Illnesses of Mass Destruction

Face to face with life
Am I the blessing or the curse
Weary in the valley
Lost for the temporal beauty of the shadow
Trying to find the words to say it all
Make sense of it and find my peace again

I write letters in a perpetual state of transition
Shouting into the void, the echoes of anguish and hopes that fluctuate between confidence and question
Caught in the in between
Trying to find a sense of home in a world that I don’t belong

Hungry is my exile heart, banished by sabotaged and betrayed affections
As I oscillate between the nature of who I’ve been and who I am

Stones throw away from monsters in our mirrors that stare back at us through the lens of divided perspectives
When one moment I seek to imitate Christ but the next it’s as if my life more truly immolates the notion
What would Judas Do?

When I feel like I’m traitor to my own legacy for bloodlines in collision
My veins weaved together and entwined
When my mother was a warrior but I bear the burden of my fathers frame of mind
As scars become the fingerprints of how we define ourselves
Suffering for heavens sake in the face of our present hells

There are no innocent victims and we’ve all got blood on our hands
Yet still we orbit in our contemplation
All that we endure as if entitled to grace when we deserve damnation

Humility entreats me as I reconcile
I’ve no vision for true justice for the ways my eyes have been defiled
When I began found but started to lose my way when I was just a child
Am I not still the offspring of God, yet molested by this world
Touched by demons, the devil is a pedophile

Kill, steal, and destroy
Weapons forged of illness
Thievery of hearts by way of failing love
This hand me down devastation

I speak heavy handed hallelujahs to salvage what is left of all that has been taken
When the one person I loved the most was healed by way of death but in the vapor I felt as if she was forsaken

When faith is poisoned by a broken meditation
I go in circles in my mind yearning to resolve this theological frustration

When doubts are fears in infancy and I cannot come up with an answer
My sorrow nurses on the sour milk of loss at the hand of the breast cancer

I remember it like yesterday when it went into remission
Then returned, on the eve of new beginnings, inside her head
As gradually life left her eyes and blurred her hopes vision
My faith was robbed by the heartache that broke me in every word the doctor said

A prognosis of three months but in two she passed away
I replay the order of events inside my mind, knowing I should rejoice at the thought of her in heaven, but I just can’t today

Appealing to God and asking why
As if to put divinity on trial according to my finite point of view
I know that you are in a better place but sometimes I feel lost here without you

Feeling my way around in the darkness of my own ways that fail to align
As I sing the name of Jesus on Sunday but journal my despair in double entendre confessions of every poetic and ugly line

Bearing my heart I bleed in honesty not for some spectacle marvel at a way with words
But to mourn with those who mourn and be vulnerable as I find a way to cure imperfect faith through the chemotherapy of truth
When depression like tumors symptomatic of the ways I medicate with lust perpetuates this cancer of my youth

Sometimes I wonder if I’ll see you again
When the accuser makes his case against me to prosecute me on the premise of my sin
I just learn to trust in God, even when I don’t understand
Such love that covers over multitudes of words and sins
All for just a man…

Consolation

Capturing the digital echo
Resounding at will
Our faces sing inside a web of catacombs

All that’s left is the shell
When life is drank like nectar from the dried up wells of undead memory

I live and suffer the beauty
Waking up in the dream of you that I can’t keep
Every morning another lamentation
Every night I bring you back to life when I close my eyes

Slumbering for visitation rights between this present hell and heavenly getaways
Like portals of transcendence behind my eyelids

Smother me with affections in my sleep
Till I wake up catching a breath I sometimes wish would escape me

Resurrection, bring back the vibrancy of daylight despite an overcast perspective
When all that’s left of the storm is the torrential downpour of the trauma

Rain is the illusion of devastation when every drop is but the catalyst of vegetation
When gravity is the soil I push through to sprout my wings and learn to fly again

What is every blessing in this moment but consolation prizes like glimmers of hope that are the evidence of eternity

Nothing here is the destination
Waiting for the end of the vapor
Author of my faith, life is labor
My story speaks beyond the pages
Digging deeper on every sheet of paper…

The Poetry Won’t Bring You Back

Pouring over these former letters
Reactivating the potency of my emotions
How do I keep the memory of you alive
What good is it to look in rearview

I can’t help but reminisce again
When every word is a snapshot from my heart
Writing to commemorate, honor, and ache for you

Another letter, another year, another moment I feel the lack
So many words to express my love
Yet no matter what I say, the poetry won’t bring you back

Speaking like floral arrangements at the grave of another memory
When there’s so much I wish you could be here to see
I feel I don’t do justice your legacy
As I look into the broken mirror reflecting all the shards of me

Videos harbor the essence of your grace
Yet even still aren’t enough to act as a substitute for your embrace

Yearning once more to see you face to face
Out of reach yet still I run to match your pace

Trying to keep up with the way you ran the race
It’s been four years and without you here, I still feel out of place

Belonging versus absence
There are parts of me that have passed away
When you are a light extinguished
I exist here in the night of another day

A question still echoes like whispers in my head
As to where I’ll end up in eternity
Will I see you again or am I spiritually dead
When I know all too well the weight of my hypocrisy

As I doubt the best for the worst in me
Yet I hope in my will to continue on
Because when I think of you I have confidence in my identity
I can still hear your voice even though you’re gone

If I knew then what I know now, in the hindsight journals of 2020 reflected
All the phone calls I might’ve made, all I wish I had or hadn’t spoken

Our bonds I feel in some way I neglected
Some days I feel like I’m okay but others I’m still broken

Holding on as I savor the memory of everything you are
When I think of you, I think of heaven, and it doesn’t feel so far…