Letters They’ll Never Read

(February 1, 2023)

Just fine sitting in the in-between 

At peace with the state of unknowing

Writing letters they will never see

This knowledge brings you practical ease

Frank words you know they’ll never read

Freedom to write in full honesty

And these the ones you let your heart cling

With no chance of failure or dying thing

No other involved, affecting dreams

You alone, power to tip feelings

Snap of the finger, heart is retrieved

Dropping all trace of affectionate glee

Or, if wishes desire to be,

Love held for stubborn eternity

Unrequited love, alright with thee

They, no knowledge, like took no seed

And so, just a past of imagining

You move back on to reality

Snap of the finger, awoke from the sleep

But still you slip in and out of the dream

A Gloom I Can’t Defeat

(Started: December 31, 2019 | Finished: September 03, 2022)

I want to be hopeful 

Not dogmatic or sad

So tired of being tired 

I want rest at last

Each moment of joy 

Seems threaded with pain

I just want the laughter 

Without a blemish of shame

Each time I conquer it

It seems to come back 

I could be peaceful 

But then I hear it laugh

Won’t this cloud of heaviness

Relent or go away

‘Cause no matter where I run

It’s still biting at my legs

It’s a weight I can’t wrestle

And a gloom I can’t defeat 

But then light tears the curtain

And love again speaks

I guess You heard me calling 

When I was wailing in my car

Gave me purpose for living

Eyes to find light in the dark

Things, again given meaning

No longer objects of scorn

A gift to just be breathing

Thinking began to reform

Life became less about doing 

More about looking around

Each piece was undeserved

Down to my next heart pound

There’s always hope to be had

No matter what future brews

‘Cause the future has purpose

It’s never absent of You

Sing Your Sweet Song, Dear Bird

(April 14th, 2022)

Sing your sweet song again, dear bird

I think you feel you’ve lost your voice

And the sound you make hurts you more than silence

But oh, how I miss that sweet noise

I realized it’s been years since I heard it

The melody would echo through our home

It used to make you so delighted to sing

Your eyes lit up as you thought on days of old

That sweet vibrato was our first teacher 

Giving us those childhood songs we know

I wish you would stay ever confident 

Knowing your old voice still holds the power of hope

Sing, sing again, my dear bird 

Even if you think you’ve lost your voice

It will again make children out of us 

Remembering our mother and her heart’s sweet noise

Till My Hope Is Sparked

Ukraine 2022 (February 26, 2022)

Though my eyes will close

When I think of pain

When I hear the news

Of violent way

Though my fear grows strong

And my heart gives way

At final moment

Will confidence fade?

The tears that run

As loved ones part

To see them again

Not known in heart

Will you be my hope

Will you be my strength?

When soul feels alone

And suffers at length?

The power of iron

And the strength of steels

Hold no great power

To the One that heals

Though my heart doubts it

And my mind grows dark

I will shout these truths

Till my hope is sparked

A Small Breath released

Has power to take

A fortress to knees

And solve this at stake

For A Mighty Arm

And All-Present Stare

Can remove our harm

And restore what’s fair

He fights for what's good

And never backs down

He is not pressured

By pain or war’s sound

He, louder than booms

That ring in our ear

Yet still more gentle

Than a mother near

To Him, we belong

With eternal fame

Who has seen it all

Experienced each pain

Been broken and torn

He too knows it well

Yet maintained His good

Though pressures of hell

He is not heartless

His love is not cold

Let evils of men

Yet, make us be bold

He could have kept secret

His kindness and truth

But instead reveals

And love, He proves

Breaks not a promise

Supplies each our needs

He, our strong fortress

Conquest of good deeds

They may hurt and harm

But we, loved and kept

For goodness will win

Hope, not go unmet

A Word To My Favorite Artist—Responding To Your Whiteout

(April 27, 2021)

Recommended Song: anything from his “Whiteout”

When’d you stop making things that were beautiful?

Your scratching on the wall sounds more like screams in a void.

Did you lose hope in thinking you were saying something important?

Or maybe it’s the scratches that say something deeper than what I’d say I saw on the surface. 

You were singing of something I couldn’t understand,

I couldn’t figure out if it was genius or if it was mad.

Was it the exploring that you talked about years ago that you’re doing now?

Carving out a new avenue for expression, a new vein for thinking and imagination?

Groundbreakers always feel a bit strange in the beginning.

After all, they’re breaking ground, and so maybe that’s what you’re creating.

The things you used to sing and say used to move me,

But now, the only thing I hear that resembles old is your latest “Rookery.”

But I guess you’re still doing something right,

Because I wrote this while listening to Richard Russell’s “Strange Last Flight.”

Hope Is Greater Than Fear

(July 28, 2020)

I must remember that hope is greater than fear. For every one that desires the harm of another, there is also one who desires their protection. For every one that believes the first word on the street, there is also a critical thinker challenging it behind closed doors. For every one who schemes to take advantage of the lowly, there is one who wishes to support them in their growth and rise to glory. For every one who spreads lies for their own gain, there is also one who will seek truth even at their own loss.  And with each yelling match witnessed in media, there are also constructive conversations happening between loved ones in homes.

I do not trust the hearts of man, and yet, I trust the hearts of man. 

With every group of sheep that starts being swept away, hope still remains; sheep can think for themselves, and there are some who hear a voice of challenge and questioning. For there is always a discussion happening in the unseen, an inner dialogue within the minds of every man, between himself and himself—heart and mind. And God is also found there, and He, a part of the conversation.

The race of man is never entirely lost. Hope is greater than fear. 

But hope stays alive in our hearts only as long as we choose to have it.

Winter And Fall

(November 14, 2019)

Would you think I was crazy if I told you

I thought there was more life in the winter?

Breathing the cold air is like smoking a peppermint breeze.

Would you think I was weird if I felt

There were more dimensions in the fall?

Between the shadows of the clouds and the colors in the leaves.

Would you think it strange if it brought me joy,

Because I had an excuse to be melancholy,

And no matter my sadness, I was at least happier than the weather?

Maybe it’s because the cold gives excuses for comfort

And the need for someone’s warmth?

It allows for slow-paced living

And no guilt in “wasted opportunities.”

An Analysis on Communication

(June 2019)

We speak in codes and metaphors, Both to hide things and reveal them. To speak so frankly could be either too brash or too cheap. For most treasured things are quite tender and “worthy of some sort of protection.” To hide a meaning in hopes of one discovering.  To speak about things deeply in order for one to dig deep to understand. There is value brought in an answer that must be unearthed. For a jewel hidden in the dark is given more weight and more value when searched for all night and finally found.

The rarity of a feeling, when two feel them so rarely.  To dig and find, to uncover that feeling conceded by another, makes one cherish.   There is no tarnish. Once brushed off, it is but one of the purest and most sacred of all.  For the decoder took just as much effort to seek the matter out as the one who had sought out those rarities found within their own heart first... and then, in efforts to be known by the most daring, resolved to speak about them with such cipher, hiding it while also revealing the slightest corner, as if to send out an invitation to the most meek, yet bold, to venture forward in expedition to understand their words of code and metaphor.

You Said the Sky

(January 20, 2019)

Let’s sit in the silence and simply do nothing.

We’ll stare at the sunset and find that we’re smiling.

No words were spoken, but I knew what you were thinking,

Or I guess we weren’t thinking as much as just breathing.

Soaking it in till our hearts overflowed,

Light gleamed from our eyes and spilled out our souls.

I asked you what your favorite thing was in nature.

Mine was the light, the way it touched every creature.

You sat a bit, then answered with tender eyes.

You said the sky, but that too often, we miss out on its design.

If one would just go outside and look up a little more often,

You said they’d see all was okay;

“Our mess-ups can’t change the galaxies or make the stars soften.”

You went on for a while, and I just gathered and gleaned,

And the last of what you said also stuck out to me:

“Every hour, the Artist puts up a new display,

How can we know art if we don’t see it when it’s right in front of our face?”

The Third Time

(March 7, 2018)

It was the third time I answered, the same as before 

Why must I repeat it twice and once more?

It may not be true, but it must be said 

Otherwise, I too would be covered in red

For if I spoke right and told the truth

There would be more than just one, there would be two

But at the third time, the clock struck, and the bird sounded

My eyes widened, my heart pounded

I shifted my vision to look away from my lies

Grabbing at anything that would help me survive 

But I knew exactly what He knew

And I did exactly what He said I would do

So like a baby, my eyes stumbled to His

(The very God-man Judas had deceitfully kissed)

And just as an archer, I would not miss

And so they wobbled to the only One who could comfort 

The very same One I betrayed; the very One I hurt

And in that moment when our eyes touched, I lost my vision though I was not trying

For my eyes were filled with liquid, and I found that I was crying

A Shared Name

(March 7, 2018)

Youngest of five, older than four

First there were boys, she, the first girl

Played with their Legos, dressed in their shorts

She was a tomboy, loved all the same sports

Mama said there had been one before

Baby would have been her number four

Cleaning the windows till pain in her side

Red filled the water, water filled her eyes

If she was a girl her name would be mine

Brother sang about her, his own little rhyme

He said that all was good and all was okay

Because "Leah was found in heaven that day"

But my name is Leah and I’m still alive 

Too soon to tell what the baby was inside

My brain keeps repeating again and again

“I wonder who I would be, and who you would have been”

My life would have changed, my name would be different 

An older sister can change things, I guess quite a bit

If you were a girl, I now carry your name

We'll share it together; I won't bring it to shame.