Those Dark Deep Woods

 Some days I'm running through a forest fire longing for the cool waters of the peaceful creek. With the thundering of each foot I can feel the dirt's depression beneath my feet. The clean forest air battles against the smokes is thickness.  In my mind the daylight and the night war against each in the sky where the orange sun contends with the red moon for supremacy. Branches and twigs gouge for my eyes but momentum and resolve forces their joints to give way. I can hear the crackles and pops as the trees themselves cry out from the flames dancing across their skin, and I am longing for the serenity of the open meadow. 

Other days I'm lost in the darkness thick and black. Searching for a scent I'm howling into the abyss waiting for an echo. The scavenging of owls and other hawkish is all I hear, creatures feeding upon the blindness of the unsuspecting. Serpents spit their tongues, tasting the confusion and opportunism of the provided darkness . A warning growl rumbles past my snarling lips because I know it is in the nature of the snake to be a snake. The night is heavy, pushing my senses to compensate for the lacking sight. I can feel the enemy. I can smell his intentions. I can hear the shifting of each body scale as he raises his copper head from the ground.  I howl a warning loudly out into the deep woods, but the only enemy they can hear is me. 

Yet still other days I've got an ax to grind as I scrape its head against the rock. I'm shouldering through the thicket leaving a slashed set of logs behind me. On those days i've got no time for the wind. On those days i'm a man screaming at the top of my lungs.  Roaring like a bear long awake past his season, Charging through the forest. 

However among many times in my mind I find myself also as a tree . In seasons of growth, and death, Life and shadows and the internalized stillness in the presence of the wind. The rain nurturing my soul. Basking in the light, oblivious to tired cliches or absurd personifications, My sunken roots a little deeper dig into life. And with each year adding another ring of depth and strength I watch with curious pause at the frantic pace of the world around me. 

 

It's not you, it's me.

Charles Bokowski once famously wrote that "the days run away like wild horses over the hills."
I watch my own reflection change as my hair starts to grey in the corners and my stories get longer. 

About ten years ago I met an old woman who occupied the seat next to me in a diner.  She had thick coke bottle glasses, shoulder length grey hair and weathered skin. She sat up straight as she sipped her coffee and began telling stories to a stranger about life, and death and her mother and friends. She spoke of harsh winters and the pain of losing loved ones to the cold. I drank my lemonade and chewed my sandwich as I feasted on her words. 

She had held many friends, loved many folks, laughed many laughs, and shed a great many tears. Time had been no kinder or harsher to her than it would be to anyone of the rest of us, this much I knew. Something in my mind called back to the love that woman conveyed in her stories recently.  I was recently listening to a story being told by a group that were casually unaware that they were telling it.  One was speaking of the promise of new love and the future full of promise and brightness. Another was speaking of the death of a season, when circumstances and the winds of change scatter the leaves from the branch.   I watched with curious eyes and admittedly lingering stares as these people both spoke of a moment in different terms. My heart rendered a little at the sight of the shifting dynamics of love in the lives of these 3 people.  

The life that you know will change, and what it becomes is not always what the rest of those around you have agreed to. 

I'm about to pull up stakes again. I've made up my mind and sure, there are a dozen days and plenty of ways that could keep it from being dead set... 

But I'm going. 

I think I've charged headlong into uncertain waters looking for something each time.  Maybe its love, Maybe its peace. Maybe its a sense of understanding or a sense of belonging... Maybe its all things that I already have, and maybe its all things that I sometimes tell myself that I can do without. 

I'm pulling up stakes again and headed for quieter country. Perhaps to a land where folks are a bit less cynical. Not to say that all the good folks here are a problem. It's not you, its me. There isn't anyone responsible for my happiness but me, and I know that if a man can't be at peace with himself it doesn't matter where he is. 

I know there are memories here that should be buried and left in the desert. The only thing that can cure somethings are time and distance.  I've got some inspiration, and a small sense of direction. That may not seem like a lot to most, but for a drifter with an apocalyptic minimalist view on happiness... That feels like a hell of a lot. Days keep running, time keeps flowing, and if there is by chance some happiness out there for a man like me... it could be worth it to grab a handful of it for a while. 

As Giant Fall

Its hard to stay sane when it seems that everywhere you turn there is some deep darkness and societal malfunction. The children are being stolen and eaten and raped, the celebrities all know, the people know, the justice system has failed and is a mockery. Politicians use people. They want their attention and their vote so that they can acquire enough rich living and decadence before the system seizes. The whole world is being fueled by hate. Racists tell the racial to hate others over race, and foolish people follow it. They're zealous to inflict pain and suffering on those that never harmed them. The price of living rises, the price of food rises, viruses spread and there is a constant stream of those that demand our subservience.  our culture is spitting on value and truth, telling us that everything that is real is a lie and all that is false is the new normal. Than men can be women and children can be lovers.  We go about our days under this onslaught of oppression because we lie to ourselves and say that the weekends are free.

 We’re not free to garden in our front yards, or not wear masks, or to be left alone. We’re not free to retain our God given rights, to attend in person services without the courts and the governments saying that they’ll exact their pound of flesh.  The music is poisoned. The shows are poisoned. Art has been diluted to ensure it doesn’t inspire or provoke an emotion that would stir life in the heart of the subjugated.   

 We’re stolen from.  We’re prostituted into systems that generate wealth for others that run off of dreams of freedom, we’re shackled to debt, we’re allowed to pretend we are free as we choose what chains will bind us.  History gets erased and the dawn of a new day that is the same as the darkest ones past rises before us. 

 They tell you that the earth is dying and the seas are boiling and that the temperatures are rising. They tell you that the we have to listen to the doctors and the scientists and not question the narrative as  they’re shouting over and blotting out the doctors and the scientists that show the truth of the lies we’re being force fed. 

 We laugh in low light because if we look right into the darkness it blinds us.  The trade wars and the deficits and debts push us further into destruction.  Each day I watch society become less and less human.  Our shock sparks outrage that is lost in the 24 hour news cycle. Or worse yet, we see the sickness and the plague of immoral cancer and we imagine it away. 

 Cowardice goes along to get along and extends its hand in friendship to that which seeks to destroy. 

 The church is eating itself. It consumes its own time and energy rehashing the same arguments that its had for thousands of years. It waters down the word of God to the point that its indistinguishable from secular advise. We stand around bickering the nuances of word meanings and vowel points, and why God is not who God says He is and how God is who He says He is.  We drink down pitchers of self righteousness and smugness as we talk about how set apart we are and how holy we’ve become over the world full of people that the Messiah came to save. We’ll strut and peacock and parade our doctrinal knowledge around but at the first sign of someone disagreeing with us, we’ll bristle and name call, and decimate them. 

 Men are seldom fathers. Women are often trying to be father and mother. The kids are broken and everyone knows it.  Femininity and the grace can cure much. Beauty that is true beauty wields power of inspiration. Not the rampant hollow distortion of beauty.  

 Its hard to stay sane in this world. They say that war is hell... well, then what is this. 

A Letter to my Father

 Dear Father,

Its been a few years since I have written you, on  account of you being dead, and I busy staying alive and all. However,  writing you a letter felt to me like something that I wanted to do. As  luck would have it, in the midst of a deep conversation with my  girlfriend about everything, she asked me if I ever wrote to you. That  seems like a good enough confirmation for me to sit down and say hello. 

You're dead. You've been dead for 20 years this month. Next  sunday to be exact. The other day I stopped by to see you. I was pissed  off that I couldn't find you in the dark. I kept thinking about how  ironic it was that I couldn't find you, considering the fact that you  haven't moved. After that I started thinking about the symbolism of my  actions. A man holding a light stumbling in the darkness amongst the  vast numbers of the dead, looking to find his father.  When I finally  found the plaque with your name on it marking the spot where you bones  were,  I felt nothing. I felt nothing as I wiped away the dirt and  pebbles that get kicked up by the caretaker who drives by with the drag  to make the neat rows in the gravel. I didn't feel much anything as I  poured the water out and tried scrub some of the dirt from the letters,  for those who may come to see you in the next few weeks. I stood there  at your grave with nothing to say. My heart felt nothing and the  nothing  was what I found so peculiar.  I remember how not even two full  years ago I made little mud craters with every tear that fell to the  dirt you call home. The hurt on that day was more than I could hold in,  and I wondered why this one was different.

We packed back into  the truck, my girlfriend still holding my hand and I thought for a  second that maybe, just maybe, I was over it. The second that our tires  tread upon the asphalt of the exit, so did the emotion leave whatever  hidden place it was burrowed. I felt it all again. I began to recall all  the things that I loved and cherished about you. Stupid things that I  missed came pouring out of my mouth the way water trickles through a  cracked container. I was telling my girlfriend about how bad your feet  smelled and how you would ask us to take your socks off. I recalled how  we would sit and watch football and I have no idea as to why you liked  the redskins. The bears beat the redskin today by the way, but I think  we both know that it doesn't matter for either team.  I told her about  that Malachite marble you gave me, and how I haven't a clue where it is  now. I had to pull over because I was crying so hard I couldn't see. To  this day I wonder why it is, that twenty years later, it can still hurt  that hard.

I know it has that effect for Mom, Barbra, and Lory. I wonder what that says about the man you were.

What it says about  the love you gave, the values that you instilled in people. I  don't write you for answers, because, you're dead. I'm writing you because I don't know why that hurt still stings that way after so long.

I'm a survivor.

I  was angry for a long time, because that is what you made me into. Not a  boy who lived and grew. Who played and loved life. Not that. I was a  kid that saw to much and dealt with more than I needed or wanted. I had  to endure. I had to over come. Because you died I lost a lot. I was  angry. When your heart stopped, my family broke. It took me a long time  to discover that I was mad. After all, how do you blame a man for dying?  My head sees reason that my heart takes as offense. I realize that God  took you in an act of grace, that he brought you to him before you could  stray too far away.  I have come to the realization that if I needed to  be mad at anyone, It would have to be God. But, how does one be mad at  God, when God is the one that has been there since you weren't . How can  I be mad at God, when I see His act as a kindness. ITs easy to be mad  at you for screwing up my plans for a normal looking life, but it isn't  easy for me to get upset when put things into the perspective of this  being part of God molding me for his purpose.

I get how  narcissistic this all may sound. I understand that. Yet, this stuff  needs to be dealt with. Cards on the table, father and son type chat.  But you're dead. You're dead and I am over being angry about it.  I'm  over being angry about it, and I am trying to stop being hurt by it.  

I think freedom is important to everyman.

That  is something that was emphasized when we marched in the MLK day parade.  You remember that dad? No, you don't. Because you died. You are gone.   Freedom is important to everyman.  So, how do I get free from that pain  that seems to be coded into my heart?  I've prayed about it. I keep  praying about it.  I live in my head sometimes. My woman tells me that I  carry things that aren't mine to carry, or that I don't need to carry.  These things keep me from being free.  I think about that.

How do I  become free from you without being free of you? How, is a question I  ask, knowing that the answer isn't going to come to me with the liberal  application of thought.

I do not want to forget you dad. I just  don't want to hurt over you not being there.  I don't want to hurt over  the fact that you have died. That you are dead. It happens.

Death happens to everyone.

Life usually preceded it though. And that my dear dead dad, is where I am. I'm trying to figure out my life. Living. Living life instead of  surviving, loathing of death. In the past few months, if I  had a dollar for every time someone told me that I have so much  potential, I'd have at least 26 bucks.  At 28 I am now trying to develop  a dream. Dreams are something normal people have, and then they work at  following them. Survivors do not have dreams, dad. Survivors "dreams"  are to basically stay alive until you die.  What kind of crap is  that? I know I want to die on my feet...  doing something  interesting. I want to do something I am passionate about. I want to be  passionate about something.

I joke a lot about punching a bear in  the face as an ambition for my life. The joke is that win or lose, that is the toughest thing to come away from. Its a bright way to go out, or  its a hell of a story to tell if you live.   I realize that it isn't a joke at all really. It is a metaphor for what I want most out of life.

I  want to conquer something worthy. Should it kill me, I die doing something worthy. Should I live, I will tell of what I have overcome. I just don't yet, know what my bear really is.

You're dead dad. I'm not yet. God has got to help me stop hurting about that.

Maybe  that is the message. Some secret message that God is telling me in the  deepest most mysterious way. That things that I remember; that cause me  to hurt at the loss of, are the things that matter most in life, here  and now amongst the living. That I should know that peoples rancid feet  may be the thing that I miss about them when they are hit by a truck or  drown or whatever. Yet still, in the beauty of that sentiment, death  cast a shadow within the light.

I think for a while, if I can...   I'll just take the light

Lament

 Sometimes I don’t feel accepted. A lot of the times I'll walk into a church and I see people buzzing around in their friend groups but I don't fit. I tried to make way with someone that I thought had common ground, to get to know them and their friends, but I think every time I reach out in a sense to bond with someone, it was treated as this alien thing. I often feel like I'm too studied for Christian churches when we're walking through Romans which mentions God's Law and I speak on it in proper context and am asked to leave. I'm ironically at Christian churches because I need the grace, love and fellowship that I find lacking in Messianic places. When I say that I sometimes don't feel accepted, what I actually mean to say is that most of the time I don't feel accepted. In my mind I understand that by challenging certain Doctrines from the scriptures themselves, it is a threat to people’s way of life in the platform of something sacred. It is not my intention to break that which is Holy. It is my intention to reconcile that which is True by the Word, with the rest of the Word as, If I have found something totally in error, I need to understand how. As I've walked in this way, which seems like a sect, a branch, a denomination of which many do not wish to claim, I have watched loved ones of like mind drift out into the disbelief. I wonder at times if I am living by faith, or surviving it. I read of Jeremiah's lamenting at the "church" mocking him and putting him in stocks as God grieves those who rejected His ways, and I feel lonely because I see as Jeremiah does but I am not as righteous. I grieve as Elijah does on the mountain top as a man who stood in front of priests and men and begged them to understand that God's ways are truth, but I am not holy as Elijah. I haven't the ambition or the drive to become some leader and preacher or teacher as some have spoken, I've rejected that pretty much every place it's spoken. I wonder if there is a church I can belong though.  A place where we can read and study the word and grow together and be friends, or a family. A place where I am not looked at as an outcast for genuinely pointing out that the scriptures do not contradict, and cannot in the context, and should they then it is the Doctrines of men that should be adjusted. I'd like to be able to enter church and not measured by my shortcomings and condemned for having flaws not yet fully crucified. I'd like to be in a church that I do not hear unbiblical sermons advocating certain sins that they believe God has made a way for them to enjoy. I'd like to be in a church that doesn't perpetually spend hours poring over numerals and pictorial Hebrew letters, and spends three hours discussing Greek words that never touch the state of the Heart or the power of the renewal of Christ in the Holy Spirit of God. I'd like to not be treated like a wolf looking to devour sheep for asking Biblical questions in a search for right understanding. I'd like to be a part of a body that doesn't have Alex Jonesian theologies in adding to the Word of God with widely disputed texts that have been verified as debunked, in order to add "special knowledge" about Nephilim, some secret plot to hide the shape of the earth, or the need to "Enhance scriptural understanding" via something that is not Scripture itself. More and more I see people spin out into deception, and heresy, apostasy and contempt. I'm left feeling like a man with no country. To not fellowship with anyone is tactically vulnerable from a Spiritual standpoint. I am weak as one, alone. I am susceptible alone for prolonged extent.  I wonder how long until my own love grows cold. I wonder how to properly love a body that holds me in contempt.

Sobriety

 My soul is a well that draws deep from the waters of time. My body is a circle of stones housing it from wondering passerby's. My essence is simplicity and inconvenience in a land of singular valves and pipes.  I am an antiquated relic I think. 

  Water is cool, and smooth. I like to press my fingers against it to feel the slightest changing in degrees of tension. I'll immerse my face within the chilled sensation, holding my breath and counting seconds as they pass. In that moment, I am in the moment. I am connected with the loud world, in a quiet moment. With my face in the waters, I can feel the breath caged within me start to panic in a way of peace. I am a vessel, spilling time around me. It swishes and swashes, swirling about. My memory is a canteen, pouring out distilled thoughts.  Drops of anguish, and drips of solitude linger like condensation.  Still-frames are frozen in my recollections. 

August 26 was the day my father stopped drinking. August 26th is the day he died. August 27th the river rose and flooded me with scars. I think of God in the two loves that left in August. I used to miss them so terribly from a time that I was drunk on their affection.  I would drink in the minutes spent together, and I’d watch time disappear. 

  But I’m sober now.

  I’m not drunk of affection, or whiskey colored eyes, or the pain of a broken promise of a future spent together. I’m not sipping on “what could have beens” because I’ve come to new understanding. We weren’t in love, we were just in fun together.  Truth is a Monday morning wake up call, and I know we were wrong for each other. 

 

 I’m sober now. 

If Love Were Words...

When he woke up that day he knew, August was going to take another one. He knew that they were having their first fight and they'd probably not recover. He knew it as he zipped up his uniform and tied his shoes. There wasn't much sense in dwelling on it. When the storm comes, he'll meet it in the eye. At lunch he sat pushing his food around  the Styrofoam to-go container with his plastic fork. He hadn't intended to dwell on it but he knew it was coming, and if her mind was made, he wasn't going to unmake it. "How's work?" the message read on his phone. "It's alright. I'm sorry that things have been tense the past day or so" He replied. "We should talk"  she said. And there it was, holding on the horizon like a thousand mounted riders waiting for the command to charge. "I'll be outside in the upper parking deck in 20 minutes" he sent. "If the armies against hope should ride for the destruction of a chance, let them come soon and I will meet them in the open field." He thought to himself. It's bad enough that this is happening... but now its about to happen at work. She parked her truck in the upper deck and climbed out. He regretted what was about to take place and he lamented that he'd ever let himself be so vulnerable. "Alright," He said narrowing his eyes in the sun "Let's do this". When her mouth opened up excuses poured out, masquerading as legitimate truths. "God said..." he heard her say. He didn't so much think that God had really said what she was about to speak, but rather she was scared and she knew that Divine edict was too holy a truth to dispute. "... that what you believe isn't for me. That isn't to say that it's wrong because you can and have shown me in the scriptures where it's true... but if I were to accept that, then there are things in my life and how they relate to my family that I might have to change and I don't think God would have me do that" A wash of scriptures flooded his thoughts about truth, and the cost of Christ, about peace and swords, but he held his tongue. "I was praying and the spirt told me that we should break up" His mind spun through the text that talk about testing the spirits to see if they're of God, and using the scriptures. He thinks about pointing out her contradictions but it would just be a bigger fight and it wouldn't change the end result. "Say something" she begged. What could he say? Calling her a coward that runs from a real relationship may have felt better for a moment but it wasn't conducive to the character he strives for.  He could throw out something clever like , If love were words you'd be mute and I'd be deaf, but again that wouldn't do anything but agitate the situation. "Well," he started "If God told just you this, what can I say" He wished to hell he'd never taken her to the cemetery where the bones of his father lay, and he'd given just about anything to take back all the tears that he let go in front of her. Maybe it was God who had ended the relationship, but he knew it wasn't for the reasons spelled out. After all, it wasn't the first time a girl had told him that God said that they shouldn't see each other anymore. The last one had been that very month, eight years prior, nearly to the day.