Leashes

Anchored children nailed to plastic seats
Their bodies squirming, aging too quickly
Teeth are gnawing at a hopeful dash of life
Every eye twitching in florescent light
In front, one stands, tall and mighty for command
Frumpy sweaters, stained slacks, a beaten man
They raise their heads, 25 at a time
And salute a flag with a lethargic chime
All day they sit, listen but never hear
Learn but never apply, dream, but its not advised
They carry away, scratching graphite into trees
Taking notes that they will never read
Musing for seconds in-between
The constant stream of worthless lecturing
From day one they’re trained quite viciously
Mouths shut, your chattering is useless bickering
Your "brilliance" is incoherent thinking
Untraditional and belligerent, youthful bitching
They speak all day, but of nothing real
Losing life, favoring collectivism with a certain zeal
They breed mediocrity in the most insidious manner
And laugh as the great starve for something better
They favor the few, obedient and bright
And hold the rest on a leash that’s too tight
Risking the chance of strangling them
A leash is a rope with a noose at both ends

Dam it!

How do you fix an overflowing river? Dam it.

My brain, the overflowing river if you will, was twisting around sharp rocks and drowning everyone in sight when I decided I needed to slow this ship down. My dam - a question I cant answer. Do I value compassion over competence?

Of course at first I jumpped all over compassion. Saying you value compassion the most makes you seem like an ethical person. Of course humanity isnt humane so... then youre just a liar. However that works the opposite way too. Saying you value competence in an inept world suggest that you are the only competent one alive, how egotistical of you. I dont think egoism is a sign of true competence either.

So finally I decided I value a combination of the two but not either alone or either above the other. A compassionate person without competence is a waste of vehemence. A competent person without compassion is a waste of a mind.

Well...
I feel like
I just spoke
For no reason
Whatsoever so
peace love and asia

"Snookle Poochie Poodle Sugar Muffin Baby Boo Boo Bear"

I have nothing else to say. The title.

"Youre so good at talking smack"

"two forces that had fought since the world began - and every religion hand known of them - and there had always been a God and a Devil - only men had been so mistaken about the shapes of their Devil - he was not single and big, he was many and smutty and small"

Im fasting tomorrow for everyone suffering as a result of the VT shootings. I want to watch the few clips I have from the video Jenny and I attempted to make that I took at VT back in November. Its so scarry.

Of all things going on right now, uncertainty is the most daunting. I have so many thoughts racing through my mind. Every breath I take steals oxygen from someone else, every bug I swat prevents millions and millions of future generations of bugs from occuring. Every tiny little dint I put in this earth alters the corse of humanity. I am one more person who will walk by you and never notice, nor care, nor ask what is wrong. I will sit down in hour and half long segments, zone in and out of some useless lecture, sinking back and forth between apathy and gibberish. I am one more set of eyes that will read someones vehement words and not be changed at all. I will cut someone off, and never consider what hell they went through already that morning. I wont see my struggles in you, I wont be willing to put forth the effort to save you, and I only help people because it makes me feel good. Its sick, the sickest of all things. I once heard that servitude is the key to joy, but if that is true than it isnt servitude, its a flashy self-sating meal for a phycological appetite. Pardon me, but Id rather vomit.

I have to go, Im getting ranty. I wonder if anyone understands.

"You know how people long to be eternal. But they die with every day that passes. When you meet them, theyre not what you met last. In any given hour, they kill some part of themselves. They change, they deny, they contradict - and they call it growth. At the end theres nothing left, nothing unreserved or unbetrayed; as if there had never been an entity, only a succession of adjectives fading in and out on an unformed mass. How do they expect a permanence which they have never held for a single moment?"

"We are fornicating in the sight of six billion people"

My Capital Punishment project is finally finished. Our presentation/discussion/debate lasted an hour. I was so worn out after it. Robert Lawton against Jenny and I, wow it was intense. I feel great about it though.

After doing so much research (and changing my mind a few times, vacillating between ideas) I am now very certain that I am anti-capital punishment. My reasons being, in general, it is too inconsistent, too arbitrary, full of racial and socio-ecconomical bias, too costly, and it defiles human life. And I think that the arguement that it is a deterrent to crime is bullshit. Besides, in the past ten years the violent crime rate and the execution rate has decreased together.

I want to go see Barack Obama on Friday. Actually Im pretty positive that Im going to. I also want to go to Europe this summer. Not so sure about that one though.

K peace. <4

"There is no difference between lies and complements. Its all the same if everyone leaves"

I made a list a few days ago of what I know about God, and what I feel about God. The differences scare me. The presence of such a struggle is terrifing. Ive always heard its okay to doubt, but it only feels like Im slapping God in the face. If it were all to end now... would I be forgiven for fighting him? Im doubting Him, im doubting myself. I dont know who I am or who I should be or even who I want to be anymore. Its just a blur of existance. I love conditionally and hate without reason. I watch TV even though I hate it. I cant tell the difference between what I like and what I dont like. I am lethargic. All of my writings seem to ask God where He has been. I see Him everywhere when I choose to, except my life. I know Im not good enough for him or Him. And I really dont how to fix any of it.

Im going to mess things up if i dont pull myself together. Im so scared of things fading like they have before that Im pushing things I know I shouldnt. Its so fucking ridiculous, my mind set. Im doing what it feels like would keep him here longer, when I know its only going to tear things apart in the end. It always does. I only know destruction.

I dont really pray anymore. It feels worse hoping for something that wont happen than never hoping at all. Im being depressing and annoying. Bleh.

Goodbye.

Reading-words-reciting-verses-bland

I cant think of anything to write. Stream of conciousness. Yay.

Sweet smells and worn knees
From hours of bending
What the hell is wrong with you?
Calloused fingers play away
You’re showing off again
You’re apologies were shot to hell
Time after time after time

You’re screaming louder than the rest
But I don’t miss your voice one bit

Well I’ve got my hands clasp for the last time
And I know I won’t have a chance to tell you again
Time healed all the wounds it could
But I’m still injured and looking for closure

I use you like a bad excuse
What did you expect me to do?
It’s all a masquerade
A god without believers
And on that day, they poke around
I’ll raise my hand and run down
Aisle by aisle screaming
Jesus save me one more time!

I’m screaming louder than the rest
But He won’t speak until I’m quiet

Well I’ve got my hands clasp for the last time
And I know I won’t have a chance to tell you again
Time healed all the wounds it could
But I’m still injured and looking for closure

For the Storms That Will Come...

We listened to the humming of an old engine and shook with the consistency of rumbling car vibrations while driving to a Columbian bar. I was in the passengers seat of my boyfriend’s white 87 Acura watching the monotonous streets of West Columbia pass by. The streetlights blurred together to make green and yellow streaks stopping only for run-down buildings and the ruins of a once booming ninetieth century economy. I caught a glimpse of a heavy, older black man resting in a chair next to a flickering “Open” sign, stroking his chin, staring at the road with unseeing eyes. We drove past with increasing speed, toward the venue to see the show, and I lost the treasure of his mystification.
The scenes flashed like the story of someone’s life; someone who had been through much and learned very little. Above the cracked brick walls of a half dilapidated house rested a leaf infested roof furnished with deep depressions in the middle where nothing was left to support it. Vines curled up drain pipes and around weather-worn once white window frames that were aesthetically pleasing at some time but now just faded into overall indifference. The porch jutted out to imply that integrity was once a defining architectural trait, but now dignity was a mere memory too painful to recall for long. The visual legacy of storms cast about the house in chipped paint and bent wooden planks seemed to make it invisible. It stared at me, as to warn me to stop calling on the storms, to stop temping the billowing clouds. It cried of mortality and threatened my sense of invincibility. We drove past.
There was a certain repetition that could be noticed; cheap paint overlapping cheap paint overlapping cheap paint. Years and years of disdainful weather, blundering sleet, relentless heat, and vicious winds tearing at the walls of meticulously planned but hastily erected buildings. Ambiguous ambition stood too sensitive, unplanned for the aches of time and irregularity of fiscal fortune. Sad attempts at saving the mislaid homes and family stores were often seen from the road, yet they appeared to just be amusing and feeble redemptions endeavors, like trying to fix a foundation with super glue and duct tape. Crumbling neighborhoods disappeared into a horizontal infinity adjacent to my journey. The loneliness on each doorstep was vainly lit by a patient dim light. It hung from the brick front and waited every night for the clunking of devoted fists that never seemed to knock.
The engine quieted as we approached a red light. We sat parallel to the pews in a church to the right of us. The wall closest to us bore massive windows revealing the audience to a sermon we could not hear. They sat still, hands folded in their laps, staring toward the front of the building whose inward delicacy was hidden from me. I could feel the liveliness of an active God moving through the rubbish of decay in the neighborhoods we had just past. The hunched over people in the streets behind us carried a burden only God himself could lift. It was as if in the brokenness God could be found more genuinely than in the Sunday suits and hair spray. The music playing in our car burst from the wires, forced its way through the speakers, and screamed praise that I had to believe was more honorable that the ennui of the night-time hymn singing Lutherans. I thought, God must be bored out of his mind with us. Until the light turned green, I scratched at the eerie feeling of vacancy that irritated my sense of spiritual decency and itched the gut of discomfort.
What God is found in dishonestly? Certainly not mine. I would rather be a house that once was, than a church that never will be. Amongst the fallen homes and worn out places stood a church, vulnerable to the outside world, whose occupants vomited creeds and slept through prayers. I find God more prevalent in the older man under the “Open” sign who is thinking on his own for the first time. I see Him in the testimony of barely existing houses which have been unoccupied for years apart from the weeds, somnolent plants, and frivolous mice that now eat away at the decay. That is just God’s way, to take something that is ruined, and recreate it in a way inconceivably creative and baffling to humanity. Inside the four walls of plaster, steal beams, wood lining, and the stained-glass nativity scene, a vacuumed sealed out all possibility of God. A God as infinite as the sky simply cannot fit in a box as small as a building. A God as raging as the ocean cannot be quiet enough to fade in with the congregation’s whispers.
The thundering of bass rattled our bodies inside the car. It had been raining for months and I was tempting the heavy clouds with my strength against the seas that they should lash out and flood to the top. Each decrepit strip of closed down stores seemed to beg me not to fight, but I knew that I must. The light flickering from my eyes sent out an SOS call, like a lighthouse in the eye of a hurricane that believes it will be saved. They say that it is faith, but it may just be hope I am too scared to doubt. I have as much of a fighting chance as an abandoned house left to fend for itself against the hungry gnawing jaws of termites and suffocating vines. I leave the light on so that God can find me, let the locks loosen so that when He comes knocking, He can get in. A house is only as living as its occupants. After the show my voice is strained from out-screaming the thunder, my hands are burned from catching direct rods of lightning, and my skin feels like melted and smoothed out plastic. Beneath a slightly convexly bent door I notice my hanging porch light still flickering rhythmically against the storms, and I know from the streets of wreckage, that it will be okay.