I wrote once, told friends once
That every moment when I expected I may get that confused looking “youre and idiot” face girls my whole life have been so good at giving; I never once did…
Well now that’s all I get, even when I didn’t expect it at all…
The truth validates itself. A word like “love” has no definite truth outside of “a word that describes our God.”
To claim it, is unlike claiming anything else. It is to claim you desire to imitate that which you do not fully know, but to claim it assumes as ones understanding grows, as does ones actions. This entails every facet and sort of love. Intimate. Brotherly. Parental, etc.
There is a story of two sons, both are told to go work, one says he will while the other says won’t. Yet the one who says he won’t is the only one who does, and Jesus tells us he was the righteous one.
This parable always concerns me…
With no reason to go out I stay in
because the reasons gone out
were those which if had stayed in
would be here to maybe get me
out from always staying in when
all I have on my mind is
the things I wonder why I’m not out
doing when otherwise caught up in not
something I meant to even stay
in as long as I had been in it
but what will we do to go out now…
my reasons absent I stay in
we are strangers in familiar bodies
To the street evangelist
I caution:
it is not God vs Mankind
for you yourself would be overrun
found with guilt and exposed with rot,
vile and set to be unwrapped from flesh;
your bones would share a campfire’s sight
of sticks lent up to be heat.
But instead it is Us All Together
and not a one with a word or deed
could come at you, come at me,
come at them with brows high
chins upward raised
to offer heed that He comes
instead offer humanity
relate to one-another’s calamity
we are not of unlike blood
while our spirits afresh,
still out bodies wrestle alike;
approach with the good news
leave behind
your conquesting posture.
sit up in bed at night
you don’t have to lay your head
no one said you were okay;
no one finished the Work.
Don’t blame yourself completely
don’t blame them
don’t omit blame completely
don’t omit them
but whatever you do
don’t let it steal
don’t let it
steal it (all) away:
all: the golden light of His love which finds our heart when we cannot find it ourselves
all: the memories of long hugs on door steps
recreational painting in the park by her house
Christmas in the bed of a truck greeting January with fireworks from a driveway sofa
seeing her play
seeing her paint
seeing her hold herself up higher than life ever wanted to let her; yet there she stands.
seeing yourself
through her eyes
all: the reasons you’re more than enough
all: the reasons she loved you
at least for me. I never was good with numbers
It’s not like you thought;
none of it. Not until you’re staring it down the throat
can you see what’s inside.
Boy, you have so much to be proud of
don’t you ever let someone tell you otherwise.
Do those things. Practice them. The things you’re good at: get better at them.
If someone seems better at it, don’t worry,
they’re not. It may appear to be the same skill as yours, but believe it or not, they will never make the exact same paint stroke as you, the same quarter note, the same incomplete sentence, or express a word with the exact same inflection.
Like it or not, everything you do is unique, and no one in this world can match it.
Life is gonna come at you hard, and it’s gonna start the war from inside yourself.
It’s gonna be hell kid, and if you don’t know your strengths
you’ll get them all confused with your weaknesses;
you’ll feel useless, and lose every fight to your own white flag.
I need you to trust me. There’s something in you
valuable. Something no one else has. Something someone else needs.
“I am free”
… well more than you could ever know
It’s been some time since last we spoke
the breathe of this blinking line…
I’ve been sick a day or two, it was strange
sickness is hardly a state of mind, I mean one could call it that, but it would do it no justice,
you see when you’re sick, it’s an alternate universe
it’s much smaller sometimes than the universe we typically call “the universe”
I like words like “foggy” and “groggy” to describe it, but, it is also something else
I suppose one must admit it is only ones perception of things that changes, but you Perception do know that, therefore in that moment Perception cannot account and adjust for such accusations.
No, it is the world that changes, everything simultaneously begins to mesh with each other, and after a certain distance for the person sick they lose color too; slip into a sort of grey.
It is as though everything carried some of the characteristic of glass when the humidity on its one side does not match the humidity of its other side. And then we’ve got all this medicine you think will get the heater blowing to dissipate the fog on your car window but no, in fact the medicine has turned the cold air on and now can’t even see through that small whole, it’s just all gone, all vision; so you go to sleep.
That’s just what they wanted you to do, sleep. Don’t move, don’t see, just sleep. Well what if I was going somewhere or had something to get done? -Well tell them you cannot because now you have to sleep. Well I could have at least done something perhaps, had I not taken this still sip of dark green tablespoons! -Shh boy, just sleep.
This happens all throughout the night, and the day, and then you’ve lost a day entirely; as though it never were. The only thing difference is that now you owe everyone at work for not showing up
nathanael.ink 