Filed under: Pensation | Tags: anger, faith, grace, mystery, salvation, souls
There are souls so lost around me
that it shakes my precious faith.
How can God not hound and hunt them,
bathing them in savory grace?
If that love which dwarfs the cosmos
is as grand as all have said,
how could this persistent question
hold its haunt inside my head?
Is His glory won in carnage?
Does He fashion souls for hell?
Does the heart that bled on Calvary
say to me that all is well?
How damnation fuels His glory
I may never comprehend.
How my God can damn my brother
while Christ, humbled, calls me friend.
Amazing grace, it well was said;
There’s nothing more absurd!
how little sense it makes
although I feast upon His word.
As angry and as weary
as this conflict leaves my heart,
it seems my soul can’t help but cry,
“My God, how great though art!”
So in weariness You find me,
broken body, heart and mind.
Here I meet another mystery:
a wrathful God so kind.
My soul cannot escape Him,
though, trust me, it has tried!
So now, in storm, to this I cling:
my Jesus loves and died.
Infuriating madness,
it seems life’s theme is strife.
But here I rest in those strong arms
of Him who gave me life.
If to look upon your mystery
is my meager task today,
then this my solitary plea:
Let me never look away.
Losing your mind is like losing a friend.
The kind of friend who always gets you into trouble and lets you take the fall for it.
The kind of friend who disagrees with you about everything,
who tells you the brutal truth at exactly the moment you don’t need to hear it most.
Losing your mind is like losing the kind of friend
who won’t let you get a word in edge-wise,
who makes you feel like a waste of water,
but the kind of friend, at least, who is the only one never to have abandoned you…
until now.
Filed under: Pensation | Tags: forward motion, living is a risk, tick tock, unshackle
Don’t try to make it sound clever. We’re just echoes anyway. Life comes at us and we bounce it back out.
Tick tock, weary clock.
Running and ranting and hopeless romancing.
So feverless echoes we stay.
That is the natural way.
If you have something to say, get it out. Get it out before it swallows you, Compadre. That is my advice. Emotional constipation is an uncomfortable way of life. And you only have one because
Tick tock weary clock.
March you till your heart’s a rock
in loving and losing and leaving and lives. Living is a risk fiercer than the high dive.
Relish forward motion.
Capsize the weary clock, then unshackle yourself or sink. Don’t you think
that’d be a good move to make this morning?
This air
isn’t going anywhere,
My Girl.
Be brave, be small, be smooth
and see
finally
that this Air right here,
so dear, so near
is more than enough
Filed under: Pensation | Tags: ambition, caged, dance, jazz, Mama, moving on, rock me, sizzle, tremors
I wish I could write me the sizzle of jazz
with the croon of the secrets of midnight
and stir in the backbone a symphony set to
a decade of all that I’ve tried to forget.
‘Cause there’s something too sad on my tongue right now.
It’s honest and unbelievable.
It’s not good enough for the scholarly halls,
and I’m not good enough for the alabaster balls,
so I’ll shuffle to my corner with no competition or gloom
and I’ll weave my own atmosphere to the tune of the moon.
and it goes something like this…
Hum, Mama, hold
hold me steady in the night
There’s a critter in the moon beams
and its face is quite a sight
Oh, hum, Mama hold
There’s a creaking down the hall
and I’m still a little frightened
like a naked baby doll
Yes, hum, Mama hold
Hum a rhythm for my feet
just in case the strength to dance
Is a force that I might meet.
Please, hum, Mama hold
Hold me closer to your breast
grip me tighter till my mind is clear
of tremors and the rest.
Then hum, Mama hold,
on this corner of my bed
I’m a girl with no ambition,
and I’m caged inside my head.
So hum, Mama hold
’till the crimson light is here
While I’m crippled by my doubt
rock me gently through the fear
Hum, Mama hold
to the sizzle of the jazz
to the symphony of decades
to the secrets midnight has
Filed under: Think-filled Semi-Narratives | Tags: blade of grass, boiling, passion, Real, reason to live, screeching, true
There’s a screeching in my soul, clawing, biting, writhing, and fighting. Like a newborn child, it wakes without warning to demand my every attention, while I struggle endlessly even to know how to pacify this strange and raging beast. I have passion welling up inside my chest. Burning, boiling passion is rising up to flow out of me. But I choke. My passion was the clawing, screeching in my soul. It was aching for a release, but I was afraid. And I didn’t know why.
I think I was afraid of wasting passion. I cherished my passion so fiercely. I guarded it as a mother bear fights the very gates of hell in defense of her lone little cub. The passion of my soul, the blood of my heart. But each drop of passion I sew leaves me with less joy to reap. Surely, there must be something in this infinite universe worthy of receiving my passion and capable of shaping it into something worthwhile. The cry echoes and vibrates in my chest. There must be something real. There must be something true. There must be a reason to live.
But I searched until my soul bled. I pushed and molded my heart trying to fit it into some shape that would accept it. Somewhere, I knew, was a place in the perfect shape of my heart. Something I could lock into and be one with. It ran from me, though. I chased it throught the corridors of theology, history, and science. I chased it and listened and waited. I was beaten and aching. The passion was seeping from my veins and I had not the energy to catch it.
With my face in the dirt, I saw something. Something so new and old all at once. The little blade wavered in the wind. It looked up at me, though I was at my lowest point. Startled, I drew back. The grass seemed to have its own life. It was looking at me – no. It wasn’t looking at me at all. It was looking past me, as I should have been doing all along. The little blade pierced my soul on its way to something greater. My soul tingled. I didn’t fully understand, but at least now I had something to try to understand, and for once the aggravated chaffing of my soul was repaced with an excited jitter. There was hope. Something was true, and I would find it.
Filed under: La Fiction, Pensation | Tags: black, good and evil, grey, little girl, rose-colored glasses, skinned knee, white
Why is the world so full of people? They disgust me. I disgust myself. I ran around for so long with great ambitions. I spouted words of wisdom and stirred people’s hearts. They didn’t want their hearts to be stirred or redeemed, though. I found that out the day everything snapped. I wanted to believe that good things happened. I told everyone that good things happened. But they don’t. I was foolish and wrong and I lied to myself each time I smiled. I was innocent and I thought everyone else was too. He showed me how wrong I was. He said he loved me, but he stole my rose-colored glasses and left me there alone to bleed. All that was left for me to see was black, white, and grey. I didn’t even cry. I didn’t know how anymore. I didn’t want to face the evil, so I made a way around it in my mind. How could I feel evil if it didn’t exist? That day, I decided that nothing was evil, and I guess that meant nothing was good either. Everything just was, and I was ok with that. That’s how I lived and I liked it that way.
There was a little park between where I worked and my house. I used to stop there on my way home everyday. I wanted to watch the children play. Even with my new and numbing philosophy, I felt like the children knew something I didn’t. Nothing seemed to trouble them. Had I been like that once? I hated to think of the day when they would discover the truth that I had found. That their lives of joy and innocence were only fragile creations of their imaginations, little worlds that their praying mothers had spun to catch them where they fell.
Everyone knew I didn’t belong there. I guess I knew it too. How could I not know it after hearing it screamed at me through their eyes everyday? It didn’t matter, though, it didn’t hurt because it wasn’t evil, and that was the most beautiful part of my new little world. Eventually, I stopped going to the park, though. It was no different from the rest of the world.
But something struck me one day. I still can’t get it out of my head. Let me run it by you and see what you think. It came to me when I was trudging home from work one day and I passed by the same old park that I’d always visited. A father was screaming down at his little daughter. She lay in the gravel, cradling her skinned knee. The little girl was sobbing. Her pink pants were torn and stained with blood from her knee and she begged, “Daddy, there’s gravel in my knee, it stings so bad! Please, Daddy, make it stop!”
He bellowed at her and cussed. It was all her fault. If she wasn’t so clumsy she wouldn’t have fallen.
“It’s not my fault, Daddy. I was just playing and he tripped me. He told me I was his best friend in the whole world, but he laughed when I fell and then he ran away and it stings so bad! Why would he do that, Daddy? Why do people do mean things?” The man sighed in distain. He gruffly commanded her to stop crying and get up as he turned to walk away. She pulled herself up and limped after him, sobbing and sniffling between steps. I knew exactly how she felt. How dare he? It wasn’t her fault that she’d been hurt. It wasn’t her fault the boy had hurt her. I started with a dertermined step to stop this injustice, but the little girl froze me dead in my tracks. As she hobbled behind him, she picked up a crumpled little white flower. She limped as fast as she could and raced to stick the tragic little weed in his fist, offering a hopeful little smile up at him through her puffy eyes.
I turned away and left as fast as I could. I didn’t want to see what would happen next, the inevitable. I knew he would throw the flower down and trample it. That’s just what people do, I said to myself. These two were no different than anyone else in the world, I said, and I dismissed it. Or at least I tried to. Something just didn’t sit right in me, though. Suddenly my outlook didn’t seem to fit. If nothing was good or evil, if everything just was, then why was something wrong with that scene? Why did I feel such outrage at the father and the little boy if they were just being? And why was I in such awe of the little girl with her little white flower?
I had been slapped in the face by Good. I didn’t want to admit that good existed, because then I would need to feel the evil. I didn’t want to live in a world where both black and white lived, because then, I thought, I would need to face the grey.
The little girl with her little white flower shocked me, though, and taught me something very important: Grey is a good thing.
Grey is made when someone carries white into the black.
Filed under: Think-filled Semi-Narratives | Tags: arcane, eyes, fog, gray skies, language, selfless, thin lips
We both have cold hands and fine hair. My lips are thick and hers are thin, but we speak the same language. My mother and I speak in the language of sarcasm and sapphire. Sarcasm is never on the tip of our tongue. It is the tip of our tongue. We are a lot alike and a lot not, but our sincerity struggles to bypass this silver tip without getting a venomous lick. It does though. Oh how it does. No silver tipped-tongue has ever spoken sweeter words than hers. No sincerity has ever been more sincere. She speaks her own, magical language that has never been spoken by any other tongue. It is a confusing language. Sometimes her words get lost in translation and turn brown. Not many people know the language of sarcasm and sapphire. It is arcane and addictive. She has taught me this language. I used to speak it through my thick lips. Nothing ever came out right. Somehow, no one ever heard my sapphire. Perhaps my silver tongue was just born thirstier than hers. Perhaps my silver tongue licked up every trace of the sweet sapphire before it could be felt by any but me. Perhaps sapphire is not meant to be spoken through thick lips, I thought. But I discovered I had it all wrong. Sapphire is much too grand to be spoken through any lips at all. Sapphire is spoken through the eyes. When she speaks sapphire with her eyes it comes in rolling waves of sunlight. My mother has small, plain eyes that crackle with boiling sapphire. I wonder where all of her sapphire comes from. My eyes have had jade and emerald. These are gems of greed. These gems speak only green. Green sarcasm is a terrible thing to speak so I closed my eyes until I felt the boiling color change. My boiling color did not change. It did not change at all until I became enraged that it would not change. Then my boiling color changed to scarlet steam. This scarlet steam swirled in my eyes. I felt the scarlet. I felt it too clearly so I still did not open my eyes.
No one deserves to be spoken to with scarlet steam. Only a monster would create it, I realized. My eyes turned gray. Grey with my disappointment. My mother spoke sapphire so fluently. All took notice of her sapphire and my gray. Grey indifference. Grey resignation.
Sapphire cannot be spoken by gray impish girls. Then I met one. This gray girl looked so much like me that I cried. She was swallowed in gray and had never heard sapphire. She needed me to speak sapphire to her. I dared not use my tongue for fear that my eyes might turn sarcasm in the confusion. She needed neither sarcasm nor gray. She needed sapphire. If only my gray cloud eyes would clear to show the sky lenses. I looked through my gray cloud, trying to fan away the fog from her. My tear fell for her. My grayish-bluish tear. My next tear fell for her. My clear blue tear. Then I understood. Sapphire cannot be spoken for the love of speaking it. Sapphire must be spoken for the love of the one to whom it is being spoken. Then came the rolling waves of sunlight carrying my sapphire to her desperate gray. Her gray had rescued me. Finally I felt the boiling sapphire, and finally, I didn’t care. I didn’t care that I had sapphire. I cared that this not-so-gray-anymore girl heard it. That is where sapphire comes from. Sapphire is selflessness. Sarcasm and sapphire. Yes, that is a good mix. While the tongue may lick playful venom to another through thick or thin lips, the receiving heart will always hear the sapphire spoken through the eyes and know that they are sincerely loved. Sapphire is sincerity. My mother is sincerely sapphire. I learned this arcane and addictive language from my mother with the cold hands and thin lips. I think our hands are cold to remind others that theirs are warm, while we bathe them in boiling sapphire. I think we have small, plain eyes to show others that even the bland eyes can make sunlight and sapphire when they stop looking at themselves. This is the gift my mother leaves for me.
Filed under: Think-filled Semi-Narratives | Tags: crack, fit, grandmother, identity, ring
My grandmother’s ring fit. It fit perfectly on my right ring finger. Never had something fit me so simply before. My mother’s rings did not fit me. They were large and gold. Gold. Doesn’t fit me at all. Gold is too good for me and gold is too vain. When light tries to dance off of a golden ring, the gold cannot resist but to twist and tinker with its color. The gold insists that the light change its color in its reflection, always adding a twinge of gold to be broadcast back out to the world. Gold is too stubborn and I am too stubborn. I figure that if I were a light I would be very frustrated by having gold always demand that I change my majestic color to fit it’s hue. I would not stand for it. I would refuse to touch that selfish, vain gold ring. I suspect that some light must feel the way that I would and refuse to touch those gold rings. I would not want to wear a ring that light itself shuns. Gold is deep, dark, and heavy. It seems to carry with it all of the desperations and dirt of wherever it has been. Silver, though, silver is a blank canvas. Silver sits humbly doing what it is told and when. Silver takes no freedom from the violet lights that rub against it. Silver carries only white with it. Silver fits me well. My brother’s ring is simple and silver. That suits me but it is much too large. I wore it once I don’t think it liked me very much. Every chance it got it was running from me. Why would I wear a ring that does not want to wear me? Finally I got a ring of my own. It was silver and smooth and simple and fit me just fine. This was a wonderful day. I felt complete knowing that now my hand had its own personality. If this spoke about my personality, though, it didn’t speak well of it. That perfect ring broke. It cracked right down the middle. Still I wore the bending and chipping ring. I wore it because it fit. It fit me. Someone replaced my ring one day. My new ring certainly fit me well, too. It was silver, white, simple, and smooth. These were words for me. Then that ring broke too. I wear it still. Perhaps its crack makes it fit me even better than I know. Then I received this marvelous gift. It fit. My grandmother, who is gone from me now. Her ring fit me. It is silver and white and simple and smooth.
But it is elegant.I’ve never had Elegant before. Elegant has never been one of my words. It is more than a strip of fake silver. It is a memory. It is a legacy. For once I found something that fits me. My grandmother, I think, would have fit me. We could have been close friends had we known each other. As it is we didn’t and we don’t. But it fits me. I fit. Finally I can walk into the room and belong. Finally I can walk in with confidence. I have my ring, I have my place, and I fit.
My fingers are not large or long. They are simple fingers with dirt and mud. They may chafe in the bitter wind, but I know that they will hold their ground. The ring will hug them and keep them warm.
I fit now. I fit in this ring, this ring that I never knew could fit me.
Filed under: Think-filled Semi-Narratives | Tags: blisters, happy people, heels, hide, princess, scars, ugly
My friend is a princess. She floats down flights of stairs with humble ease. She smiles and waves and speaks yellow and orange with eloquence unmatched. No one sees her without a smile. Except for me. When she glides down the stairs with her royal grace and congeniality I see the chains of pain that trip her. When she looks them in the eyes with her shoulders straight and firm I see the black in her bright hazel eyes. When she spreads cheerful greetings to the people on the outside, I hear the fear rumbling in her voice. She is a prisoner of her own law. Her law demands perfection. Her law demands impossibility without grace. This princess in her fairy shoes. Her silly skinny fairy shoes. She wears them when they hurt because they hide the pain. Sad people don’t wear high heels. Only happy people wear high heels. Happy is who she should be. That is her law. So she wears the high heels even when they hurt. Each night she stares at her blisters until she can’t see them anymore. Each night she grits her teeth until she can’t feel them anymore. A single black tear falls and before she can hurt she puts on those painful pink shoes again. Happy people don’t cry. Happy is who she should be. That is the law. Each hour in snow and night and day and rain and pain. She walks in her blisters, pretending they’re not there until she sits alone on her pink pillows and grits her teeth and sheds a tear. This tear that I can hear from miles away. She is my princess. My aching pretty princess. I will always catch that pretty princess tear in my right hand. There will always be one pretty little red tear to match it in my left. The left tear is fed by my bleeding heart. My heart that bleeds a drop with each right tear I catch. When she trips down those glassy stairs I will catch this perfectly imperfect princess. When no hazel is left in her eyes, she can close them and rest on my shoulder. When her voice is choked by fear, she may borrow mine. I will wear her pretty pink blisters and I will show them to the world. “These are the blisters of a pretty princess,” I’ll say, “A princess whom I love, blisters and all.”
Then I will ask her, what good are pretty pink shoes if they never take you anywhere? Day by day you grit your teeth and hide from the world. When will you show your black tear to more than me and the pink pillows?
I don’t deserve to cry, she will say, with her eyes straight and solid and her heart crumbling in my arms. Only people who have pain have the right to cry.
You have blisters, I will say. Your pretty pink shoes cannot hide your blisters from me. You do cry. You cry a single black tear every night and I hear it. I catch it. I catch that single black tear every night in my right hand and I save it. I save all of those boiling black tears and I wish I could drink them so that you don’t have to. I wish I could drink that fear so that you don’t have to because you are my pretty imperfectly perfect princess and I love you, blisters and all.
She will look at me with black in her eyes and I will offer her the red in my heart. This red I have saved for her I will offer as I kneel to her feet, those aching blistered feet. Off will come those silly skinny pink fairy shoes. I will dangle them before her blackened eyes.
Those are my shoes, she will protest. Those are my shoes and I must wear them. If I do not wear those shoes they will see the blisters. Blisters are ugly. Happy people are not ugly.
Oh, but they are, I will say as I pour my pretty red tears over her scaly black blisters.
They are ugly and that, my Princess, is what makes them beautiful.
