Just a Midwest boy with shin splints mistook for growing pains On the side just running wind sprints thinking I’m in a race But the pace was set by shameful words Clattering hooves of a demonic dirge Heavy chains rattle from a wordless throat Self-induced headaches from walls and knuckles I prayed as a child to bring heaven to earth As an adult I hoped to leave this world first Chariot of fire ascension Collapsed lung dissension If it ended in new body redemption Then they were synonyms in my brain But the past dictates the present like a wound dictates the sting Not a lesson I’d thought I swallow at the age of 23 It sat lead heavy at the bottom, starving man eating stones found out you can look through windows if you’ve shut door Mercy greater than judgement Knowledge over hate Love before emotion Sincerity covers all mistakes They say some will die a thousand times but I'm fine with passing twice No more going out on broken limbs I'm not just living now but I'm alive When I was younger the thought of dying brought a smile of relief to my lips Now a days it fills my soul with unease cus of life goals I'd have to miss Nights occupied in discussion with my wife of what we'll name our kids I want my skin to remember every scraped knee I have to kiss Every report card and every lie my kids confess Learning again how to be a conversationalist When my child speaks the language of the Heavenlies A reflection of a glass sea In front of me reflected in whites of their eyes Because the truth belongs to God The yearnings of my heart are mine I pray to the Father that even once in awhile the sun and moon align But I'll let myself be eclipsed I'm a tattered sail blown by the winds Just a deceitful heart clinging to a promise given to it So if I lay down tomorrow then I will gladly rest My life's been a run on sentence in need of a period. Mercy greater than judgement. Knowledge over hate. Love before emotion. Sincerity covers all mistakes.

I cannot pronounce the name of the city I was born to But I know there is a story scratched into my eternity It makes me sit without shifting Meet the gaze of a stranger and let the corners of my lips to relax into a smile Because I know I don’t know much I don’t know shit about marriage or how to change the fan belt in an engine but I can certainly learn because I know how a thing feels You’ve felt it too How it has shape and a barren smoothness, black as pitch Terrible to observe A weight that cannot be shifted between shoulder blades and not a thought can hold But I’ve witnessed that feeling thing become submerged under a glow called phosphorus “Bearer of light” when my white skinned grandmother kissed my sun burnt cheek The weight shifts whenever I remember my father crossing the picket line at work despite the nails they hammered into the coffin of his reputation and the others they used to pop the tires of his 78 Thunderbird This man told me after his father died "it's ok to cry" although my grandfather shed not a tear in front of the boy my dad was Because hard men were scraped together by depression years and dust bowl fears They were made to resemble the bomb shelters their daddy's dug to give them the shadow of safety That shadow is all they ever chased not understanding that the Son is what gave those dark lines their shapes So I'm allowed to stand in the peaks of calloused hands that came before me To crouch in the twilight before the velvet crushed night And claw like nails and knuckles on bedsheets during a fever induced dream in that magic hour Unaware that we are only trying to catch a shimmer of the perpetual sunset heaven is when we finally close tight our eyes to sleep We take none of our bones with us They clack like dice in our coffins Trying to convince us life is all snake eyes bets But I can't believe that I still get so angry every day that it makes my tongue feel like a nest of barbs I'm almost convinced they must show through my cheeks even when I attempt to swallow every single one of those sharp words I've felt God's fingers be pricked by the nettles that once made bedding in my thoughts Washing the whisper of wasp stings away Proving through synapses and tissue there is true weight in faith And that is where I wait still I stand in the tension within the snapback of every handguns hammer Before it clap cracks to it’s original place of rest Filling the space and time between the nothing but air footfall Of the last ledge before a final drop Where every introduction I give comes out formed looking like an apology because I saw you standing there but greeting a stranger always seems like a waste of breath Understand love is still filing down the hard edges pressures formed over the years Please be patient with me I'm still trying to trade my hard pressed diamonds for drowning waters that feel more like embrace than suffocating mistakes So here I am Because hurry up and wait is the mantra that's burned into every kiss Stay is the speech between each pair of lips And my soul screams light-speed Within each stationary prayer The amount moved is mountains with each wordless utterance While I stand perpetually blemished by time’s stain No memory can scrub me clean Hurry up and wait is the mantra So here I am ILLOGICAL REST.

You’re the path left by twisted men Doubled back trying to be straight again Halos the size of greed Flat earth spirituality Can your pride pierce the clouds? Your crossed fingers trace the truth now All those tongue lashings only lead to a gnashing of teeth Speaking in hushed tones doesn't add up to prayers to me The ones destined for flames without the charm of grace The sign of a cross more like the crossing of snakes Rain dance for the crops that you store for yourselves While your village is starving you hoard all the wealth You can't roll the stone away from your own grave Wash your stains clean only on Sunday Folding your hands to pray To hide your hate isn't truth to me I'm a bastard A cynic A blasphemer of truth A mocker of beauty with the blackest of roots The fruit that I bear only has venom for juice We're both of one movement An eclipse of the moon You being my kin Isn't the kind I want speaking for me Your fangs betray the hate hidden in me The dividends of sin that's told in this pair of limbs Heavy crown fashioned out of hatred, hammered in tin But the breaking of sinew is not where atonement begins You can't roll the stone away from your own grave Wash your stains clean only on Sunday Folding your hands to pray To hide your hate isn't truth to me You can't roll the stone away from your own grave Wash your stains clean only on Sunday No matter how I pray To hide my hate There's only one truth to me Hallowed it be thy name.

No's and cannot's are merely trapdoors and invitations A search for better reasons Stumbling blocks for the naysayers That dared to fathom that "not" words could knot enough negative thoughts to weigh your limbs to the floor but they are surely not enough You stand with fingers like ivory keys Each digits brush against the world Makes a reverberation, a sweetest note that rushes like poured water through your being rippling the oceans between your bones lurching them forward into a kinetic battering ram of the purist freedom humming among your marrow It tumbles from the perfectly shaped escape of your mouth And that is some sort of truth When you babysat you were always told to leave the houses better than when you first came But your own room always looks more cluttered than the time you left it before And there's iron shod roots beneath the basement that has a crashing spire ripped through the roof But maybe it's more about how you organize the particulars than torching it all too soon You say you've made mistakes but what's worse is to hesitate To live inside the car crash fears of a heart that never tried to escape To fear the torch you never lit Sit in closed eyes punishment Better to question your surroundings then sit closed lips and clenched fists Sunday mornings tend to yield Trepidation born of years Expectations opinions mirrored It doesn't have to be that way It's not Crescent tongues hiding darker halves of double sided speech Tipping off the werewolf hearts they hide Behind their double rows of teeth We're all afraid of something Fear is what you make of it It's not just how your match-sticks lit But who you call on to protect it

"I've never seen a wild thing feel sorry for itself." Maybe it's not about the wilderness But being tamed by someone else I've missed sunsets my whole life To be paid in swallowed stones that try to convince me I've been full this entire time Never again will that be me I'll let my tender thoughts grow free Even if the prunings would be the death of me If the sky doesn't crack open wide like the wound in Christ's side I won't give up the ghost but grip it's hand tight Exhale my mistakes make my way into the bright Because it was a Slow march to suicide Coffins like church spires In my mind Year '11 on my hands and knees my body wracked like seizures Meeting the Spirit in the back of my eyes Rockslide monument beneath murmured misery Mountain shift beneath placid glance I wish every song wasn't my attempt for sympathy through others grief Pile stones on me higher than my chest cavity Weigh me in millstones so I can taste the salt between my teeth (4 beats) Find me East of Eden Fig leaves over my eyes Two tokens for my troubles God sees me naked in lies If I'm allowed in heaven Pray my friends are by my side Promised hinting of relief Questions still squeeze The life out of my lungs before I speak I’ll burn myself in effigy Light matches in my teeth Greek Fire Ceaseless burning No cold could bring relief If bodies are like signal flares I hope it be Enough to bring You back to me Die wild Let me stand in the wilderness Wildfire footprints all around Die wild I'll gladly spill the contents of my throat upon the scarlet ground Die wild It's not the contents of my pockets those things will never bring me peace Die wild The craftings of the tongue you thought would never cease Find me East of Eden Fig leaves over my eyes Two tokens for my troubles God sees me naked in lies If I'm allowed in heaven Pray my friends are by my side