Poem

Written for the dreams of the dead and dying
Deceived by those who are always lying
Their tongues drip with deception
Bitter cold is their reception
Some, desperate for love, think to find it here
I cannot find love in hatred-filled sneers
Oh, God, come cleanse me from the evil beside me
Rip out the fingers around the heart inside me
They are hopeful that they can claim me for their own
Unfortunately for them, I am not alone
I am far beyond their touch
They cannot count me as such:
I am no longer under their false power
You fill me more with Yours every passing hour
I do not seek from them love I do not need
I have what I want and I pay them no heed
I cannot be counted among the dead
Despite any whispered words they have said
Neither am I the one who is dying
It is merely them practicing lying
But some are deceived, some are dying and they are dead
It is for any hope they have, these words I have said
I know there is hope because my soul is saved
And I hope with this hope, the Way I have paved

Threat

This is not just some childish fear; this is a legitimate threat. But as real as this threat is, the fear itself is what it threatens with. The separation from that which protects. The love we have within us from the God of the universe has the ability to cast out all fear. When we focus on this threat, we are letting go of that love and grasping at fear instead, as though this fear could save us. But it is the love that saves, the power we inherited through that love. The power of the living God within us. The threat they hold over us can only be in the physical realm or in the mental. They can affect our physical world, and we can allow them to infiltrate us with the fear they so desire us to have, letting it grow in our minds. Yet we do not have to do even this. As long as we are under the blood of Jesus Christ and trusting in His love and the power He shows through us, they cannot harm us, and we will not fear them. For as real of a threat as they can be, they have no real power. The only power they have is that which we give them in fear. They can have no affect on us in a spiritual sense. While they can continuously lead us farther from God through deceptions we choose to believe or through the fear that makes it difficult to trust, they cannot take our souls. They have no access to the most important part of our being, the real part of us, as our souls are held by God, and He doesn't ever let go.

The Flower

It was all she had left. Or perhaps it was the only thing she had ever had. The first real thing.

The flower still bloomed, just as the day she had found it, in a garbage can outside the grocery store, a dumpster, a place of refuse. And yet this beauty. She had refused to leave it there, though she knew taking it with her would help it no more than leaving it. While she could possibly keep it alive in its pot, the place in which she lived was no better. It would still be beauty among refuse, among garbage. Her "house" was garbage, not even a house at all, but a box in an alleyway. She was garbage. Refuse. She had been told so. And she had been refused by all. She had been turned away. There had been no one to accept her. That is why she accepted the flower. She liked to see it as herself. She liked to imagine she was beautiful, even though she knew it was not so. She liked to think that someone would see her amidst the refuse, see a scrap of beauty amongst the garbage and take her away.

Summer drew to a close. Fall drew to a close. Time passed faster than she had expected. But it wasn't the first time she had spent a year alone and wondered where it had all gone and known it would never be back. It was lost forever. Lost and wasted, just as all of her life had been. But the flower was not a waste. The time she had spent caring for it was the only time she had ever spent on something worthwhile. This was something that could last. Yet the seasons had contrived to destroy it. It could not last the winter in a cardboard box. She could not carry it with her to the bathrooms she slept in by night during the cold months of the year.

The arrest occurred before she could put much thought to a solution. In her cell she wondered if it was worth it for the warmth, that can of soup she ate cold from the can with her fingers, the one she hadn't had the money for. The warmth, perhaps; the food. In this way her life was improved. But the beauty was missing. What little she had found that made it worthwhile to live. That which she was required to care for to keep alive had kept her alive. And the thought of it kept her alive now.

She returned to the alley. Time had passed. Too much time. But she was hopeful. Too hopeful. Surely what sustained her would not be taken from her.

There was a darkened alleyway, the dimming light barely revealing a lone figure, kneeling on the ground. The light faded, taking with it the image of the figure as well as the empty alley, the trash cleared away, the boxes, the garbage, the refuse. But the darkness could not conceal the sound of the weeping that issued from the figure, the sound of a life destroyed.

Expression

This is kind of raw. And the rhyming is strange. But whatever.

Impossible to tell how I feel

Yet I know that it is real

The way of how I am

The story if my life

My heart with a broken seal

Yet I know that it is real

How often I can’t express

Go and put me to the test

I’ll know not what to say

They fail me every time

The words mean less and less

They only make a mess

My heart holds much

It holds to it, as such

I want to say what I mean

It is as though I don’t

My heart’s strong clutch

My secrets no one will touch

Yet secrets are not what I desire

This feeling is burning like a fire

I know it is known and not

My heart does not fully tell

My heart: deceptive, a liar

I want to tell how much I admire

Admiration is not the extent

The love from my heart was not merely lent

The way I feel is never fully stated

I wish it could be read and known

I wish they were words in a letter sent

I wish you knew it will never be spent

In Writing

I cannot deny the benefices of writing, displaying itself through my own personal stability, my memory, and even my creativity; for this writing is ever a source of comfort to me, it allows me to remember whatever I choose to record, and even words merely expressing feeling or describing a day's events can be an outlet of creativity as you choose with which words you will attempt to express yourself. This is how I write when I really write. When the words flow from me without thought, without long, drawn out contemplation, without wonderings of what I actually want to say, when they follow no pattern, when the subject on which I write changes frequently simply because my thoughts changed directions and my writing followed; then, and only then, do I consider myself to be writing, the verb that possesses so much meaning for me. That words contains my life, not because writing is my life, but because the words I write hold my life within them. My life is in writing - not because I have captured every detail of everything that has happened in my life on a page, but because those words on that page have succeeded in capturing who I am.