Invisible

Sometimes I feel as though
there’s a hole inside my heart;
and I don’t know what it is,
but it’s ripping me apart.

And you tell me that you care,
but I don’t think so today.
I want to hug the people I love
but they’re all so far away.

Smokin’ green all by myself-
I’m locked with in these walls:
I’m lying by your side,
but I don’t feel you at all.

So I put my hands in my jacket,
and slide the tear off my cheek:
one foot in front of the other,
I keep on walking down the street.

Put a patch on my chest
’cause there’s a hole in my heart.
I sowed it together,
but you’ve torn it apart
with your indifference
to my invisibility.
I’m laughing on the inside
because you don’t know what you mean to me.

Your touch gives me the chills.
I’m freezing at the thought
of the promise that you made me,
but I guess that you forgot.

You said you wouldn’t push,
you swore you wouldn’t prod,
but now you tell me that you’re lonely,
and leaving- swear to God-

You’re not the worm I can’t remove
from this intestine of a heart…
but you’re the bacteria that it feeds off
and I’ve known it from the start.

I’m calling this quits
before anyone gets hurt;
but despite my best attempt
I think this misery’s inert.

Put a patch on my chest
’cause there’s a hole in my heart.
I sowed it together,
but you’ve torn it apart
with your indifference
to my invisibility.
I’m crying on the inside
because you don’t know what you mean to me.

Lost in a crowd of liars,
I’m desperate for an end.
You grab me in your arms
and say it looks like I need a friend.

You tell me Jericho must fall,
even if it’s stone by stone.
You come on inside,
and I don’t even feel alone.

Your chicken soup healed my broken heart,
your patience left me in a daze.
Some call you Doubting Thomas,
I call you my Saving Grace.

Take a piece of your quilt
and like your love- put it inside me.
Ignore my terminal condition,
restore my dignity.

You put the patch on my chest,
healing the hole in my heart.
You put it together,
after I ripped it apart.
You’re the artist
behind my visibility.
I’m smiling on the outside
because you’re everything to me.

On Love

            I lost more than just my head-band in the back seat of his sporty and not-yet-totaled car that July night. I remember the familiar taste of alcohol on his breath, and telling myself this shouldn’t be happening, but thinking it was okay because we loved each other when we were sober, too.
            Earlier that day, out-side of a church and in the blistering sun, I gave him more than my ring. He gave me his shortly-there-after and we held the hands they were adorning as we waved hello at friends of each of ours.
             At dinner, with out saying a word, I slipped my bracelet over his masculine and beautiful hand. Months later, he told me told me he only took it off when worked. It looked better on him anyways.
             Singing my current favorite song to him over the phone, I decided to burn him a CD of my current favorite songs that I thought he’d enjoy, too. Driving around and listening to some of the songs before I planned to give it to him, he asked me what kind of crap I was listening to. I didn’t like his music either.
            During the weeks I felt the farthest away, I sent him cards to tell him how much I loved him. I used my best penmanship when I wrote the address and purposefully forgot to put my name on the return address just in case his mother saw and asked who I was. She never noticed and neither did he. I scrawled my heart out all over those letters.
            My heart was broken and my hugs a little bit bruised, but I gave him everything I had and more than that in retrospect; I failed to realize that without receiving anything myself, I’d soon run out of things to give. When he finally called it off I didn’t expect or want any of it back, almost a year later, I’m fully realizing I’ll never get any of it back. But he fails to see the one thing he gave me freely.
            I am all the wiser. Love fully, and love completely…but make sure you have that love to give; it works like a cycle- you give all you have and just when you think you’ve run out you realize that somebody else has given you all the love you need to continue loving. It just doesn’t work on a one-way street.      

Friendship

     I thought that he loved me; honestly, I thought that I loved him. One time I drove the three hours simply to confess my most recent mistake to him in hopes that he would confess that he loved me. I was straddling the bench that stood at the invisble boundary of the beach behind me, and he sat down in front of me and simply put my sobbing face between his enormous and protective hands and looked me straight in the eye and told me it was okay and that he loved me.  After that he took me in his arms and picked me up the way I secretly hoped he’d someday pick up our little girl and carried me this way across the bridge that joined more than just the two sides of vast, rushing river.  Once on the other side, we droppped down into the dunes and sat there motionless listening to the water lapping upon the shore and the wind howling through the abandoned fields just over the hills. A couple minutes passed and he stood up and walked out onto the dock being tossed violently about by the angry all-consuming waves. The wind carried him back to me and we physically communicated how much we loved each other to the world surrounding us. We whispered it to the sand, to the river and to the trees- but we forgot to confide it in each other. With him on top on me I secretly hoped he’d make me ‘with child’ so that the man my inebriated flesh had lied to the night before wouldn’t have to worry about growing up himself. Neither one of us really ever wanted to get married at all, yet a part of me was looking forward to being the shortest in my family because the man I decided to spend the rest of my life with was just shy of a foot taller than me and our three- maybe four boys and one little girl took after their father in that aspect as best they could. Holding his hand on the way home I asked him what he wanted us to be. He told me were friends, and that we were friends with benefits only because that way when things ended, we could still be friends.

     It’s funny he said that, we haven’t talked since.

The Vindicator

         Trapped in every direction, and chained down like circus monster, I wallowed in my despair. Even if I did have somewhere to run to, I had no way of escaping myself. I refused to move any longer, the shackles rubbing deep into my body: designed with such intricate detail, that even the smallest flinch turned a deep gnawing inside of me. Pre-occupied with my physical pain, I turned my gaze upward and saw the man with the twisted face and pointed nose. He snorted a glance back at me, his lofty prisoner- the way his puss-filled eyes pierced into my being made me wish I never would have known him. Every part of my jaded self knew I shouldn’t have returned his glare, but the longing for revenge was too strong for a child as weak as I had become. 
          His demonic laugh only continued to justify my nightmare. It was too real. The more I struggled to get away, the more pain I felt from the chains eating away at my flesh; but the more I gave in, the more I felt the self-inflicted beatings on my soul.  All faith of escape melted into my worn and callused hands as I saw the very blood flowing from them only waxing the chains I was now a part of: my blood only strengthening my captivity. I screamed, and I cried, and I lamented in total and utter vain. My voice now cracked and hoarse from its hours of meaningless worth found, however, exuberance in the discovery of freedom: my rotting fingers, unconsciously pulled up to dry my self-conceived tears, announcing the freedom my voice found itself in.
          We were free at last! Our wanting and wailing had not been in vain; however, terror now flowed rashly into my blood at the notion of being caught and sent back to the horrible, damned place I came from.  And with this thought, I did the only sensible thing I could think to do: I ran. I ran as far as I could and as hard as I could. With no way out, I found myself caught in a periodic wave of paranoid circles.
         Suddenly, ceasing all thought, a fulgent ray stole my savage eyes, and revealed the most pure and brilliant light I had ever before known. Radiating into this hell, and drawing me unconsciously to the massive barrier that it so effortlessly penetrated, it appeared to exist as a solitary symbol of the hope that existed beyond the walls of this hell.  Waving my beaten hand almost mystically through it restored some life in me and I suddenly felt not only the urge, but now the need to escape the life I existed in. Yet, I couldn’t conceive a possible way out, the hideous fiends being everywhere- an apparent defense against not what was on the outside, but what was trapped inside of their home and hell. In disbelief I collapsed to the ground, sobbing out my anguish and pain in unconceivable utterances of hopelessness.
          My pleas for help were answered by the only thing there to hear me, my enemy was now also my friend. Not even bothering to lift me up, the man with the twisted face threw a shackle at me, telling me I had never been free from the pain and captivity of the world I had always been a part of. The chains were tighter than I remembered them being, and the pain came quicker and more severely than ever before. Clenching to the raw, white of my bone, the animal drug me to a pole and tied me up like a rabid dog.
          Pondering the freedom I had almost tasted on my dry and cracked lips, I still knew not where else I could go, or what else I could do. This was all I seemed to ever know. Looking around, I saw others with the same disgust, the same comforting disgust, of this demmed inferno. We were all useless to the world we came from, too weak from the monkeys hanging around our necks to do anything but struggle, and to delight marvelously in doing so.
          My epiphany was discredited when I caught a glimpse of an innocent and beautiful man being drug in, bleeding and limp and whimpering like a dog that knows he has no chance of surviving. What could this man possibly have done to be damned to such a place as we? A thousand questions filled my mind as I continued to watch, amazed at his humility, breathing in the misery and crying selflessly for us, not himself.
          I stared in disbelief as they chained him, nailed him and even hung him from the most humiliating bloody and rusty post. His chains weren’t like ours though, they dissolved in His blood and tears, the enemy couldn’t hold him here, and yet He stayed. Conversing with all who called upon Him, He bled and they were set free. With delight in His eyes, He sat next to me and revealed the truth of it all. He held me in His arms and His blood melted away my enslavement- liberated, I tried to run.
            I tripped, over my own bloody feet, and was caught. Cursed, only to return to my Hades. “Don’t you ever learn, you silly child?” the beautiful man greeted me as I was chained back to my familiar place of shame and sorrow. The turns burned as they raced down my face. How could He say that? What had I done? He had set me free only to laugh at my defeat. “How many times have you tried to do this on your own?” He asked me with a sympathy I didn’t understand, “and how many times have you returned to your abyss?”
            He offered me His hand to help me up, and with a single, effortless blow, I shot a nail through it. With out as much as a flinch, He offered me His other hand, and I accepted nothing but more blood from it. Engrossed with pain, He fell to the ground and I grabbed the bloody pole I was chained to and spiked into His side. Finally, I thought, finally He feels the pain I’ve felt all my life.
            Rolling in His blood like a savage, I made sure I would never be shackled again. I stood up to leave, and felt the eyes burning on my back. Nobody spoke a word, but I knew I had done something terribly wrong. With this conviction, I turned back to help the man I had cursed so inhumanely. “I’m sorry,” I choked out as I sat down by the almost lifeless man who once shed tears on my behalf and was now covered in mine. He rolled over and picked himself up off the barren ground. “Do you understand yet?” He asked me. “What did you mean when you asked me how many times I tried to run away?” I pleaded with the savior. “Do you understand?” He asked me again as He grabbed my hand.
            “I don’t know what I’m supposed to understand,” I was losing hope again.
            “I think you do.”
            And I think that’s when it came to me. I had to hate this man, or I would have never been able to trust Him with my life. I had to fail this man, and myself, or I would have never relied on Him fully. I had to give everything I had to this man, or I would only fail again. “Are you ready?” He asked me, as if I had reason to stay.
            I wanted to though. I had to give up so much. I had to humble myself everyday. I had to admit that I wasn’t capable of doing anything good on my own. I wasn’t so savage that I was completely evil in and of myself, was I?
            “Are you ready?” He asked again.
            What about all my friends? I’d have to leave them all behind; obviously I couldn’t stay with them if I was going to be free. Why couldn’t they be free? How could I possibly leave while they were stuck here to meaninglessly suffer?
            “It’s a choice every man has to make for himself,” He answered, as if reading my mind. “All you can do is show them the hope you have found and pray that they realize how much they need it as well. Have you decided yet?” I couldn’t comprehend it yet. There had to be another way. Maybe I could stay and eventually persuade them to come, too. Even before I had finished my thought a whip cracked on my back, bringing years of pain with it. I was already falling back into captivity.
            “Are you coming with me?” the man asked His last question, with tears falling from His pleading eyes. “Yes, I am. I’m scared though.” That was the biggest under-statement I’ve made in my entire life. “You’re going to have to help me along. I don’t want to get caught again. I don’t want to screw this up.”“Of course, my love. I wouldn’t think of any other way.” With that He led me straight to the front gates.I was terrified; I didn’t understand what He was doing. I grabbed His arm and tried to pull Him back.
            “Don’t you understand?” He asked me. “I’ve already shed my blood on them; I’ve already defeated them for you. They can do nothing to you, you’re the only thing keeping yourself here.”I was? It couldn’t be. I had tried to leave so many times before. “It’s when you don’t listen to me, when you try to do things on your own that you get tangled up and need help.”It was. Nobody had damned me but myself. And in return, I damned this man to that very hell. Every word I spoke, every action I completed, and every breathe I took; I damned Him to it all. “Aren’t you coming with me?”“No, I have to stay here and help these other men get out, too. My Spirit is with you, though. When you feel defeated, let Him guide you through it, just as you have let me guide you.”
            “But what if I don’t know the way? Will I have to go back?”
            I was in His grip once again, “You do know the way. Just trust in Me,” and with that, He left, back into the damnation of humanity, to save the others, and set them free. I walked away, rubbing the scars on my wrists from the chains I once belonged to. Yes, I once belonged to them, but my vindicator had set me free. Free.

I love you and I’m sorry.

So I’m here, and I’m not even sorry. I’m so sick, so fucking sick, of watching people throw their lives away. I’ve been there…I’ve been fucked up…I’ve fucked myself up because I thought I had nothing better to do, and what the hell, it seemed like a good time. But I’ve seen how it sucks the hope out of your life, and I’ve seen people suck the hope out of their lives and spiral downward because they have nothing better to live for, and I’m so sick of it. Here’s the deal: I LOVE YOU.  And I’m sorry. I’m sorry I ruined our summer. I’m sorry that you can’t admit to the things you did and that for fourteen years, I enabled you to lie to yourself. I’m sorry that I was right there getting high with you and encouraging the shit that with out me there by you, you continued to do to the point of permanent damage. I’m sorry that I considered only what you said to me, and thought that I never needed to be there to encourage you because I thought you had it all together and that the only way you were able to get my attention was through your death. I’m sorry that when you talk to me I have no idea what to say. I’m sorry that when you cried with me, I didn’t know how to hug you back. I’m sorry that I can’t tell you that I care about you with out admonishing the actions that I am guilty of as well. I’m sorry I can’t be there for you. I’m sorry I can’t take you through that year of hell and bring you to the point where I’m at: where you’re able to see the shit it does to people’s lives, where you can see how much it hurts innocent people, where you can see how much it steals from you.  Where you can see you are a wonderful, beautiful, lovable human being who doesn’t deserve to be cheated out of your potential just because you want a quick “feel better” to your depression and hurt and being let down by fools who don’t deserve your love and by assholes who don’t understand how amazing of a person you are. What makes me so mad at myself is that I can tell you all of this- I can cry and I can yell and I can ignore you until the day I die, and that all you’ll ever get out of this is that I’m pissed off and you should be sorry…and it’s not that way at all. I’m not angry, I’m just scared. I’m scared because I don’t want you to turn into the people that have hurt me. I don’t want you to hurt anybody, I don’t want you to hurt yourself. You are worth so much more. You are capable of so much more. And if you can’t see this hope in me, if you can’t see my love for you and my faith in you to be so much more than what you’re settling for, than I’m doing something terribly wrong in the way I live my life…and I am so sorry for that.