What Were You Expecting?

Please don't follow me, oh!
You're just too 'perfect' for me to know.
And I don't want to take your 'innocence.'

If you choose to act this way,
You've gone and thrown it all away.
And what were you expecting?
Another lullaby? Are you kidding?

Your tears won't change a thing.
There is nothing that will take away THIS sting.
So, you'll wonder where to go from here.
Blinded, caught, and stuck in fear.

I've been here many times before.
Fighting, 'til you hit the floor.
Caught swinging from your blind side, you only have yourself to blame.

This nightmare comes only at your call.
You've set yourself to runnin' toward a wall.
Aching for things you never understood,
Now you're not but a child lost in the wood.
and I told you, you should have walked away!

Placed in this corner, miles in the wrong direction.
Faced with uncertainty, you should have sought correction.
I know what you're thinking, but you're wrong,
I don't count myself among that throng.

Life is better when you live for 'sorry' not 'safe'
I never was the guy to play tough,
but I was the one to say, "Enough is not enough!"

It was never my intention to let you down,
All I ever wanted was the chance to stick around.
I'd tell you, but you're not one to believe it.

Stuck when you can't 'achieve' it.

So I don't want your pity, it'll just go to waste.
I don't want your piety, cause I don't like the taste.
'Cause there's a fine line between love and hate,
It is time to shake the silence before its to late.

With a flick of your tongue, you twist the world around you.

All of it continues to haunt you,
It's the spider and you're the fly,
That you'll have to give 'the others' in this world a try.

I have no simple answer that will 'at ease' your mind,
There is nothing in this world that will answer what you seek to find!
What do you want from me? Another lullaby? Are you kidding?

Everything about you makes me wanna scream.
But there is no awaking from this waking dream

Strange Faces

It seemed like yesterday we spoke on the phone.
Now, I stare at these pictures on the wall.
Filled with life, beauty, gall.

Familiar as they are, they are strange faces.
Distant memories from what was but a year ago.
And it seems to me our youth is running low.

A hole has formed within this canvas I tried to paint.
What has changed in these strange faces?
It's as if I'm just chasing time, changing paces.

I can't go back, and frankly I don't want to.
Still, I need to keep these memories of mine,
To show me how to leave the past behind.

Sometimes I feel like a vagrant,
That, in my hometown, I'll become the topic of awkward conversation.
All this work and I have yet to see compensation.

So now, I bear eyes upon them with out recoil.
Staring into past souls of those I have called, "Friend."
Days I pray that won't be forgotten, turned to just a trend.

Aspiring to the Median

I can say with the utmost honestly that the last few months of readjustment have been some of the hardest existential struggles I have had in my life.  In some ways I feel like I am back in High School, angst-ily trying to figure out who I am.  Other times I feel like I'm back in college, full of faith reckoning and finding out how my spiritual, social, and experiential views can coincide.

I am half Agony and half Hope and the Universe, at this moment often feels torn, twisting, an ungiving wasteland.

People talk to me of sacrifice, of the time I spent in Africa, and how much was taken from me.  Some even stating, or wondering, if maybe I was not meant to go, that the difficulty I faced to even get into the Peace Corps was a sign I wasn't meant to go, that I mistook the Call to leave with my own desires for volunteerism and justice.

This of course I don't see as true, I was meant to go, and gain much from my time there.  It was my great joy to go, to be used up for a purpose I recognised as a mighty one.  I, however, cannot look at my life and actions as a sacrifice or else I am receiving the glory -- not God.

If I continue look at my circumstances as what was taken from me, I risk being nothing more than a feverish, selfish little clod of ailments and grievances, complaining that the world will not devote itself to making ME happy. As if I was the centre of it!

Instead I want to be a force of nature, a powerhouse to be reckoned with.

Troubles I have, no matter how difficult and dark and seemingly consuming of my life they might be, I have been promised more. These are light and momentary, achieving for me more then I can see right now.

So "Keep the earth below my feet ... / Help me learn from where I have been / Keep my eyes to serve, my hands to learn."

Call me Mara

As someone who is usually pretty out-going and generally upbeat and positive these last few weeks have been incontrovertibly difficult for my spirit.  For uncontrolled reasons I find myself, simply put; sad.

Ever since I have returned to America I feel like there is a war raging within my body, as seemingly rivalling identities and world-views battle to reach an equilibrium. As I try to find answers and turn to the place and the Body I have so many times ran to in the past, I feel as if I'm proverbially being turned away.

That no matter how hard I try I can't find rest.  In this place between Heaven and Hell I feel I have no home.

As I turned to the Book for guidance I was drawn to Ruth. Though I do not feel I have answers or even peace, the words of Naomi stuck in my mind and seem to describe what I feel inside:

"...call me Mara, for the Almighty has dealt bitterly with me. I went away full and have been brought back empty. Why call me Naomi, when the Lord testifies against me and the Almighty has brought calamity upon me."

I feel like I left for Africa full of hope, energy and Passion, yet have returned feeling helpless, doubtful, and in some ways empty.  As I enter through the doors of the Body I feel the pointed fingers of condemnation, rather then the extended arms of healing. Will I feel like a child of God again or am I doomed to feel separated forever?

One Thing Remains

Today completed my official move up to the Beaver State (keep all dirty jokes to yourself**) in literally the hub of Duck Country and I couldn't be more stoked.

It has, however, been quite the whirlwind. It's hard to wrap my mind around the turns my life has taken in the last 2 months, and I know some people I love are struggling too.  Many have asked me some serious questions that I simply haven't been able to answer completely, especially as to why I am moving so far, so fast.

The simplest answer is I'm worn.  I am currently a broken human being (literally in some senses), walking around trying to maintain some semblance of normalcy.  I spent nearly 9 months witnessing, at points in time, the weight of what the world can bring.  I've seen some of the darkest states a human being can be brought to and not be able to do a blessed thing.  I've seen the brightest hope in a child's eyes, and the darkest flame burning in the soul of a man as his hope fails him. And then I was suddenly ripped out of that world as if I had never been there...

Part of the reason that I left Oroville and California in general is to escape.  Not from problems or anything like that but to escape "normal".  I prepared my mind and heart to be gone, away, separate, from that which I knew and was comfortable with, for two years and then was abruptly placed back into that existence as though nothing had happened.

 I felt pressure to be me as people knew me before, but I am simply not me as I was before.

And my heart is heavy.  I find myself facing a brick wall of anxiety in places that I am supposed to feel at rest and home in. Continually tired from the effort it takes to keep on breathing and to meet the expectations placed on me.

My knowledge tells where I am supposed to find rest,  I am simply weary and struggling to lift my eyes up.  I desire to know a song can rise from the ashes of my deeply held dream I believed to be being fulfilled.  To be reminded that redemption wins.

But that takes time.  So, I took my life to a place partially removed from my old life so that I can have the space to find what I have lost, and find the strength to rebuild what I can.  My heart may be frail and torn, but my hope is to rediscover the One Thing that Remains through all the trial and the change.






**but not really, just send them to me privately =P