A Letter to…

This letter is addressed to the church for its mission faces the ground rather than the heavens. To the elected people for greed is an infection easily caught but rarely cured. And to my brothers and sisters for I tell you that love has moved into the neighborhood.

Comfortable is a sickness easily caught.

We stay inside our million dollar walls telling ourselves that the problems people face in countries around the world is out of our hands.

And already we’ve made a crucial mistake

Why do we build walls between our brothers and sisters and ourselves?

Are we afraid that color of their skin may cause us to be tainted in the eyes of the creator?

Why do we look across the sanctuary and begin condemning our brothers and sisters, labeling them unholy, as we are trying on the shoes that only God can fill.

Who are we to say that others are unworthy of the eternal love to we were gifted while we were still sinning?

As if somehow blasphemy is not a sin all its own

As if my broken pieces cannot be used to construct something beautiful

As if all of my love for God escapes through the extra holes in my ears

And the ink beneath my skin makes me tainted before the perfect creator of all that is imperfect

What we defined as different, He first defined as unique

What we defined as a lost cause, He first defined as a faithful servant

What we defined as Homosexual, He first defined as Son and Daughter

By the rules of this world, not a single man, women , or child, is worthy of one cent of the treasure of heaven

However, Jesus did not come to enforce the rules of man, but to abolish them

And in their place, create the rules of Heaven.

Love your enemies; no exception

Give to those in need; no exception

Blessed are those who are persecuted; no exception

But when a country is in need, we dare not give to them because they are responsible for persecuting our Christian brothers and sisters

As if our missionaries, better yet, disciples of God, did not expect it.

As if nowhere in the bible does it say that being a Christian isn’t easy?

To the elected people:

Do you honestly think that the people who elected you

People just like me

People just like you

Don’t see it?

The way you forget those in need, like it’s a bad case of amnesia.

The way you cater to the rich but abandon the poor, sweeping them under the rug of marginalization

And play it off as if your run-on sentences can’t be fixed with simple punctuation.

You see the “trickle-down” effect doesn’t permeate the impermeable.

What you call a poverty line

I call an umbrella

Keeping those under it from gathering water

I have come to see that there is no cure for your infection

As human nature is a greedy business.

To my brothers and sisters:

Why drink?

The water that trickles down is no more than leftover condensation dripping out of the exhaust of a real American machine

This is not anarchism

As I believe in a system

A new system whose named is carved into the streets of every slum, favela, and ghetto around the world

Love.

Nothing More

They say

its the part of the year

When young boys

Start missing their homes

As if I’ve

gone away

To the bloody battlefields of war

But nothing more

Than county lines

Separates me from mine

And I won’t wait

Just one more day

To be back in your arms

The look on your face

Says it all

I know I’ve been gone away for too long

You say your heart aches

Like if Summer never came

And it was Fourth of July

But nothing more

Than little white lies

Is keeping me from coming home to you tonight

And I won’t wait

Till tomorrow morning

To say I love you baby

Baby, baby, baby, baby.

I’ve wasted my nights

For hours

Just waiting for that damned phone to ring

The say I should of

Learned to buy you flowers

But instead i just learned how to sing.

But nothing more

Than broken hearts

And a hundred and twenty-eight fucking miles

Keeps me from falling in love with you again!!

And I won’t wait

For your heart to break

Over again!

And I won’t wait

For the wind to change

To sail away with you babe

To sail away with you babe

To sail away with you babe

And I won’t wait

Ohhhhh

To sail away with you babe

White Bread

What is so toxic to people about being uncomfortable? What causes us as humans to want to be comfortable? Is it The American Dream, injecting us with “I can’t do anything about that” and “It’s not my responsibility,” or is it the Enemy keeping us away from what our father has willed? Whatever it is, we ignore it, and blow it off as something of great unimportance. We spend our well-earned worries on 99¢ problems that serve as barriers between the heavens and us. Little do we know that those barriers are no more than anthills, and with one step to the left and two to the right, victory is met. But still we don’t dare to face our comfortable sickness. When things become difficult, we say “God would never put me through this, I must be doing something wrong,” when in reality, Christianity isn’t easy. Still, without allowing God to define himself for a change, we tack on post-it note characteristics of who we think God is, because it makes us more comfortable. As if cutting the crust off of white bread makes it taste any different.

Home

The leaves are falling

and Autumn is calling me home.

And your memory

still sleeps inside the walls.

Our bed left unmade

from the last time I wasn’t alone.

I just sit here waiting,

wondering when you will…

come back home.

Why I Write

This is why I write. I write poems, songs, and stories, all to discover the real reasons behind what I feel. Just as free write is meant to help you understand what happens while you write through a self-discovery process, poetry does this. While I write, through the poetic way in which I write, I discover the real problems in my life and their real solutions. The word solution comes from the idea of the root of something. That’s why we’re always told that at the root of the problem is the solution. So, through the process of breaking everything in a story, sentence, idea, or word, down, we are able to find its solution. We are able to find its true meaning. But more than that, I find what it means to me, in my life. Reflecting on my life, on my past, is more than just looking back on it. It’s looking back at it, knowing that there are some pieces missing, and that no matter what I replace them with, it will never be identical. But that’s okay. The imperfect way in which I remember my past, reminds me that it is not are past that matters. And in the same respect, the imperfect ways in which I think about my future as well as my past, is a reminder that neither my past nor my future are as important as now.

Comfortable

“Comfortable,” is a sickness.

It’s every foul word you throw my way way because your mind is too weak to have anything else to say.

True love is a monster.

It twists your words and wakes you up at night with sweats and convulsion wondering if any of this is even real.

Dreaming… Dreaming is a disease.

It ties slip knots around your ankles like anchors of the fairy tales that you once believed,

Because once upon a time life was so simple, like a mothers arms wrapped around her child crying “everything will be alright.”

alright? alright?

When was everything alright?

When was it all so easy?

Behind Closed Doors

I am terrified of the exploration of myself. Maybe I’m afraid of what I’ll find hiding behind closed doors, doors with locks that know no keys, doors with rotting wood that has been painted over time and time again to hide the deterioration. Usually when a home owner has a very bad experience in their house, they move. Sometimes I wish it were that easy.

Knuckles

I haven’t been content in so long.

When I was a boy I was told to keep your fingers between mine so that true love wouldn’t slip through my knuckles.

Don’t. Let. Go.

In my dreams, we are older. Married A house A dog Two and half kids. And then I wake up

One week

One month

Six years you say

And sooner or later we will never be together for all of eternity

When I was a boy I was told to never use those two words together in a sentence.

I’ve been breaking your heart, loving you, and making plans for far too long.

Sleep is for sane

I think so that I might be able to solve all of these problems but nothing nothing nothing will fix this except for one in seven billion.

When I was a boy I was told to find the cause of the problem to fix it

I found the cause, and you are the only one, one of seven billion, that can fix it

Fix me

Fix. Us.

God…

My hands still smell like you.

They still shake with memory

With apology.

With pain.

I hope that someday you may read this and laugh.

Yes.

You heard me right.

Laugh.

Laugh because these so called problems had solutions that you never thought possible until you tried.

I pray to god that one day you may try.

Because the truth is, I don’t deserve your 100%

I dont deserve only one out of a billion.

If we are baseball then I am machine pitch and you are MLB

Way out of my league

I don’t deserve to be looked upon with your flawless eyes

My hands don’t deserve your beautiful god-crafted fingers between mine.

And so.

True love slips through my knuckles.

I pray

Pray pray pray

That you may catch it.

-SH

Family

There are certain whispers that echo in certain rooms, that I hope will never beat on the drum of my ear again.

My house is home to everything I’ve ever heard, felt, done, or seen.

These things are more than just guests, they become family, however they’re the kind of family that you don’t invite to Thanksgiving dinner because of something they did to Uncle Joe.

He’s stilled pissed off about it and won’t ever let it go and so they are never allowed to leave the door of the house they entered through.

As you grow up with all of these things; living, sleeping and eating you while you eat breakfast, you learn to lock your bedroom door and then your bathroom door, and sooner or later you find a closet that fits them best, and shove them all inside, lock, and melt the key down and use it as your morning coffee mug.

Sooner or later you’re going to start to miss these things.

After all… they’re family.

They go from sleeping in the closet, to crawling into your bed.

They infect the words you say to the people you love.

They inhibit your love for those people from being true.

Sooner or later they will suffocate you… unless… you… unless I remember that these are my memories.

Unless I remember that my past only has as much power as I allow it.

Unless I suffocate them.

-SH

I’m Sorry

Nowadays the feeling of being lost comes naturally

I  scream, “God, why do I even feel anymore!?”

Although most of my nerves have gone numb,

I’m still able to feel the part of me that’s missing

the part of me you took

the part you still hold in your hands.

See, the key to borrowing is giving back

but what you gave back was a tidal wave of confusion

a tail spin into the destructive state that is true love

a mileage between two cities that brought distance between two hearts

137

never just a number

always a cause

the motivation for an example

a display case for a purpose

a measure of distance that brought us closer than ever

but yet further apart

rewind

restart

living day to day life

has never been so hard

I’ve been waiting too long for an apologetic postcard

Maybe I’m too for gone

and maybe you still have my heart

and all your word are like bombs

causing mine to blow apart

Ive tried picking up the pieces

that shattered like glass

How do I even start to heal

when your love is like an infection

first my heart

then my hands

first my memories then my dreams

The only thing that haunts me

is my failure of an apology that lingers on my lips

and I’ve started to dream of you in colors that don’t even exist!

I’m sorry

two words

that never seem to be able to carry their own weight.

They just fall off my lips

no rhythm no rhyme

simply weighed down by the fear of goodbye

and I’d be stupid to think that it’ll fade with time

that it’ll become a broken memory in a broken mind

Every word that you said

sunk straight through my chest

and slowly burn a hole in my heart the size of one week

one week was all the time it took

for you to spell goodbye

and this time

you meant it.

-SH