Neon Crosses.

Dark alleys and street corners lit by neon crosses; drunks and belligerents, high and illiterate—tossed out and aside like litter, broken and bitter, accepted only by detox or the coroner. Every other face a foreigner, speaking in slurred tongues, incomprehensible, ranting about all things nonsensical; I sit and listen. Their eyes glisten, encrusted with tears, all things but trusted; over the years they become worthless. Dark alleys and street corners lit by neon crosses; men and women lie motionless like boulders, embossed by the pain of loneliness, covering them like mosses; this world is a burden on their shoulders. Dark alleys and street corners lit by neon crosses; that flame for life damaged by losses, lingering lightly, smoldering, dying. The night is broken by crying, broken promises: “I swear to God I’m trying…I’m trying.” Grunts and blasphemes answer my prying, someone screams, someone runs; flashing blue lights, tires squealing—that cold tingly feeling happens to my neck and I can’t stop my hands from shaking. A nervous laugh, a smile faking I sit candidly; I try and talk about my family, avoiding those irritating issues like income, type of car, the list stretches on for far too far. Poverty is defined as being not invested; maybe these people just need someone to invest in them—they are the antonym of blessed, dressed in filthy rags that reek of urine; an odor so potent it makes my stomach churn—my eyes begin to burn... The decay of western society is sitting at our doorstep and we sweep them into the gutter; they loiter, litter, and mutter, remembering those better days; blind children amidst the fierce fray. Every Thursday brings me back to reality, the frontlines, the casualties, they lie there dying. I move on from drunk to drug dealer, being the light of Christ, my radiance sputtering, flickering, dismal in the overwhelming darkness. I end a conversation, start a new one, soaked with the saturation of sin and sorrow; I see a glimmer of hope in hearing, “will I see you tomorrow?” Lying I reply, “no, but I hope to see you again.” I walk and wish upon that feeling of seeing my slovenly sister in Christ kneeling and praying, praying I will not see her again. She’ll move on, clean up, straighten out, and a plethora of other disillusionments of grandeur if not just betterment. These people are not victims of our government; they are hurting, they are alone. These people may not have cars or money or an education, but still they learn. These people may not care about their current situation, how they sleep on cardboard, how tribulation leads to glory and the like, how there is literally nothing they can afford, yet still they yearn for something greater, something more. I get back to campus and either crawl into my warm bed or head to Denny’s where I stuff my gluttonous face, feeling the stabbing pain of self disgrace with a side of pancakes I never finish, drowning in butter; I put my fork down and remember my fallen brothers kicked carelessly into the gutter. I feel sick. Fucking sick...

Stripped.

Smoke saturates the stale air surrounding me. I enter the enigmatic darkness--like a bar within a darkroom. Undeveloped images of bare beauties envelops me, intriguing to the core.

The uniform smell of lust and wanting wafts around the club, animalistic, as if the beat of urban tribal mating carries the scent of sin within.

She lays on me, touches me, nearly kisses me, and keeps me wanting, waiting, paying; I can almost taste the sweat on her chest...

But she does not love me.

How can such a place exist? Despite the presence of so many people illuminated by neon stage light, this place is void of true humanity, the opposite of stark reality; like there's too much to resist.

I look around and all I see are broken dreams; through the dark, their faces scream "escape..."

Snow.

I’m back to familiarity,

my new home, bullets flying,

hugging my own chest tight

like a bullet proof vest.

Empty nests rest neatly

in tree-tops, crusted lightly

with crystal angel dust;

the white sticks steady

to stems and leaves and

trunks like cellophane.

The silence somehow screams profane,

louder than words, charismatic,

like a Pentecostal church.

A dying birch or maple outlived

only by the mighty pine,

coated heavy with armor for

the coming winter.

Guarded by a chain-mail

of splinters, it stands alive

where things are dying.

Am I a pine—a figure standing,

living, where everything

around me heaves and breathes

their final breaths?

Either way, this paradox

of death and re-birth

has some kind of hidden intrinsic worth.

It would be pathetic if

the only value we find in this

is found in the aesthetic.

I see my own breath rise

and fall like Rome;

my own home becomes a

foreign place to even me.

Like everything I see is déjà vu,

instant replay of a life already lived.

How can you expect anything

from the man who has nothing more to give?

I feel like Steven, Rueben, Bruce,

any degenerate down from Jesus Saves:

broken and hurting and helpless.

I feel like the small sapling sprouting forth in September,

feeling my life prematurely culminating in November.

Overpass.

My breath lingers and swirls, like the steam that rises from the city streets. A siren sends a cold shudder down my spine, springing my legs into forward motion; I can see my shadow cast by the dim light burning in a rusty barrel, sending old news into the heavens like dying fireflies. My jeans are tattered and worn—just like me…I press the bottle to my mouth and drain the rest of its contents, letting the fluid warm my insides. I chuck the empty glass idol under the overpass, hearing it shatter against my cold, hard, unforgiving bedding. I am tormented by demons in the shapes of memories, failures, and dying opportunities; the vicious cycle has me and I am lost inside its symmetry. I exhale into my shaking hands, contemplating praying to a God who does not listen. I bite into the bagel I was given—pain hits like a sucker-punch; the hard crust hurts my teeth and I chuck my dinner with disdain. My coat, my shirt, my life is falling apart at the seams. I sort through my plastic trash bag of possessions and pull out the bible they gave me at the Mission. I page through the lies and remember how real God was to me…and how easily I was forgotten. I remove my box cutter, lying silent and still near the end of Psalms. I hold the cold piece of metal in my palm, looking upward, whispering to no one, “I do not belong here…" My wrist becomes a living cutting board, saturating my “sharper than any double-edge sword," dividing my soul and spirit to other sides of the river; my blood pays the price my body can’t afford. I curl up and hug my knees, trying to get warm, crying and shaking and finally, praying, “Please forgive me; take me away from here." The last thing my eyes see is the silver sliver of the moon above me, as if God shed a tear just for me. “Finally…"

Clean Slate.

//I'm considering this my fresh start//

As entertaining as my boxing side-project is, I need something that requries just a little more depth...

And so it begins.

I feel like sometimes the wrong things must be experienced to catch the slightest glimpse of what is right; you plunge through the darkness deaf, dumb, and blind with only a fading hope you see the sight of light. The true curse of any leader—the desire to experience the other end of the spectrum—the dark places you will have to guide them out of.

And what is “right?” I’m not sure I quite grasp the meaning of the word. Does it mean guilt—as if the said act of wrong-doing must inwardly instill a sense of self-damnation—a deep-seeded fear of Divine retribution.

Not to say I don’t feel guilty. Quite the opposite—I bottle it inside and internalize the hope of undeserved forgiveness—the very name of Mercy.

And not to get all religious on you; I just think there are far too many questions in this little world of ours to all be answered by science or even logical reasoning; sometimes the impossible really is the answer. Just try and rationally explain the concept of infinity.

Nothing is exciting anymore—every sensation feels like a fleeting feeling of instant amnesia; forgotten forgetfulness is quite the paradox. The innocence of childhood has vanished from consciousness completely—no remnant or reminder of some revelation to revel in.

And why even search for an answer when there are so many different questions; why so much evil in a world so beautiful; why so much pain in a world so capable of love—more failures than miracles; more disappointments than victories.

Maybe we could all focus our attention on one question and answer it entirely—eloquently; beautifully. Why are we here? My generation and I refuse to believe we are just another cog in the machine of monotony: we exist to exhale; to breathe in the freshness and mystery of a world beyond our comprehension—there is so much I do not understand…

And beyond the metaphysical there are relationships and connections and bonds of inexplicable human emotion—uninhibited feelings of somehow universal understanding. Tears tear across cultural boundaries; laughter lights up the dark spaces within humanity.

Maybe the real answers reveal themselves as we experience one wrong answer after another. Maybe doing wrong things in moderation doesn’t make them right; maybe purposefully experiencing the darkness in this world isn’t enlightenment at all; maybe it inhibits us from our true selves—from greatness.

And so we hurt ourselves—blindly. Without control or boundaries we fail ourselves and war against the way we want to be. We wind up hoping for just a break from this torrential world…nothing more.

I cannot let the past bind me—it covers me in guilt. I cannot become too consumed in the future—it blinds me with anxiety; I can only live for now, for myself and the ones I love; and so I live well.

Love hard. Laugh often. Live well.

more thoughts will come...