for ‘ladder,’
we are bound to what the gypsies are kind enough to tell us,
what our eardrums are brave enough to let in,
even when the sun starts to blink,
I will be too terrified to stir,
she will leave footprints above my head,
I feel a little less cowardly knowing that
if she had died the stars would have quieted
patience, little one, I should have said,
the fortune-teller tells me what your shadow looks like,
and how soft the water below you is.

sometimes i remember

2009-08-18T00:33:00.000-07:00

how much i don't know.

our roof will also testify.

2009-08-15T00:58:00.000-07:00

The tornado warning came
like an excuse
for the wind being too poor
to afford a lawyer
like the county sheriff
wanted the day off,
because he has control
of things like
storm warnings, right?

The packrat that lives
like a screw in my skull
remembers our ages
as something like
3, 6, and 7
but really,
we were not so much puppies anymore.

Micah was terrified
like a November wheat field.
I was waiting
to watch the wicked witch
thrust under our house
as though Spokane could become sensational
like every
fictional story I’d never written.
Even now,
Joel is still a pond,
only cleaner
and more polite to house-guests.

I was 12.
I don’t know if the trees
on my street
are maples
but I hope they are
because I live on Maple Street.

And like rain would have
made it worth it,
they all couldn’t
clutch their leaves tight enough
to completely deny my packrat
sustenance,
but honestly,
this is just a record
of sketches I could never draw,
things I don’t actually remember,
terrors Micah denies,
stories I am sure
were real, once.

clean is not a function of humanity, but we're still made in God's image.

2009-08-13T01:13:00.000-07:00

there's no need to explain
why your expectancy
smells like
laundered dishrags
and prison bars pending locks.
you'll feel vindicated
if i leak out,
but this raft
has been seventeen years now
survival
bordering success.
you're waiting for
the ten commandments
to catch up with my
racing spikes
but i ain't running to beat perfection.
i define holiness as
an attempt at finding my kneecaps.
God gave me diamonds
to bleed on,
just to show
how my life is made of prayer
and i know this:
he loves me
for my pulse
and hunger to fly.

call my house an asylum for its comedic value - ps these are not titles

2009-08-13T00:38:00.000-07:00

in my house
there is a waiting room,
a fax machine,
a filing cabinet with a lock,
and an overstock of Kleenex.
the people who come here
are like me,
God must've forgotten
that equilibrium is just fantasy
for we-who-are-"greater-than-angels"
but you may find it odd to note,
that unlike them
although my bedspread
and toothbrush live here,
i have never called this
refuge.

the english teacher i would have had.

2009-08-12T22:06:00.000-07:00

"i am a pessimist and a cynic because i a romantic and an idealist at heart, so i am constantly disappointed."
- Mr. Woodard

i stay awake on purpose, stupid me.

2009-08-11T00:45:00.000-07:00

Is it possible to blink oneself to sleep?
Do you know what letters feel like
before they are arranged?
I imagine it is like swimming
with less mobility
and warmer.
Have I missed the sunset
too many times
to call myself a romantic?
I have many pairs of shoes.
I want them to match my hairline
and mood swings
but no matter how much I walk in them
they do not change color,
they are too much like me
and not enough like clay
only the laces come undone
and the soles wear out
after too many uses.
What makes a soul intact?
What bomb shelter do you use
for thunderstorms?
Mine is named Jesus.
He does not get angry when I ignore him,
though occasionally I wish he would.
What if I woke one morning
and all my shoes had walked away?
What would I do if one morning
all the letters of my Bible
had re-arranged themselves?
I have never not believed in Jesus.
I have never lost myself like that.
Will you explain to me
what it is to be certain of uncertainty?
Is it like the taste of copper in my mouth,
is it familiar things
in cities I have never visited.
I like the water
because I do not float,
but I have never fully sunk
like it is just enough control,
but I want to know what it feels like
to survive a waterfall
is the drop short,
can memory be that contained,
or must it be like a sunset
observed but unmeasured,
is forgetfulness an art,
like improvisation is to jazz musicians?
I used to know much of insomnia,
but that was before I had things
worth lying awake for.
I have never not believed in Jesus
and he has never not believed in me
but I have always doubted myself.
If I walked without shoes
would I wear holes in my feet,
would my soul find my eyelashes
and sneak through them
when I try to not fall asleep,
would it be worth fighting through the dam,
if I were unable to tell you
what heaven looks like?

shockingly, i couldn't sleep.

2009-08-05T00:19:00.001-07:00

"do you write mostly about sad things, or happy things?"
"oh, 50-50," i say.
but really,
let's be honest.
i write what comes easy.
if i could actually embody sadness or happiness
i would not want to tear apart this parchment
water can be drunk fastest lukewarm
and it's rare my pens see the true extremes
i'm good at pretending, dear kate, very good.
most would call it sad or angry
i call it half-ass
see,
i've never found my voice, still
and i am looking under all the bookshelves and lampshades
i was born four weeks early
so it's possible it never developed,
isn't it?

i will readily admit.

2009-07-26T00:05:00.000-07:00

it was very strange to be in san francisco as a tourist. i think the weirdest part was being so visually familiar with the city. it was junior high, for crying out loud. the last time i was there for any length of time was the summer before my eighth grade year - i just counted it three times, was that really the summer of 2005? (is this growing up? i don't know if i like it.)

in front of city hall in downtown san francisco there's a big park, i don't know what it's called. kate and i navigated the bus systems to city hall and i pointed to all of the homeless people sleeping on the grass. it's because it's illegal for them to sleep there at night, so most just wait til daylight. some do sleep there at night in hopes they'll land in jail for the night, where it's warm and sometimes they get a meal. most of the time if they're caught there they just get a big ticket, something like $600.

kate and i spent a lot of time in the haight ashbury district. it's very shopping-oriented, but in the second-hand sense. definitely not cheap. but not like the downtown/union square area. it's full of everyone, from tourists to locals to dogs to homeless, the one afternoon i spent by myself i found an empyrean-esque coffee place to finish the prisoner of azkaban in. they had real yerba, something baristas in san fran apparently don't understand.

but haight is where we did a lot of lunch handouts, i spent some time looking for the soup kitchen. couldn't find it, of course. and here i was, hopping from shop to shop trying not to look the sidewalk-residents in the eye.

it sort of hurt.

i remember being in san fran, feeling so helpless because there was no way we could fix it all. all the poverty, all the disease, all the filth, everything we had shoved in our faces... there was NO WAY we could fix it. and THAT hurt. i remember it. my journal has tear stains.

but this was maybe worse. this time i wasn't even there TO fix anything. i wasn't there to try. i don't feel so much guilt (which would be bad/unhealthy) as just plain... sorrow? grief? what in the world is the word for this? i know i didn't go to help anyone. i went to be with the janzens and kate and i did and it was wonderful and i'm so glad...

...but my youth group also left for westport yesterday.

sometimes it's hard to feel like god's hands or feet when there's too much to grab onto.

my moral compass would say that this is the right kind of hurt. and it is. i know this. it's the kind that can go one of two ways, either you wallow in self pity for yourself and despair for the world, or you learn how to do something about it. i believe in god. i believe in christ. i believe they both move and work here. now. and he/they WANT help. for my sake. for our sakes. but sometimes things hurt, and even if it's how it should, it still hurts. like running. the good kind of pain. however good it is for you, it doesn't make it hurt less. however much you are winning, the pain it takes to win is still pain.

and that's called sacrifice.

and that's what makes jesus so different to me.

(because he's sacrifice manifest)

micah leaves for that junior high trip tomorrow. and i am so stoked for him. SO STOKED. he's about to get his world rocked. this trip tore out the carpet underneath me. i hope it does the same for him. i'm excited. i'm to see him off at 7am.

last night was so dark, i exhaled a smokestack.

2009-07-15T23:43:00.000-07:00

Have you ever coughed up darkness?
There is an ocean bed that rests between my palms
on days the sun doesn’t have enough courage
to protect me from the clouds.
Love is blue,
and don’t let my children’s books fool you,
rain is not.
The essence of the heart is not red or softness
or bread on butter as we all imagine,
or would like to.
Once, I put a microscope to my wrist,
hoping to understand the gear shafts
that tick-tock my pulse,
but they guessed at my intentions
before I had time to adjust the lens
and escaped to my eardrums,
there,
they told me secrets not meant for eyes
like how the rhythm of the human biology
can never be incorrect,
but it can be inadequate,
and how the cadence of our heartbeats
can sometimes depend
on the velocity of the tears of God,
with these references I support my belief
that rain can only bless speechless things
like a horse’s water trough
or fields that understand nothing of emotion.

I saw a picture of a ribcage split open,
this is how I know that we carry
thump-thumps the color of a cloud-home,
when I wrote this yesterday
I wondered at
how many different words I can use
to describe the heart
and how many to describe the sky?
More than I have ever found to explain God
but not nearly enough,
so record this poem as a lack of creativity.
If I am any basis for comparison,
may I test the measure of your chest, too?
Does yours have a paperweight nucleus like mine?
Is it a sinking life raft that has every reason to float too?
We are not heroic fairytales.
The ground below us imagines what
we would taste like softer.
It has become so hungry,
it has forgotten how to eat,
the way love remains elusive to those who have been lonely
all their lives.

When I die, they will find a pot full of pennies in my diaphragm
wishes I swallowed when I should have been stargazing.
I pray the autopsy will make someone else less poor,
although I know the mortician will be struck with this jar
like an affliction,
like a deaf man healed to hear,
who cannot say hallelujah, for he knows not how,
and my pennies are pieces of smoke.
There are ghosts in my lungs,
they are looking for my heart,
they are looking for yours,
so record this poem as a warning bell
or a raindrop playing the piano.
If you must feed the darkness,
tell it to eat everything red inside you
for the heart is a piece of the sky;
even demons cannot drink what is poisonous to them,
when it rains I will cup my hands,
tell them my chest is not a vineyard,
but the lagoon between my fingers
holds everything they ought to and will not take from me.
every time they do not leave,
my breath looks like steam
the roof of my mouth tastes like clouds and clockwork,
I hold precipitation behind my eyes
the way soldiers hold extra ammunition,
my breath always smells like thunderstorms and seaweed,
have you ever coughed up darkness?

an old question i'd forgotten to keep asking

2009-07-14T00:42:00.000-07:00

why do i get to be all Jesus crazy while most people can't even FEEL him?

once again,

2009-07-12T01:58:00.000-07:00

where is my ocean?
homestead,
why are you so many footsteps
from this adolescence i'm cemented to?
if i had payed more attention in class,
i would have learned that
sand is the product of erosion,
and in my childishness i would ask why
i am not soft
and full of comfort like the ocean's frame.
why i cannot hold sun beam memories
like the beaches.
it is then i think my future,
or a kind old moon-mother would ask
what experience i think i have
to declare myself weathered.
when i show her my diaries
she will laugh and call
the holes in my socks fairytales.
so i will cry,
as all children do when proved wrong,
but she will hold me gently
and say,
"baby,
it is not that you are not brave enough
or big enough to hold this heat,
but you don't yet understand
that the ocean is colder than she seems,
and so long as you intend
to call salt air home,
please realize that you will have
bigger tsunamis to face,"
my eyes will have grown cherry orchards
without the greenery by now,
she pulls me tighter,
"but hush those aching lungs,
love,
and do not toss out
the tidepools that brought you here.
if you really believe in growing up,
God will erase sinking (and anchors)
from every language
you are going to learn,
little one."

VERY A LOT STREAM OF CONSCIOUSNESS AFTER EATING TOO MANY FRIES

2009-07-10T00:13:00.000-07:00

air
breathe
ocean
salt
tear
kitchen
gabe
brother
god
sand
child
door
hand
sanctuary
church
floor
ladder
sleep
music
fish
swim
eyes
warm
blankie/et
cement
hammer
orphanage
manuelito
spanish
nun
dog
roof
blue
photograph
memory
run
away
win
truth
Jesus
cross
death
blood
pulse
thump
bruise
ER
meds
snow
dream
nightmare
both
neither
and
tomorrow
i
wake
up.

i'll mail your letter today.

2009-07-04T10:20:00.000-07:00

heartbreak,

You’ve got eyes like
you and your sisters shower too much these days
because you believe it’ll
wash out the fog.
Your hair breathes
nothing but swing sets and perspiration
and ends that split
the night dad slammed the door
behind his way out.
Your stomach doesn’t cry
it knows that it has
no right to complain
when other pieces of you
own so much more hunger
than it could ever imagine.
Do your ears hear your face trying to run?
It always looks like
that last anticipation before
the sprint,
the bolt.

but where you live, there are no thunderstorms.
No,
there are only fat tears
kissing checkerboards,
making rain sounds
without the light.

Do your legs know they weren’t actually built to carry this much?
Have your feet ever stopped long enough to know
what tired is?
Your mouth sings a silence
louder than I’ve ever heard,
and I know what air sounds like
after the fire’s been sucked out of it.

Children were meant to laugh.

i saw a picture of manito park in the winter, here is the result:

2009-06-30T23:28:00.000-07:00

the way snow looks on empty park fields
(on days too cold
for children to tunnel underneath the season)
reminds me of Adam two moments
before God's breath
made 'living' out of dust.

bones never break clean,
so i am doing my best
to stay intact
lest dust collect inside my own blood
like shrapnel following the fracture
from when brother fell off the stairs.
Thanksgiving smelled like concussions that year,
it might as well have been mine.
i wasn't yet old enough to understand
how worry
or care
can induce bleeding
but i was close.
mud is never ever crimson
but blood is too bright
for snow to absorb -
it runs
some say melts,
i call it fear
or cowardice.
but how, you ask,
could i fault it
for avoiding
what i complain of?
(stains)

i don't like hospitals.
coupled with holidays
and chills,
they've become just a little bit less than tradition
like rituals that everyone pretends
have died out.

could Adam foresee
what his heart would eventually look like...
...brother's forehead:
indented,
eroding

i said it would have been unfair
to wait until Christmas
my doctor replied that
i would have ruined it anyway.

does this obscurity align
with your bruises?
can you assure me that
i am not the only one
to break open
instead of tearing at the seams?
because i've watched humanity burn,
and i don't like lies.

tell me why snow is too silent,
tell me why wounds are made of noise,
would it be better if
those dichotomies
folded parallel
or is distinction essential
to our understanding?
i pray for black Christmases
and Thanksgiving in houses
devoid of staircases.

i might be a poet
(remember, stock in my trade
is organized sound)
but there are some times when
i will take the silence
over any slideshow soundtrack,
stuck on repeat.

2009-06-28T00:56:00.000-07:00

i'm homesick for the ocean so bad.

drafted-picture post ancient book-find stream of thought.

2009-06-23T17:57:00.001-07:00

at my estate sale,
i want them to look for
what i couldn't have hid
underneath the floorboards.
i meant my prayers to be
storytellers and agenda-less apostles.
they're invisible,
that's why you can't find them.
what price to you sell
attempts towards adequacy
(or passion) at?
with the profit you make
when my knick knacks
and breath are sold,
buy back from or for me
the moments when i forgot myself enough
to learn what to live for
be warned -
you'll have to barter hard.
morticians dissect things for a living.
so surprise them
when you have motives that
can't be torn apart.
be the converse of my
weaker moments,
only steal the songs that are left
in my lungs
and afterwards,
seal the casket
so my monotones remain
myths.
would you be
so kind?

old journals and why i love ross carper.

2009-06-19T00:59:00.001-07:00

because two years, eleven months, and four hours ago - i used to record times along with dates, now i do neither - i was sitting in the well room of first pres, ross was on the stool in the middle of the room telling us/me that he didn't think at that moment that jesus could make everything ok. his mom had been diagnosed with cancer, he was supposed to give us a talk/sermon/thing for westport, so he told us the truth. that he didn't know it would be ok. people don't tell other people things like that. especially leaders. leaders don't tell "their kids" that they doubt all this. that they think that all of this might not be true. but everyone does sometimes. and ross didn't bullshit us.

thank god for the honest. without them i would have nothing.

too much morning benders and ryler dustin.

2009-06-16T10:03:00.001-07:00

I remember things while they are happening.
Twice a day there is a seam in the fabric,
where God owned "indecisive"
and the sun and moon vie for power
and definitions lose reliability,
because nightlights and daysprings sometimes meet
soft as hair on cheek.

But after these things occur,
I lose my memory like I lose my car keys.
I'd be better off without them,
or it,
anyway,
because automobiles only hold stale air
and pasts have sat still long enough
to be fit for the clearance rack.
For me, forgetfulness is not so much a skill
as it is a deliberated discipline.

I like to have favorite articles of clothing
to wear too often
the way I like my Bible tattered.
Only a few things are worth remembering
past the immediate
and perhaps it is for this reason
I am not a great writer,
not for my youth,
not for my faith,
not for my lack of brokenness,
but for my selective belief in worthy moments.

One day I will ask God
to expand his indecision,
for in the heaven-sky's rift
I am very determined to find meaning
in all things.

some freewrites because sleeplessness, my grammar is awesome.

2009-06-16T02:13:00.001-07:00

despite what the architects say,
no steeple is quite the shape
of that hole in the sky
at the top of Golgotha
(the Aramaic word
for skull)
the night purity
was martyred.
Crucifixion was a game
invented by the Romans,
called,
let's erase mercy
from the dictionary.
Even murderers -
(one of which Christ was not -)
are human,
and I don't believe dignity
to be a merit bade
only allotted to
the upstanding.
Would you call yourself perfect?
Would you die if you were?
Did holiness scream?
Does it bleed?
Don't let the righteous confuse you,
Perfection is, in fact,
unattainable.
Condemnation shouldn't be
doled out like
soup kitchen lunch
on credit,
but these days it seems,
grace has a price.
So when they tell you,
the crosses in church
should remind us
to behave,
ask yourself if those
ornamental trees
have ever held nails
and public examples.
Contrary to popular belief,
crucifixion involves
nailing through the wrist,
not palm.
It only takes a slit to kill,
but Christ was trophied
with wrist-wounds
the size of the pillars
the church throws
atop those "less worthy,"
eloi, eloi, lama sabacthani,
my god, my god,
why hast thou forsaken me?
did you know that
Jesus and I
once sang that duet,
harmonies spaced by
2 milennia
and a lack of divinity
on my part.
But God is tied in my shoelaces,
my wrists have never
held bulletholes in their frames,
but the church should have
grown out of steeples
long before any resurrection.

+++

it's time to stop pretending
that i see poetry's ghosts
or prophecies
on my eyelids.
documentation is essential
to prove that i am
actually searching
for something.
talking hasn't always
come easy,
some girls wait
as long as possible
for their voiceboxes
to mature
as if the waiting room
would endow our vocal chords
with a sense
of confidence
or at least certainty,
for my part
i used to count my words
like pennies
but copper tongues
are solid
so this is nothing
but making up
lost time.

weirdskylightsandtoomuchconfusioniwanttoun derstandallthings.

2009-06-14T18:58:00.000-07:00

mercy: compassionate or kindly forbearance shown toward an offender, an enemy, or other person in one's power; compassion, pity, or benevolence.

love thy enemy. woops.

passion has more than one direction and therefore must be controlled. but i am far too small to deal with my own soul. i believe in a christ who loves the people who hate him. vulgarity may be a drawback of mine, but i have said before, 'i don't want to fucking be religious. i just want to be like jesus.' it would be an honor for someone to say, she loved the people who hated her.

everyone has enemies. arguably, i've made my own.

i don't believe that ultimate mercy is a human-possessed trait. people can have merciful instances, yeah, but it takes something of divinity to own it. and i don't have that yet.

hold fast and don't let go - the definition of real prayer.

uh, woops again.

prayer shouldn't be birthed out of necessity, but i forgot. i forgot that prayer is the boat, not the lifeline. that was a crappy metaphor. i don't want to be called a poet like i don't want to be called a christian. titles are often only pretentious (not always, but often). and what happened to my posture of humility? real jesus-ness is a theology of humility. woops woops woops, sometimes i am made of the opposite of everything i believe in. but i do believe in it.

there is so much upside down. i have too many questions. and too many beliefs. why do i believe all this? i do. i do i do i do with all of my cells and blood and head and heart and life why is this so clear?

this is what happens when i walk the line between confused and

there
is
no
alternative

what else can i
do
with
jesus?

END STREAM OF CONSCIOUSNESS.

why dad stopped running.

2009-06-12T02:01:00.000-07:00

I don’t come from many places.
My first house was a
quiet box of suburbia
in a gated community
with a fence as high as balance
to keep my family’s sanity
from escaping,
I always got the feeling there
dad was running
from something.
Our neighbors were
adults too rough
to deal with childhood’s
bicycle tracks
and chalk portraits.
We were 45 minutes
from the only two places
I ever went:
church and school.
We were also
3 ½ hours
from the only friend I had,
but please,
I am far from looking for pity,
just qualifying that I too
wish to be entitled
to this breath.
I used to think
there are things
we never grow out of,
and this December planted nothing
but the terrifying idea that I had added
to my fear of the dark
to a terror of a white called snow
so make no mistake:
humanity has a footprint
like a shadow
and this one’s a stamp
too permanent
to hide from,
I wonder if angels see in color,
if they also have felt
their hearts in their throats
when they realized it is possible to fear
both black and white
and for all the words of the bible
I believe to be true
most days heaven
sounds to me
the way I imagine
a refugee camp
sounded to my Nepali friends
who live down Division
nine and a half months ago
before they spoke English,
an escape,
something safer,
but not home.
When I was eleven,
our second house was a skyscraper
it was green then
and smelled like
dad unlearning the
programmed uselessness
his parents once taught him
by their absence,
he rebuilt my room
with my mother’s father
and began to
understand significance
I don’t come from many places.
But I too know
how to spell the word “lost”
I too know exactly
how hollow a chest can be
I was never one to
pretend that I am made
of anything more than
well-placed shots in the dark
call me lucky.
I used to think
there are things
we never grow out of,
and if there are,
humanity is first among them
but if you asked me,
I’d tell you what I learned
the day dad stopped running:
I’m not looking for heaven,
the streetlamp eyes
lining the aisles of this room
assure me
heaven is already here
and we are not angels
but I dare you,
welcome the days
you feel your pulse in your throat,
tattoo fire on your breath,
and breathe the air so warm
the snowmelt is as loud as
the darkness evaporating.
If you’re looking for an escape,
you’ve landed on
the wrong edge of the planet,
but if you’re willing to frame your self-portrait
with bicycle tracks
I’ll bet you everything I’ve ever believed in
that we’ll make the angels jealous
of this light spectrum we have,
called “home.”

post-prayer self-reassurance

2009-06-09T23:27:00.000-07:00

there are some who say
i am foolish.
say, immediate sacrifice
is indicitive of my/our well-being
they believe i do not forsee
the weight of consequence,
and though i (often) see myself
on their side
of the line,
i am willing to believe
that future sacrifice
is appropriate.
who is to say that
i know nothing
of results?
if destiny
or God
controls our future
i am taking this present in my hands
i believe in free will
so don't call this
a rebellion.
like the last drip of water
from an apple blossom
we are quiet revolution(arie?)s
in freefall
just below the wind tunnel,
and i muse to myself
that reflections must
never grow tired
of their expression filled silence...

the start of a thank you note to my jr high youth pastor

2009-06-07T22:04:00.000-07:00

in the seventh grade
i man that i somehow
still trust implicitly
handed me a pandora's box,
wrapped with newspaper.
the headlines screamed stories
of girls like me
who irritated him
with our
blind leaps of faith
and imbalanced heart-head (love-religion) ratio.
i burned through the paper
like an illiterate street kid
looking for scraps of food
in a recycling bin.
inside was dry air
and at the bottom of the box,
stenciled like a photograph
was the word "why?"
were the answers given to a girl
too self-absorbed
to ask the questions?
weren't the answers given to the ones
who tear themselves apart
just looking for
which questions to ask?
i know that morality
has little to do with redemption
because i own
too many mirrors.

screw finals.

2009-06-03T23:49:00.000-07:00

there are many things
i would like to write
and can't
things i would rather not write
but have
will
and there are nights
when finding ink is like
pulling blood out my veins
with a straw,
the opposite of pleasantry.
leeches and ticks get
far too personal for me
and perhaps
i fear they'll run
my pens dry.
i have no qualms
with insects
who space themselves
a polite distance from my skin,
and i am not so proud
to think
there is inspiration inside
these blood canals
worth protecting
but i've got to take
what i can get
so call in the exterminator
and let's pretend
this is in
everyone's self-interest.

righteousness at my brother's expense?

2009-05-30T00:15:00.000-07:00

"...personally, i'd rather give birth to lucifer, a fixer-upper, the kind of kid who will sit at the last supper and complain that judas got more mashed potatoes because God knows, the holy have done more damage to this world than the devil ever could."
-andrea gibson

i have not been so angry in a very, very long time.

and in answer to my own question, this is the furthest thing from righteousness, but it is still at my brother's expense.

TELL ME, what relentless pursuit of christ is this?

hoy todo está bien.

2009-05-28T21:34:00.001-07:00

"You're a complex individual, and emotions are some of the baggage that come with being who you are! Some of the other baggage is the fact that your friends love you and want to support you, so fuckin' deal with it!"
-timothy riggs

i survived the year. congrats me? perhaps. vamos a seguir adelante! let's go forward.

picked a book off my shelf, here's what i found

2009-05-26T23:47:00.000-07:00

"...i had always assumed a kind of anonymity with god. when i saw myself in heaven, i didn't imagine sitting at the right hand of god, as the scriptures say, but i pictured myself off behind some mountain ranges doing some fishing and writing a good detective novel. but if the gospel of jesus is relational; that is, if our brokenness will be fixed, not by our understanding of theology, but by god telling us who we are, then this would require a kind of intimacy of which only heaven knows. imagine, a being with a mind as great as god's telling you that you are his cherished creation. it's kind of exciting if you think about it hard. earthly love, i mean, the stuff i was trying to get by sounding smart, is temporal and slight so that it has be given again and again in order for us to feel any sense of security, but god's love, god's voice and presence, would instill our souls with such affirmation we would need nothing more and would cause us to love other people so much we would be willing to die for them. perhaps this is what the apostles stumbled upon."
-donald miller

i guess this is what i believe in.

god poems are hard to write when you like him. especially if you really like him.

for better or for worse.

2009-05-25T00:53:00.001-07:00

a compilation of random crap? mostly to even it out, because april had 23 blog posts, and so far may has like 8. and most of them are meaningless. (as is this, but shhhh, it's a secret.)

+++

it doesn't take much
to inspire jitterbugs
when you're drunk or high on
too much apprehension
but i'm feeling life vicariously
like this was scripted
but i didn't write it
and my best role
was never director,
they must have been joking
when they said,
"give her the lead,"
because i'm no actress either.
i'd rather be the villain
to your empty novel.
only the president reserves
the right to veto,
so i said yes
in three different languages
maybe they wouldn't agree to
a stage presence based on misunderstanding
but affirmative means all-go
no matter who you are
so i'm sorry for becoming
the protagonist

+++

i was never one to
play up
my lack of coordination
so i thought perhaps
you'd mistake my stumbles
for ballroom,
and when you did
i fled
like mouse to hole
gopher to ground
poltergeist to closet
i've only ever been
the one in pursuit,
when they ask me why i run,
i sometimes wish
to say it's how i remember
how to breathe
and this chase
has started to suffocate me
but air is for logicians
and those who play safe
i have enough fear
for everyone,
twice over,
but if you really think
i'm brave
maybe i'll learn how
to dance

+++

i have always known
that being good at this
means forgetting how
to write about myself.
we all choose things
with which to hide our scars,
but my makeup remembers
those days i could only pretend
it was necessary
i am unlearning self-fulfillment
through words
i am tired of looking out
for me.
so i don't know where you sleep
or if you cry before you do,
i am just sure
that if i deserved
any merit for this ink
(and trust me i don't)
my vocabulary would be so big
i would know which syllables to use
for you to see you
as clearly as i wish
i had the courage
to reflect myself
i will not pretend today
i am writing this
for any other reason
than my conscience's comfort
but i have taken to convincing myself
that i wish to
because empathetic means little
when followed by a self-portrait
but my pen is itching to be free
of my fingers and
their fortresses.
this is not for you,
but God help me
if i didn't wish it was.

+++

i am too busy
being concerned
to care that this
is the perfect model,
i never wanted this
to be
how i got
my practice
or
'skill'
but i guess there's
no such thing
as unbroken art
the question lies
in the depth
of the shadows
i feel punished
for feeling things
too strongly
it's in my chemistry
i know you
aren't deaf,
you put that in
my blood!
i must have an
obsession
with justice,
i am convinced
that i am owed
a little fairness,
"Jesus paid it all
all to him
I owe..."
apparently,
faithfulness has
its expenses,
so call me
a diplomat
and call this
negotiation.

+++

for all of the words of the bible
I think are true
most days heaven
sounds to me
the way I imagine
a refugee camp
sounded to my Nepali friends
who live down division
nine and a half months ago
before they spoken English,
an escape,
something safer,
but not home.

um,

2009-05-23T07:53:00.000-07:00

whew. :)

"a good story cuts both ways"

2009-05-17T10:08:00.000-07:00

i think
if i had not spent
so much energy
buying time
i'd have the power
to be angry
i am sorry
for being
self-righteous enough
to make this
a prayer:
i'm not asking
for wisdom.
I already know
what Jesus
would do.
i am not,
under any circumstance,
worthy of this
the rule for
this notebook
is scribbles only belong
to misspellings
that aside,
no excuses,
no looking back,
You are so clever
that you surpass
any false dichotomy
Your omnipotence still
allows our hands
free will,
no,
love,
this is not
a storybook
and i believe Job
to be as real
as our relation
to his plight
and this is
hardly suffering
but what else
have i to trace?
i'm an artist,
motherfuckers,
the cynic in me
assures you
that this sort
of prayers
is prettier
than all of my
excuses
for theology.

and to top the fucking cake

2009-05-16T05:52:00.001-07:00

the only place i've ever even wanted to call home is being taken too.

fucking sprinkler law.

a piece of a not freewrite.

2009-05-14T14:57:00.000-07:00

This belief came out
in a government high school
institution
staring down the barrel
of an accusation
that sounded something
like this:
you’d rather believe
in omnipotent,
omniscient,
invisible
apathy
than the good of our
tangible,
realistic,
at least honest
humanity?
(apparently,
it’s not just
the righteous
who find their qualms
with me)
in reply,
I spread my arms wide
outlined with charcoal
all the lines on my wrists
I would have used
to bleed out
my insecurities
if I didn’t know
how to run.
Honey,
I said,
every shower I take
leaves stains in the tub.
They look like
diluted prayers
from all the people
who thought they couldn’t
make them holy enough
to earn a stamp
to send them
to my Almighty.
Please,
if you know what
white looks like,
I’ll leave Jesus
at the doorstep
like an afterthought,
until then
forgive my neediness,
I am tired
of my shortcomings,
we are all born
with scars.

dear Jesus,

2009-05-11T21:45:00.000-07:00

i love you.
but holy hell.
sometimes...
i am sacrilegious.
and possess the ability
to file a huge complaint.
tonight is sometimes.
love,
danielle

why i have a bad grade in geology.

2009-05-07T08:51:00.000-07:00

freewriting during lecture woot woot

some days
safety is as elusive
as certainty
in your eyes
some nights
i'd almost
be willing
to go back
and this is familiar
this tired
this sleepless
this pity
this overindulgence
of self
and my weaker
manifestation.

too much ground to cover.

2009-05-04T23:34:00.000-07:00

so i will do my best. i am re-studying colossians. my moral compass russ and i sat down a few weeks ago to basically re-orient my life. i've been in something of a rut, at least spiritually, for the past few months and most of that was self-driven, laziness driven, whatever you want to call it... i was fed up. we came up with a plan and it involved consistent bible reading, something i have never done or been good at except at the oaks. in class. when assigned and required. (and often in greek or latin, not english.)

i tried to start in psalms. that was the plan originally.

somehow i ended up in romans last week.

then i found my old (in quotations "old") bible. NLT i think? i switched to ESV just because it is in fact closest in greek and hebrew translations. but anyways, found the NLT. the destroyed bible. seriously, sometimes i worry that if i look at it the wrong way the binding will snap and the pages will shrivel up.

and here's the thing with the last week or so... i haven't WANTED to read my bible since (i can name the actual week if i get out my calendar) july of 2007. but i haven't been able to put the thing down. it's crazy. mostly paul stuff, but gospels too.

so, colossians. (pulease, i've never been diagnosed with ADD........) main message/point of the whole book: Christ is above all else.

something i think many people, christian or not, miss in the idea of christianity - like, the real, first century AD badass version of christianity - is the recognition that, uh, it actually has something (read: everything) to do with christ. people talk this and that and fight over God God God, and they're referring to God the "father" or whatever. NOT that he isn't important. NOT that we would be anything without him... but people miss the idea that christ validates everything. i don't think it would be worth anything without jesus.

colossians focuses on that. "everything changes because christ is my life." i had a conversation recently that ended up on the notion that: "the purpose of life is to get rid of as much of the shit as possible." and i agree.

no question.

rob often says that one of the most central players in life is hope. and for me, i can't just hope that life is going to be better. call me naive, call me simple, call me ignorant, i simply don't accept the notion that this is all there is. i've experienced something greater. i don't mean to be preachy, i just really am CONVINCED that there is something worth hoping for, only because God manifest came and killed any chance satan had in this world of winning. he lost. period. life is still shitty because WE are imperfect. but there is hope. because christ changed everything... which ought to include US.

there is so much of a reason to live for that.

sometimes when i write things like this, i feel like i don't make sense. and in some ways, although i feel like i might be misrepresenting my faith (or god, or whatever), i'm ok with that. i KNOW that there are some things i will never be good at explaining. i don't care how much seminary you go to or how many preaching classes you take, some things are just too big for words. and i'm good at words. but i KNOW that.

some things are just too BIG for words.

colossians 3.17: "go to everyone, admonishing and singing with thankfulness."

ok, one last thing and i'll shut up.

i told russ that i want to learn how to pray, because, despite all my wordiness and ability to be the outspoken student leadership cornerstone... i've grown up enough to realize that prayer is personal. the pharisees got owned by jesus for doing what i've considered usual practice for so long. stumbled upon colossians 4.2: "devote yourselves to prayer with an alert mind and thankful heart."

seems "normal" or straightforward enough. but the greek translation - yay nerdiness - translates "devote yourselves" almost directly into the phrase "hold fast and not let go."

dude.

i want that.

"hold fast and don't let go"?!

HELL YES.

i want to DO that. find something, hold fast, don't give up until there's an answer. (EVEN if the answer is no.) the question is not "do you pray?" but rather "are you prayerful?" it's another lifestyle thing.

it's like anything else. like running. like writing. if you want it, you will hold onto it and NOT LET GO.

yeah. everything changes. at least for me. because christ is my life. i won't let go, y'all. i can't.

thank God, i can't.

so much for

2009-05-01T22:30:00.001-07:00

giving up freewriting...

night #2

it would be wrong
to assume
that i am capable
of sinking
but science has proved
i am unable
to fly
i'm looking for
the spelling of a word
listed somewhere between
idealism and
jealousy.

"danielle,
you can only be jealous
of people."

"really?
then watch me cry
over the dictionary.
i envy
meaning
and all her
constituents."

i've been sketching this out
for months
patience is a virtue
but failure is what grace is for
i've been waiting
to finish this off,
engraved,
it's about time i learned:
the wise man will bite his tongue
while i seek instability
to cry between lines
practice makes perfect
practice makes perfect
practice makes perfect
as if words actually
made pictures
sometimes there are reasons
for admitting
language is an excuse
for reality.

the beginning will change, the middle will be thrown out, and the ending doesn't exist.

2009-05-01T00:46:00.001-07:00

sounds like a great start to a poem! written on index cards in pencil, because i got sick of every notebook and piece of paper and pen that i own.

you believed
that wealth should
be measured
in syllables
that love should
be spelled independent
of music
but hearts are not
like me,
and if you think
they're deaf then
i will have no problem
naming you a fool,
so throw rocks at my window.
i may be
too fearful
to answer.
but be reassured
that i keep it closed.
i'm waiting for
the pebbles to
develop percussion
and i don't mean to ask so much
i promise,
i will be as dedicated
as the tides
and far warmer.
just assure me
you are made of
reality.
i want an apparition
of more than just
fictionalizations.
this is a love poem
for the man
i hope to meet
but am planning on bypassing
while i'm too distracted
by my
fence building.
the letters are small
and i am outlining
this hope
in pencil:
permanent is something
i haven't yet been given
the chance
to learn.

home =

2009-04-29T15:44:00.000-07:00

being forced to beg for coffee.
then not having to pay for drip.

hermano numero dos.

2009-04-27T14:30:00.000-07:00

i couldn't have wished this
on you.
our similarities run
thick as my conscience
and you'll mistake
my corners for misunderstanding,
but, baby boy,
don't cry to momma please.
my abrasiveness might
have been childish
because it seemed
so instinctive
and i came close
to asking
for forgiveness
you were the only reason
i could ever feel guilty
hating my reflection.

(*maybe a beginning)

yes, tri, i like crappy christian music.

2009-04-26T21:38:00.000-07:00

And the problem is this
We were bought with a kiss
But the cheek still turned
Even when it wasn’t hit

And I don’t know
What to do with a love like that
And I don’t know
How to be a love like that

When all the love in the world
Is right here among us
And hatred too
And so we must choose
what our hands will do

Where there is pain
Let there be grace
Where there is suffering
Bring serenity
For those afraid
Help them be brave
Where there is misery
Bring expectancy
And surely we can change
Surely we can change
Something

And the problem it seems
Is with you and me
Not the Love who came
To repair everything

And I don’t know
What to do with a love like that
And I don’t know
How to be a love like that

When all the love in the world
Is right here among us
And hatred too
And so we must choose
What our hands will do

Where there is pain
Let us bring grace
Where there is suffering
Bring serenity
For those afraid
Let us be brave
Where there is misery
Let us bring them relief
And surely we can change
Surely we can change
Oh surely we can change
Something

Oh, the world’s about to change
The whole world’s about to change

i need to stop freewriting.

2009-04-23T09:25:00.001-07:00

...and get my act together, write something that doesn't make me hate myself. like, a real poem. that would be cool. what's a poem again?

the first time
i wrote about you
it won me a name
or proof that
someday
i'd be better
but when push
came to shove,
you were still hurt
i was still proud
you were still proud
i was still hurt
you, at least, had melody.
but i'm just a
what?
i'm just a
what?
poet
i'm just
what?
a poet?

you know something?
she asked.
what?
i said.
you don't ever stand still.
it was the first time i realized
"home"
will be the tricky bitch
someday.

There’s one thing left
I need from you.
Just wash out the sink.
My mirror’s all fogged up,
and without my reflection
the car can’t stop
so keep the water running
until my footprints are so dusty
even the mice around them suffocate.
Then you won’t have to worry,
there’s nothing else
to do.
That’s unfair,
you say.
Yes.
I say.
But love is not cement.
I learned that
from a textbook of yours
that left tire tracks
down my face.

for the sake of wanting a new notebook:
Jesus
forgive me
i pretend
in this book
that you didn't teach me
how to hope
i didn't mean to lie
the truth just doesn't
look as good
on paper.

now i'm going to mercilessly begin writing lots of crap and then destroying it. see you in a few years.

see what i mean? (#19 [i think])

2009-04-20T00:20:00.001-07:00

friendship is,
among other things,
finding sacredness in
sitting silently.
as i grow up,
i've found
no matter what i do,
i cannot word
either the worst or best
pieces.
friendship understands the necessity
of the gap between
my voice and my heart.

(*i couldn't write this any worse, but i probably can't write it any better, either.)

eff going in order. (#20)

2009-04-20T00:04:00.001-07:00

her shoes leave footprints
like they didn't exist
like running away
was so much easier than hiding.
when the clock strikes 12,
beautiful,
who are you going to be?
when the birds
and all that spins your world
grow too tired of following,
i really hope,
for your sake,
the invisibility of your shoes,
is only a mirage
from here.

i am also tired of being the victim. (#17)

2009-04-19T23:29:00.000-07:00

it's hard to look back sometimes
harder than holding on, i guess.
so take it as penitence when i let go.
can you forgive me for admitting
that i don't miss you?
i'm painting the walls of the steeple
to match the color of my regrets
so that when
i tear it down
they could recycle it
into a confessional.
the walls will learn to speak
as soon as i learn to write
in something other
than the dialect of my pride.
"i'm sorry"
means a lot less
than the wood splinters
on the ground.
tell the construction workers
to be careful,
the paint is still warm
and blood is sharper
than you might think.

this could probably be labelled a jesus poem. (#16)

2009-04-18T00:10:00.000-07:00

*freewrite, not poem.
this one was about synonyms. i started with carried, because i kept choosing really terrible words like fear and anger. kurt is tagged because i used his line.

i am carried.
all my life
I've been stumbling over
my biography's disability
through this quicksand
and I'm sure I'm still sinking
because,
"baby, I'm heavy."
you know better than I
flying never was
my spiritual gift
but they tell me
they can still see my toes.
I was sure they drowned
years ago.
I haven't ability,
but these days it's
the loss of my footprints
that bequeathed me
my humility back.
I am far from weightless
but you reminded me again,
that you would never expect me
to grow wings.

catch up (#15)

2009-04-17T23:58:00.000-07:00

I've been running in circles
for quite a while now
and I rearrange my furniture
more often than before
pretending to look
for something I don't want to find
writing the same round letter
over and over
like maybe these circles
could spell something more than
evasion.

I've only found my needs met
when the darkness burns out
to reveal reality
just below the surface,
so listen,
don't you lie to yourself,
(everyone does)
no matter how much you run
dawn will always
be faster
than your feet.

freewriting before the meet.

2009-04-15T14:12:00.000-07:00

-i had no idea this was so long until i typed it. ruh roh.

You once named me ‘liar’
your voice is mistaken.
I just couldn’t apologize
for crimes I was too forgetful to commit.
Would you rather
I kept your lamp dark?
Sunrise doesn’t echo to your appeals,
or mine,
and if you want me
to allow you
to be foolish enough
to find safety underneath the bed
(be my guest),
you’ll find she flees
like a heartbeat from bad memories
engraved like stretch marks
where your innocence used to be.
You nodded anyway,
as though closed eyes
would make the dark more heavy
or the light less tangible
but,
honey,
this is reality,
so welcome home.
I can see you trying to erase
the absence of my ‘I’m sorry’
but chalk don’t come off so easy.
And if you really wanted to believe,
that my inability for remembrance
is a sin,
you’ll have to untie
the lampshade from around your ankles.
Electricity has no place outside of a storm,
so let me stand over my heater
and melt into wax
I’ll make you a candle.
Watch me break the dark over my forgetfulness.
You're desperate for sound
like you could stop dawn
with a scream,
but truth is a friend only to silence,
and she could never sympathize
with the backs of eyelids
or intertwined eyelashes.
So, please,
take this flame.
It might warm your throat.

i just want to sleep.

2009-04-14T22:57:00.000-07:00

if I could,
I would highlight the words “running away”
with my brake lights.
No bicycle is sufficient enough
for the height
of the roads I want to climb
and I rely upon these streets.
They do not tell me that I cannot
walk the blurs between safety and cowardice,
they do not tell me that “running away”
is a euphemism for “weak,”
or at least they do not fault me.
They spur me on because
they are frozen,
and despite all my best efforts,
I am not.
They understand me,
as much as any path can understand
someone bound to drive them backwards.

Because of the Smile of Adam's Adorable Son? (#13)

2009-04-13T23:13:00.000-07:00

(*disclaimer: ugh.)

there is a reason my attention
gains a singularity of purpose
every time a child walks into the room.
It reminds me of relativism,
and that sometimes the difference
between spring and winter
is the immeasurable gap between green and white,
I don’t know what a color spectrum is,
and I know if you ask someone small
what jubilance is,
she may laugh at your familiarity with the dictionary
and show you
without knowing it.
Ignorance is bliss is only half true.
No child is ignorant,
they just have not yet learned
to hide the truth.
When hotels are mansions,
and oceans are measured in chlorine-stained hair,
wisdom floats with all the acuteness
of the honesty
we hid under our shoe-soles,
when we believed we could define
what “growing up” is.

note to self:

2009-04-13T06:33:00.000-07:00

just about everything feels lighter in the morning.

napowrimo #12/#1 (or, tardiness).

2009-04-12T14:26:00.000-07:00

at mark's suggestion, i am going to attempt to begin (quite late in the game) national poetry writing month, where i write to a prompt every day. this is in order to overcome writer's block. this one asked "where you came from," i think. so, pieces of my childhood, i guess:

The firstborn’s first years elicit so many pictures
that if photographs were bread slices
we could feed several small countries.
I have all of mine
in a box, wrapped up with ribbon.
I put them there to hush their voices.
Childhood can be enjoyed
in the immediate
or from a distance,
but not in between.
The streaks down my back were sketched
with all the fright of one-windowed bedrooms in the dark
and redeemed by safe-house fortresses constructed
of nothing more
than extra sheets and all of our pillows.
(and that flashlight we stole from the Mormon neighbors’ shed.)
“Balanced” is the construction paper
of today’s coloring books.
But if that’s the case,
then my childhood
ought to have been medicated.
I had a strong affinity
to things like barking and crying,
and accidental philosophizing
(this concerned my caregivers,
I was simply proving
my less-than-ideal individuality.)
I believe I am more of a child now
than I was then,
so I enjoy the distant with pretended immediacy.
I think I like looking at the sky,
because I imagine that I am looking
for another lens
to take these pictures,
so I might have to unwrap the box
that I tried to hide
under the sheets,
just to test the strength of the safe-house.
And sometimes,
when I am very tired,
or very honest,
I believe the stars
are nothing more than faraway camera flashes.
pointed just at me.

thank you emilie sowers.

2009-04-12T11:30:00.000-07:00

"Don't let mistakes be so monumental and don't let your love be so confidential and don't let your mind be so darn judgmental and please let your heart be more influential."

surprise!

2009-04-10T10:38:00.000-07:00

i made the two mile top sixteen districts list!!!
i had no idea!
way to go vandine, for not even being my track coach but emailing me anyway.
what?!?
so that's cool.

today.

2009-04-10T04:49:00.000-07:00

i may have a terrible case of the tireds, luckily i have myself a barista to provide me with more of the stuff that caused this sleeplessness in the first place... but it will be grand. mayhaps i shall take an empyrean nap. hopefully though, i can fall asleep again for the next hour and a half or so, that would be nice. i have good friends.

i can already feel it, sire fairbanks will have his work cut out for him today.

bitterness, woohoo!

2009-04-07T21:17:00.000-07:00

....it don't have no title yet. i'm thinking: "what i would write about you if you broke my heart." haha. or something, although i think it'll just end up being 'misstep.'

I saw you yesterday,
picking up your dignity off the floor
you left my honesty
for the janitor to deal with
you deemed her too hard to hold onto
then asked why I didn’t break your fall.
This voice of experience
can’t sing you
a sonnet worth listening to,
but it might sound familiar
if you stare at it long enough.
you never wanted to believe
I had enough in my past
to leave leagues under me like the ocean
so you wouldn’t have to face
the cold that is submerging
you told yourself no waterbed this deep
would make itself
my predecessor,
but I know why you ran away.
Waves fill up my recent ancestry,
I told you from the beginning,
if you had come looking for solidity
you’d better learn
to talk with stains on your tongue
I taste like disappointment,
my infection was always diagnosed,
“misstep.”
When you said
tightropes were your specialty,
I started convincing myself
falling and diving look the same,
I confess,
I suspected
that your acrobatics matched
my illness letter for letter,
that’s why the pretending went so easy.
But when you hit the floor,
you blamed me for being translucent,
I replied
that intentional blindness
breeds distrust,
I might be reflective but I am not simple.
Read the backlog
it’s stapled together between
prescriptions for self-deprecation
I forgot to pick up,
I weaved you a disclaimer
wrote an apology for my introduction,
you said slippage was fine,
maybe you didn’t believe I was lost,
maybe you didn’t believe you wouldn’t find me.
Either way,
take no heed to my bitterness
when I tell you
the lifejackets are back in the shed.
I recommend the sandy ones,
it means they’ve made it back.
While you pretend to look for them,
I’ll pretend to notice the blood
leaking down your dimples,
giving away you never learned
disappointment leaves a salty aftertaste
it proves all the depth
you might have been too jealous to believe in
I might have been too arrogant to hide,
but trust me, boy
pasts are like ghosts
no one claims to believe in them,
but everyone leaves the back door unlocked
just in case.
I’d tell you not to run so fast,
but it struck me yesterday
that dignity would never leave honesty
for midnight to clean up.
So tell me I’m not an ocean,
I’ll remind you that you’re no swimmer.
When you wash out your mouth,
leave the disclaimer in the shed
and hope your absence hurts me.
You’ll learn someday,
tightropes stretch thinner by each season
and when you’ve got leagues
of mistakes to your name
you’ll find falling
is the least of your worries.

work.

2009-04-04T10:27:00.000-07:00

Just in case
I will leave my things packed
So I can run away
I cannot trust these voices

I don't have a line of prospects
That can give some kind of peace
There is nothing left to cling to
That can bring me sweet release

I have no fear of drowning
It's the breathing that's taking all this work

Do you know what I mean when I say, "I don't want to be alone"?
What I mean when I say, "I don't want to be alone"

Empty spaces
With shadows hit by streetlights
Warning signs and weight
Of tired conversations

In the absence of a shoulder
In the abscess of a thief
On the brink of this destruction
On the eve of bittersweet

Now all the demons look like prophets
And I'm living out
Every word they speak
Every word they speak

Do you know what I mean when I say, "I don't want to be alone"?
What I mean when I say, "I don't want to be alone"
What I mean when I say, "I don't want to be alone"

Do you know what I mean when I say, "I don't want to be alone"?
What I mean when I say, "I don't want to be alone"
What I mean when I say, "I don't want to be alone"
Alone, alone, I don't want to be alone

I have no fear of drowning
Its the breathing that's taking all this work

God is good to me because...?

2009-03-30T17:56:00.000-07:00

my GPA is still a 3.7.
hallelujah!
Jesus loves me
this i know
for my transcript tells me so...

no seriously.
those grades were an act of God.

things i have done or wish to do.

2009-03-30T16:32:00.000-07:00

sing on a bicycle walk nighttime streets write bad poetry travel the whole wide world take too many pictures erase all the pictures just to see if you remember write in the sand cry because it's easier than smile smile because it's easier than crying smile and cry at once wish on falling stars wish on normal stars watch disney movies pretend you've seen them all before play lots of nerdy video games do the dishes without being asked don't do the dishes when you are asked eat too much candy become addicted to coffee have a hero or many be friends with people who are different than you write lots of run on sentences forget to look back sleep the day away dream awake run as fast as long as you can remember something terrible replace it with something wonderful do badly in a class do really well at something wonderfully obscure don't lie love a dog as hard as a person love a person harder than you could ever love a dog stay up late get up before everyone else keep your heart in a jar give away your favorite thing eat cookies cultivate a friendship with someone seemingly unfriendly refuse to answer the phone give up driving to relearn walking when you cannot walk fly or ride your bike remember that this is your chance.