Shell

Does a ship ever stop floating
Does its sail tear?
And if it tears, will it die?
Will it keep on living?

A shell is sad
A bear is crying
A unicorn, this fantastical beast is comforting the poor creature.
A porcelain baby crawls delicately, but joyfully on his heaving back
And sinks him deeper into the ground.
By a pool.

She has nothing to give but an image.
A beautiful, angelic, and eternal portrayal
A masterpiece of beauty
A carefully constructed dream

And under the ground
Hidden beneath the pool
Is a shell
Dead
Weeping tears that nothing living will see
And why should a shell weep
When it is the only thing that is not alive anymore.

Bury
Bury
Bury

Until only the angel remains.
I will join the infant in its delicacy
In its primitive world before it was born.
To a place where it cannot be hurt.
Cannot have spina bifida

And I will be there.
Safe in the place before my life ended.
Like a photograph preserved
In time forever.

Just leave the shell alone.
Perhaps it is not there anymore anyway.

Calling

The memory of your voice

Is like rushing down a hill

down

down

Down into the very depths of the earth

That I grew from

To dust

From dust

I am dust

I am spirit

I am Patricia

And you called me Patricia.

When you said the most beautiful part of me

Your sound made Patricia

I laughed I cried

I was

I was not

Patricia rose from dust into herself

I have no words for such a phenomenon

to describe how you create a soul

You see it and it is

You speak it and it is

You say Patricia.

Here I am.

Tangled Walls

She smiles with eyes that are hollow and dark

I peer into the deep, eternal canyon

There is hunger that scares me

I'm afraid of her fear
And muted opinions and
Time ticks by

She chuckles 

Quietly wiping the crumbs from her mouth

With one small sweep of the napkin

Her subtly trembling hands

With eyes void of crackling warmth

Obey a quieter voice that speaks nothing

Let me in, let me in!

Tangled walls from her mind maze

Stand irrationally firm

As I push with my power

To bring peace and salvation

To the dying child

Who silently waits to become no more

Her posture is straightened

Her quick comments are practiced

She waits and speaks without error

Dancing and prancing and laughing

Between all my questions

She avoids an unknown terror

And I wonder

What lives in the depth of her eyes?

Oh to explore that dark wonderland,

A private territory space!

But there's no path, no door

What resides in the warren?

Stay away, stay away

She yells from her hallowed ground!

Summoning last amounts of strength

As I approach

She can’t afford to be unsure

Her heart is her own.

A fiery night

He screams
He shrieks
He punches
He kicks
He claws
He crawls

He is an angel
He is a demon
He is a creature
He is my son

How does one mother an animal
Whose only instinct is to hunt, run, or hide
From terrors that are unclear

It cannot be reasoned with
It will not allow rescuing
It will not hear blessings, only curses
Whose body was built to endure fire and torment

Crossing into his world
Can only stab my chest
As I watch my once-newborn
Mercilessly devoured by searing flames
Under a cruel ruler's order
The beast has had his fill

His mouth drips with the blood of my children
My heart turns to stone as I desire one thing
His punishment

God give him the justice that he deserves
Train him to stop feasting on innocence
And consuming the little hope in my son
That I have toiled for

Breathwork

A breath
In
Pause
Out

In
Heartbeat
Out

Another thought
In

Out
Emptiness

Can't keep
In

Going like this
Out

To lift my body with energy
In
Needs less air
Out

To believe that things will get better
In
Needs more
Out

Maybe I should let Him
In
breathe for me
Out

On Fierce Reality

Another day to look at reality
in its fiercest form
A devouring lion
A relentless hail that pounds
across my already bruised face.

Fresh, raw, and crazy
Sanity runs quicker than I
Cannot keep up
Cannot reach beyond my already outstretched fingers
to briefly at moments glance her strands
of hazy hair

Reality,
the strongest dream that I awoke from
If only I could control that phantom
which only appears in the darkness
to do my bidding
instead of depending upon it for my very life

Hope can disappoint
Dreams are by nature, fleeting
They roar and crave
Ever consuming and never satisfied
Mercilessness in it's cruelest form
like reality.

Oh let me be awake and this nightmare depart!

Catching Up

Hello everyone out there who is reading this blog. It's been a while and I wanted to thank you for following me. It has been a few years since I last wrote anything, but I don't want this blog just to die and be dependent on Google searches to be unearthed. Therefore, I'm changing the role of this site to becoming somewhat of a temporary diary. I am not really a wonderful writer or communicator, and as much as I enjoyed writing this blog, I have run out of steam writing about the Bible.

Don't get me wrong! I still love Jesus! I just have much to say, many stories to tell, and a lot of free time this summer, so I am going to attempt to chronicle my days as they happen (with no daily commitment) from here on out. Not just, "this happened, this happened", but honest-to-God thoughts that I have had about life.

Today, I saw a movie called "Hello, my name is Doris" which is about a woman in her 60's or later that crushes on a 20-something man at work. It's quite awkward to watch and I do not recommend it, but it gave me some food for thought. It made me think about how long I am going to be "young". Do you ever think about that? Do you ever wonder when you're going to start getting wrinkles and start being overlooked by the world? Or do you think about what is it like to be old and forgotten and alone?

Proverbs 31 talks about beauty and how foolish it is to get caught up in it. It says, "Charm is deceitful, and beauty is vain, but a woman who fears the Lord is to be praised." I feel like that is easy to say, but difficult to apply. After I thought about this verse, I stared in the mirror and wondered what my face would look like 50 years from now. I looked at my youthful cheeks and neck, rosy from walking around the house, and pinched them as if to make sure that they were there to stay. Youth feels so permanent, yet I know I'm just like a flower blooming in the springtime, naive to the winter in store. The cold is coming...

And then Ecclesiastes 12:1 says, "Remember your Creator in the days of your youth, before the days of trouble come and the years approach when you will say, "I find no pleasure in them." Isn't that dark? I wonder if I am in "the days of my youth" or the "days of trouble." It certainly already feels like I'm in my days of trouble, but perhaps there's more in store.

I don't know what the purpose of this blog is for, or what exactly I'm going for right now. It's rather mirroring my life to be honest. My purpose seems hazier than it did 10 years ago, a trend that I am hoping to discontinue. Do you ever feel like your mission is lost? Like somehow in the waiting room of life, you were forgotten? What do you do in those times to find it again? I feel like I have no mission. Every day that slips through my fingers seems to be dripping with regret and my heart burns with a desire to find direction.

Perhaps I'm afraid to make a wrong choice; to choose a path that leads to a place that I cannot leave. I'm realizing more and more that the choices we make day-to-day alter our life course significantly. The direction that I decide on is going to lead to specific opportunities that I may not have had otherwise. It could also limit me and lead me down a dark path.
So those are my thoughts for today.