If you should throw your life away
for whims and wills and what people say,
rest assured I will always preserve
your once unstoppable, untamable nerve.
________________________________
If you should fade into the mold
and follow the rules and slowly grow old,
I’ll forever guard your abandoned dreams,
forever adore their luminous gleam.
_____________________________
If you forget the way you hoped,
and with normality swoon and elope,
and never deign to regret your loss,
and rise each day and file and floss,
__________________________________
I promise to stay the child you knew-
the one who refused and never grew.
I’ll carry your innocence until I die
and hold it close on my way to the skies.
_______________________________
And if when I die I’m asked to declare
If on Earth I found any good left there,
I’ll present the good you had from the start
and the unshakable notion it’s still deep in your heart.
Thursday, April 26, 2012
Saturday, January 21, 2012
Public School
Consciousness emerges,
clumsy and blundering,
pushing with unsure but empowered force
from the depths of a warmer place
of blissful simplicity
that cannot exist elsewhere,
or could, if only someone were to think less of this elsewhere.
Struggles against churning seas of dense fleece and polyester,
trudges forward through air that sears the skin
with icy brutality,
stumbles from tiny world to world,
fumbles with thick fingers to apply things atop things,
to cover and adorn,
mask and disguise,
protect from further searing.
Rumbles in a haze through colder climates,
takes place in cells of metal,
sitting on metal, beside metal, behind metal,
hearing metal.
Wanders, a dying hum of vitality, through cold hallways
whose lifeless influence sinks deeper and deeper
with each passing moment of submergence.
Like an ice cube melting quickly in warm water,
except you are warm, and you are what's melting.
While miles away,
in a world warmed and created by that vitality,
a longing to create, to learn, to inspire, to explore,
hums louder than any that can be transported,
thrives in its individuality,
and yearns for the missing piece that has forced itself so far from home,
to attempt to operate in warmth in other worlds,
but instead drains and flickers
and comes near to dying before it returns home.
clumsy and blundering,
pushing with unsure but empowered force
from the depths of a warmer place
of blissful simplicity
that cannot exist elsewhere,
or could, if only someone were to think less of this elsewhere.
Struggles against churning seas of dense fleece and polyester,
trudges forward through air that sears the skin
with icy brutality,
stumbles from tiny world to world,
fumbles with thick fingers to apply things atop things,
to cover and adorn,
mask and disguise,
protect from further searing.
Rumbles in a haze through colder climates,
takes place in cells of metal,
sitting on metal, beside metal, behind metal,
hearing metal.
Wanders, a dying hum of vitality, through cold hallways
whose lifeless influence sinks deeper and deeper
with each passing moment of submergence.
Like an ice cube melting quickly in warm water,
except you are warm, and you are what's melting.
While miles away,
in a world warmed and created by that vitality,
a longing to create, to learn, to inspire, to explore,
hums louder than any that can be transported,
thrives in its individuality,
and yearns for the missing piece that has forced itself so far from home,
to attempt to operate in warmth in other worlds,
but instead drains and flickers
and comes near to dying before it returns home.
Wednesday, January 18, 2012
After a certain point you stop consuming food
and it starts consuming you.
It enflames your thoughts, your wills,
so that even those musing which are not directly ablaze
are muddled in a stick, choking fog of heat
that lays in the back of your throat,
sweet and dense and heavy
like you wanna choke.
To choke on the fact that your want to kindle it,
to add fuel to the fire,
to encourage it in it's hot, immovable persistance.
That's why you don't need it,
that's why it clouds you.
That's why no matter how many times you convince yourself you can control it,
it will always win.
Occupying your mouth,
those plushy bulges around the rim of your jeans,
you self-worth,
your whole mind,
your thoughts, your actions, your choices.
Without it, you are abalze with something new.
Not something hot and overwhelming,
not thick and oppressive,
but a frothy ice,
an anti-fire,
a frigid blaze
which stings your senses
and bites with reality,
which attunes you to the present
which makes your feel fantastic
amazing
exstatic
and most importantly
here.
After several days you are more here than you could ever be
because there is nothing inside to distract you
and no need, no desire to tie you.
And no guilt to bind you actions
and no regret to stuffle your peace of mind.
And there are greater things to seek,
to rely on,
to necessitate,
to achieve.
and it starts consuming you.
It enflames your thoughts, your wills,
so that even those musing which are not directly ablaze
are muddled in a stick, choking fog of heat
that lays in the back of your throat,
sweet and dense and heavy
like you wanna choke.
To choke on the fact that your want to kindle it,
to add fuel to the fire,
to encourage it in it's hot, immovable persistance.
That's why you don't need it,
that's why it clouds you.
That's why no matter how many times you convince yourself you can control it,
it will always win.
Occupying your mouth,
those plushy bulges around the rim of your jeans,
you self-worth,
your whole mind,
your thoughts, your actions, your choices.
Without it, you are abalze with something new.
Not something hot and overwhelming,
not thick and oppressive,
but a frothy ice,
an anti-fire,
a frigid blaze
which stings your senses
and bites with reality,
which attunes you to the present
which makes your feel fantastic
amazing
exstatic
and most importantly
here.
After several days you are more here than you could ever be
because there is nothing inside to distract you
and no need, no desire to tie you.
And no guilt to bind you actions
and no regret to stuffle your peace of mind.
And there are greater things to seek,
to rely on,
to necessitate,
to achieve.
Thursday, January 12, 2012
Four Years of Teaching
It seemed for four years that we pursued the right path.
That ignorance of that which we thought below us was just.
That the ability to manipulate, to skate, to use intellect to avoid thought
was a point of superiority.
That the people we knew were the only ones that cared,
when all along we cared the least.
It seemed for four years that knowledge was something we possessed.
And that the capacity to easily comprehend information was enough to consider ourselves knowledgeable.
But we weren't knowledgeable.
We didn't seek knowledge. And that, in itself, is the greatest indication of it's absence.
You reach a point in your life when you wish you knew more.
You wish you had sought and absorbed more along the way,
because as the world develops, as a person develops, we seek passion.
And passion without knowledge is a passing fancy,
while passion with knowledge defines who you are.
And we are all seeking definition.
So you spend your time defining yourself,
frantically gathering knowledge that has backlogged
while you were trying to ignore it,
to fuel what you now yearn the understand.
But then how do you explain yourself to those who still do not care?
Those who can not see that your definition has not changed,
but has only come into existence?
Those who continue to ward off their own definition with nonchalance,
who can only see the union of passion and knowledge as fanaticism,
as a reverse evolution of the mind,
as a detriment to maturity?
Those who see growing up as a slow easing into objectiveness,
a quiet acquiescence to disinterest,
an acceptance of skepticism?
How do you explain to a generation of conditioned indifferents
that the ultimate reward of maturity is the achievement
of a childlike passion in what makes you happy?
That age grants you the ability not to see your whims with stark, hopeless realism,
but to regain the romanticism of childhood aspiration?
How do you explain to them that those who join passion and knowledge
are the revolutionaries that cynics,
those who refuse to take up renewed hope in the world's improbabilities,
entertain themselves by discrediting?
How do you explain to them that the cristicism of dissenters can not affect the passionate,
but that the passionate can affect the world?
How do you explain that they are suffocating themselves?
That ignorance of that which we thought below us was just.
That the ability to manipulate, to skate, to use intellect to avoid thought
was a point of superiority.
That the people we knew were the only ones that cared,
when all along we cared the least.
It seemed for four years that knowledge was something we possessed.
And that the capacity to easily comprehend information was enough to consider ourselves knowledgeable.
But we weren't knowledgeable.
We didn't seek knowledge. And that, in itself, is the greatest indication of it's absence.
You reach a point in your life when you wish you knew more.
You wish you had sought and absorbed more along the way,
because as the world develops, as a person develops, we seek passion.
And passion without knowledge is a passing fancy,
while passion with knowledge defines who you are.
And we are all seeking definition.
So you spend your time defining yourself,
frantically gathering knowledge that has backlogged
while you were trying to ignore it,
to fuel what you now yearn the understand.
But then how do you explain yourself to those who still do not care?
Those who can not see that your definition has not changed,
but has only come into existence?
Those who continue to ward off their own definition with nonchalance,
who can only see the union of passion and knowledge as fanaticism,
as a reverse evolution of the mind,
as a detriment to maturity?
Those who see growing up as a slow easing into objectiveness,
a quiet acquiescence to disinterest,
an acceptance of skepticism?
How do you explain to a generation of conditioned indifferents
that the ultimate reward of maturity is the achievement
of a childlike passion in what makes you happy?
That age grants you the ability not to see your whims with stark, hopeless realism,
but to regain the romanticism of childhood aspiration?
How do you explain to them that those who join passion and knowledge
are the revolutionaries that cynics,
those who refuse to take up renewed hope in the world's improbabilities,
entertain themselves by discrediting?
How do you explain to them that the cristicism of dissenters can not affect the passionate,
but that the passionate can affect the world?
How do you explain that they are suffocating themselves?
Sunday, January 8, 2012
My Manifesto
For a while I had a hard time having faith in God. For one, things weren't going as I hoped He would have planned them, and for another, after my long absences from church, which were due to a number of influences, the most prevalent of which were my job and social life, coming back to His words and His people's rejoicing often sounded, to be honest, like the blind idolization of a narcissist. I found myself frustrated with the way Jesus told everyone to be humble, but here His people were giving their lives and all their faith for him. And what really did he represent? He didn't represent others, he didn't represent the people who were themselves worshiping. It seemed that the concept, the thing that these people were sacrificing themselves for was really just simply Jesus himself. And God, who I viewed as the main story of which Jesus was a spin-off. And what kind of narcissist creates a whole world of beings for the sole purpose of worshiping himself? And as one of those beings, why would I ever want to fuel such an ego by dedicating my life to Him as well? Even if he did give me the very opportunity to live my life, it seemed that He was only doing it out of a selfish will in the first place.
And then, one particular Thursday night, I had a breakdown. I had a million things to do and I couldn't get anyone to take responsibility and I knew it would be hours before I would fall asleep and life was generally just sucking for me in that early morning hour. I hadn't been to church for months and I thought maybe that could be the cause of some of my symptoms so I tired praying. That just felt like sucking up. that just felt like telling all the people I was at that very moment furious with that their conceited nature was completely justified because I, a free-thinking and intelligent person, thought they were the epitome of awesome. It felt awful. And I felt awful that it felt awful. Because for a lot of people, praying is the cure to awful. But it wasn't. It was making things worse.
So I pulled out my Bible. Because I love words, and sometimes other people's make more sense to me than my own. I thought maybe I could have a "moment". One of those "moments" that people are always having in which they open the Bible and turn directly to something that speaks right to their situation. I don't know my way around a Bile and more than I know my way around Hogwarts (probably less, actually, so that's a bad comparison), so i slipped my fingernail between two random pages and hoped, quite simply, for a miracle.
I didn't get it. I opened to some story about people traveling in a war, right int he middle of the story nonetheless. It was all narrative and it definitely wasn't speaking to me. It was probably the most irrelevant story I could have possibly found in the Bible, as most of them are broadly enough based that they can be construed with minimal ambiguity to apply to any circumstance. However, this one did not. Then I remembered that there was Psalms in the Bible and Psalms were like poems and poems were like religion to me anyway, so maybe I could get some feelings from those. There was a lot of rejoicing. A lot of idolizing. It was slowly calming me down though. It was helping me breathe. After a few stanzas I had actually formulated a better way to approach my situation at school the next day. I felt a little bit like a better person. I also felt a little bit like my problems didn't matter very much, but that only Good really did. So I kept reading. I read about 3 Psalms. Then the annoyance started creeping in again. I was sick of idolization, I saw enough undue at school every day and it disgusted me. Luckily right then I read the line "All the ends of the Earth have seen God's power to save". I'm not sure why this was so lucky,because I don't even know what in this sentence brought on this realization but it was then that I realized- God isn't a man. Now I know that this is Sunday School 101, maybe even prerequisite material, and as far as epiphanies go, it's unrevolutionary and anticlimactic to say the least. But I have this problem.
You see, I saw God as man. Not in that he had arms and legs and a long white beard and walked around in a toga. In fact, when I pictured him, he actually looked more like the Genie, presiding over a palm-sized planet Earth. But I saw his essence as man. I saw his personality as man. When really, the only thing man about God is the form in which he put his son.
So what is God, really? God is abstract. God is goodness, and happiness, and justice. God is life. God is existence. When we praise God, we do not praise a man with an ego, for God can have no ego, because he has no personal motives, he has no desires. His only desire if "His" existence- the existence of good and truth and justice. We say "His" but we would be more accurate to say "It's", for God is an entity- one full of a goodness that we should all strive towards daily, one that permeates the world around us and burns within each of us. God is life.
And life, existence, created the physical goods that we move amongst. There was existence and there was life, and life created mountains, and oceans, and grass and dirt, and bodies, for us to case ourselves in. We are individual, because we are cased, packaged, with a brain. And that is our soul. But we are all the same, we are all parts of God, because we are merely God, existence, trapped in a case, attached to a soul, and living. "people who love the Lord hate evil." People who love existence, in its purest and truest form, hate evil. "praise the Lord our God, and worship at the Temple, his footstool. He is Holy." Praise life, and existence, and the presence of perfection, and purity, and your verse in the play, and worship at the Temple, it's footstool. It is Holy.
And then, one particular Thursday night, I had a breakdown. I had a million things to do and I couldn't get anyone to take responsibility and I knew it would be hours before I would fall asleep and life was generally just sucking for me in that early morning hour. I hadn't been to church for months and I thought maybe that could be the cause of some of my symptoms so I tired praying. That just felt like sucking up. that just felt like telling all the people I was at that very moment furious with that their conceited nature was completely justified because I, a free-thinking and intelligent person, thought they were the epitome of awesome. It felt awful. And I felt awful that it felt awful. Because for a lot of people, praying is the cure to awful. But it wasn't. It was making things worse.
So I pulled out my Bible. Because I love words, and sometimes other people's make more sense to me than my own. I thought maybe I could have a "moment". One of those "moments" that people are always having in which they open the Bible and turn directly to something that speaks right to their situation. I don't know my way around a Bile and more than I know my way around Hogwarts (probably less, actually, so that's a bad comparison), so i slipped my fingernail between two random pages and hoped, quite simply, for a miracle.
I didn't get it. I opened to some story about people traveling in a war, right int he middle of the story nonetheless. It was all narrative and it definitely wasn't speaking to me. It was probably the most irrelevant story I could have possibly found in the Bible, as most of them are broadly enough based that they can be construed with minimal ambiguity to apply to any circumstance. However, this one did not. Then I remembered that there was Psalms in the Bible and Psalms were like poems and poems were like religion to me anyway, so maybe I could get some feelings from those. There was a lot of rejoicing. A lot of idolizing. It was slowly calming me down though. It was helping me breathe. After a few stanzas I had actually formulated a better way to approach my situation at school the next day. I felt a little bit like a better person. I also felt a little bit like my problems didn't matter very much, but that only Good really did. So I kept reading. I read about 3 Psalms. Then the annoyance started creeping in again. I was sick of idolization, I saw enough undue at school every day and it disgusted me. Luckily right then I read the line "All the ends of the Earth have seen God's power to save". I'm not sure why this was so lucky,because I don't even know what in this sentence brought on this realization but it was then that I realized- God isn't a man. Now I know that this is Sunday School 101, maybe even prerequisite material, and as far as epiphanies go, it's unrevolutionary and anticlimactic to say the least. But I have this problem.
You see, I saw God as man. Not in that he had arms and legs and a long white beard and walked around in a toga. In fact, when I pictured him, he actually looked more like the Genie, presiding over a palm-sized planet Earth. But I saw his essence as man. I saw his personality as man. When really, the only thing man about God is the form in which he put his son.
So what is God, really? God is abstract. God is goodness, and happiness, and justice. God is life. God is existence. When we praise God, we do not praise a man with an ego, for God can have no ego, because he has no personal motives, he has no desires. His only desire if "His" existence- the existence of good and truth and justice. We say "His" but we would be more accurate to say "It's", for God is an entity- one full of a goodness that we should all strive towards daily, one that permeates the world around us and burns within each of us. God is life.
And life, existence, created the physical goods that we move amongst. There was existence and there was life, and life created mountains, and oceans, and grass and dirt, and bodies, for us to case ourselves in. We are individual, because we are cased, packaged, with a brain. And that is our soul. But we are all the same, we are all parts of God, because we are merely God, existence, trapped in a case, attached to a soul, and living. "people who love the Lord hate evil." People who love existence, in its purest and truest form, hate evil. "praise the Lord our God, and worship at the Temple, his footstool. He is Holy." Praise life, and existence, and the presence of perfection, and purity, and your verse in the play, and worship at the Temple, it's footstool. It is Holy.
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