What a Difference a Day Makes

With terror and perfect peace waging war in his mind
He enters the chasm of despair
To the joy of those who put him there.

As the stone covers the entrance The last rays of light
Glimmer into the eyes of ravening death
And hope, precious hope, holds its breath.

Then absolute darkness is pierced by power that knows no bounds
And puzzled death is left to hunger
Empty, angry, powerless, in wonder

And when the stone is rolled away, and earth's light returns
Hope, substantial now, iron-strong
Is Faith, and lifts its mighty song

Oh King, live forever!

...wait...

We live in hidden Love.
It has been eclipsed,
And the world is dark,
Cold, grievous, stark
Full of the deafening echos
Of pain.

But when the shadow has passed
And Love is revealed,
It will blind our earth eyes
Burn through the doubt, the lies
And leave only the holy sound
Of His Name.

And we will see what was there, all along.
With the light of true love - Clear, Pure, Just, Strong!

Joie de Vivre

We
Sit here
Waiting for
The rising sun
And breathing in joy
With great lungsful
Of precious
Morning
Air

Rooftops and Shepherds

The clean, cloudless skies
Bless the shepherd boy's eyes
As he walks tall and strong,
Poor, humble, Invincible!

Oil that's falling
Down hair,
Over cheekbones
That glow with the fire
of the calling.

Then cries, and shouts
War, blood, fear
Guilt...and the world
Stops.

While the chosen one waits
With a dull, nauseous ache,
For redemption.

Painless

Can a life that feels no pain
Be taught to suffer?

Can a belly that has never ached
Learn to fill those who hunger?

I am surrounded by the richest of Love's treasures;
My man, my children, my family
How long have you given them?

Yet, I rest in the
All-consuming joy of my Savior.

And I wait here, and
Pray in my comfort-

Lord break my heart,
Before life comes to
Break it for me.

While the choice is mine,
I beg for a heart like Yours.

The Myth of Emptiness

When trade winds die, and breezes cease to blow
The sun's rays slice the vault, a brutal knife.
The vast, unending waves, so dark and low
Seem empty, deathly calm, devoid of life.

On cloudless nights, we gaze into the sky,
An infinitely dark and lonely place,
Where mankind has no home, can only try
To think and dream and fill the barren space.

A grieving heart that aches for what is past.
That loses faith, that cannot love, or dream.
Waits only for finality, a Last.
Longs hopelessly to join that Western stream.

Yet all these things, the heart, the sky, the sea.
Are full of beauty, waiting for release.

Wither Like the Grass

One thin man climbs the hill, slipping and sliding as he steps on boulders, grunting as his body hits the ground once again. With the last of his strength, he crawls to the top, and stands staring into the black depths of the water so far below him.

As he falls through the air, a sunbeam bounces off the sea below, and makes a halo around his smooth head, and his wrinkled face. He calls out, in one last fleeting, flying prayer, the soulless roar of a man who earned and fought, but never lived. The hollow cry of a creature who abstained from love.

Dictator's Legacy

A fervent man of pensive mien
Yet wanders through a world unseen
As truth and love both pass him by
And leave him lonely, dark, and lean.

For danger lurks in isolation
When a man, or more, a nation
Lives within itself and makes
A dogma from interpretation.

Beginning

The hot Durango dust
has settled, on the place where she lay.
The sky is still blue,
And the earth is still brown,
Like her eyes, and her hair and her skin.

But she is gone.
And while we search for answers,
And mourn for this ending

She soars.
Leaving the thin, transparent earth
That we call real
And finding Reality and Peace

While we wait, in the dust,
And water the future with our tears
And misunderstandings.


In memory of Daisy M. The niece of my very dear friend, who died while visiting her grandparents in Mexico.

Prairie Phoenix

A fierce dawn rises in the east,
Though the sun itself is setting.
Billowing clouds, black above
But brilliant beneath
Pour across the fields and lift
Into the limitless prairie sky.

The roaring sound of death, a furnace wind
Sweeps across the plain,
Leaving behind it nothing
But birth in the dark, scorched earth.
New life rising from the ashes,
Forced into existence by the flames.

A Long Night

With eyes tight shut
I turn on my memory.
Open the boxes
I'd closed in my mind.

Trace with my fingers
The lines of your face.
Search through reflections
And try hard to find

The feelings I had
When I first saw you standing.
Arms strong, in the meadow
With dirt at your feet.

But time lumbers on
Anasthetic, and heartless
Erasing your features
The bitter, the sweet

Are all gone, and I feel such a stifling peace
As I open my eyes and give up, find release.

Helpless Hero

If you were in danger,
I'd run to your side.
I'd hold you, and carry you,
Help you to hide.
I'd fight all your enemies;
Tell you to run.
I'd stand in your place;
Shelter you from the guns.

And Babe, if they hurt you
I'd take up your pain.
Bind all your wounds
Shelter you from the rain.
I'd give you fresh water
If you were in thirst.
I'd feed you and care for you.
Run to you first.

But what can I do, Love
When you're full of tears,
When all of your dangers
Are sadness and fears?
How can I rescue you?
What can I say?
How can a human
Take heart break away?

I'll hold you and whisper
My love, and I'll try
To give you the freedom
To hurt, and to cry.

Oubliette

Here I sit in my cozy hole.
The world above
The earth around
And around
And around
And beneath
And I sit with my thoughts
And the past.

If fear was a color, than
It would be red.
The walls of my hole are
Not red. They are blue.
And Blue is the color
Of freedom.


For I have a secret.
Here in this hole.
In the ground.
I have found
My own soul
And it has no walls
No bars, No dark.
It's cloud free
And I see
The glory of Heaven
And the one thing
That they cannot have.
They cannot have me.

The Pilgrimage: Part 2

If you haven't read Part One, and would like to see a picture of The Umbrella, follow the link before you continue.

The Umbrella floated along on a little lake current, and bobbed just far enough out into the water. It hadn't roamed so far that it wouldn't be able to get back to the edge, but it wasn't so close that just anyone could reach out and grab it. In short, it was in exactly the sort of place that would give an umbrella the most joy.

It floated for several hours in this way, but by the time the rain had stopped, it was gently nudging the reedy shoreline, where moss and sticks and a little boy's lost boot all swirled together looking brown and green and striped red. (Because little boys' boots are supposed to have red stripes, aren't they?)

Just as The Umbrella was beginning to get comfortable, and having quite a cozy chat with the red boot, another of those little winds came up. The Umbrella always felt quite undignified in the wind. In rain and sun and clouds he was proud and noble and strong, but in the wind, he couldn't make himself behave no matter how hard he tried.

This particular wind lifted him up just a bit, so that he floated with three big bumps right up into the grass around the lake, and tipped crazily up on his side, with his black handle sticking out like a big, pointing finger toward the other side of the lake.

What the Umbrella didn't know, but was soon to learn, as I will tell you if you will just be patient, was that hidden under his side was a very small ant den, and in the doorway of that ant den, was one very small ant.

The ant's name was Maximus. That is the sort of name that makes a little fellow either very bold, or very embarrassed, and today, Maximus was feeling embarrassed. He was feeling quite useless, which means that he didn't think he knew how to do anything important. He was not as strong as he might have been, and not as clever as perhaps he should have been, and not as friendly as he could have been, if he weren't so worried about being strong and clever.

When the other ants talked to Maximus, he felt like they were probably being nice to him because he was so little, and his name was Maximus. Or maybe they were really just making fun of him, because he was so little, and his name was Maximus.

In any case, Maximus was just settling into a good bit of "feeling sorry" when he saw, coming out of the sky, a big white...thing. A Thing! A White Thing! It covered up the clouds and blue and the trees and all the big, big people with their big, clumsy feet. It covered everything, in fact, and all the other ants down in the den didn't know anything at all about the White Thing!

Maximus was so excited, he didn't know whether to rush back down the hole and tell everyone, because that would be a very important thing to do, or to rush out into the grass and get a better look at the White Thing, because that would be a very brave thing to do.

In the end, he decided that, with a name like Maximus, brave was the only option. So he gathered all the courage in his six trembling, little legs, and he waved his antennae in an especially heroic manner, and he walked slowly out of the hole, into the grass and out from under The Umbrella.

The Price

Every home must have their cars,
And altars for their movie stars,
Side by side refrigerators...
All the things we might need later.

Rush and hurry, can't be late,
Seething if we have to wait.
Move the money; make it talk.
Wear the latest; walk the walk.

And in our efforts to progress,
We find that we have made a mess.

Taking Flight

We try so hard to bind the universe
To hold it in our hands, and squeeze it dry.
We have to be the one, the best, the first.
We need the world to know that we can fly.

To hunger after knowledge is a gift.
The search for truth is part of who we are.
But when we think we find a bit, we lift
Our foolish, human pride, too high, too far.

For all the vastness built in time and space
Must overwhelm these creatures here below,
Who fight and plan and theorize and place
Their own importance in the search to know.

And just like Icarus, we start to fall,
And find we are mere mortals, after all.

Survival

She looked out over the vastness of the prairie, and felt the future calling her, in tantalizing tones and whispers of promise. To leave the past behind and start again, to feel the mountain breezes on skin that belonged to no one but herself. Heaven!
And in her heart began the idea, the merest fragment of a vision, of running. Running toward the hills, away from the little white farm house, away from responsibility and expectation, that weighed her spirit down. Why shouldn't she fulfill her destiny? Why shouldn't she be able to fly?
In her mind she packed her bags, threw her cares away, and fled. She ran down the sidewalk with never a care in her mind, and she boarded a bus, a plane, a taxi...anything!
Don't they say, “To thine own self be true?” Don't they say that I should be self-fulfilled? Countless people had told her, in story and song, that she should make sure she loved herself first, then she would have love to give other people.
Mesmerized by the hills and the prairie, enchanted by the waving freedom of the flowers around her, she began to walk. Away. Just away. She chanted to herself, in a quiet, rhythmic monotone, “to thine own self be true...to thine own self be true..” until the mantra seemed so true that nothing else could possibly hold truth..or exist...
And as she walked away, with the winds of freedom blowing her dress into billows, tiny feet ran to catch her. A little boy, with stubby legs that caught in the grass, desperately held out a flower, and rubbed at the tears streaming down his cheeks.
He could see the hands pulling his mother away. Gnarled hands. Old hands. Almost as old as the world itself. With blackened claws and soothing, intoxicating, rancid whispers...leading her to the what the world calls freedom.
With the strength of a hero and with the arms of true love, that is true to itself last of all, he grabbed her ankles and held. The forces that pulled her were strong, but the strength in his tiny heart was stronger still, and he held her until she fell, and could look down at him with angry eyes, that gradually became aware of everything around her, and then filled with the same tears.
She held her little son in her arms, and murmured nothings to him, as truth, real truth, seeped from his heart into hers, banishing the evil that had drawn her away.


This is a Thursday Tale, and the picture is from Junest at Deviant Art.

You Are

God's hands, when you hold mine.
His fingers when you wipe away
The tears of our children.

God's feet, when you walk the road
Of a peacemaker, and when you stand
In the gap for the weak and the hurting.

God's voice, when you speak with patience
In the midst of a storm
Of frustration and fear.

God's heart, when you love me
And tell me again that you
Will never leave me while you have breath.

Through you, God reveals his love for me,
And for all those who know you.
I am blessed to be your wife,
And my prayer is to be half of what you are
Someday.

Terrestrial Trial

My mantra has no words.
It has no sound.
It rises from within me
As it rises from the ground.

I cannot help but cry,
With all the earth.
As with creation groaning
In the pangs of giving birth.

One day I'll have my words
Not just the burn.
For now I only cry to Him
And plead for His return.

Passing Through

In childhood the door was brown
And strong.
It saw many children run outside
And inside
And outside again without ever
Remembering
To close it.

And then I was older and watched
For a boy.
I waited and peered out the grate
Until finally
He came, in his beat-up truck
I opened the door
With a smile.

When all of the family were coming
From near and far
My Mother and I painted it blue.
Welcoming, new
To celebrate the day that I changed my name
The door wore a smile
And stood open.

Now I own the door, and it's still blue.
My children, My Love
All enter through it, and I watch for them.
It is strong
It celebrates with all of us, As it opens
The door is mine
And it rarely closes.

The Dragon that Lives Here

My dragon sits in unexpected places.
He waits for me
He watches
And he comes,
When he comes,
With a hundred different faces.

In the darkness of the night he breathes his flame
To scorch my mind,
Grab my thoughts
With his claw,
Beastly claw
Calling me by nature and by name.

In his twisted eye, one deadly bitter tear,
Distorts my love,
Pulls my heart,
Steals my joy,
Precious joy,
Turns my peace to dust. His name is Fear.

Hushed

The haze of heat rises from the baking fields.
It pushes and rushes up, up -
Lifting the clouds into towers.
A massive, white anvil fills the western sky,
And in the silent, portentous hush,
Before the Smith lowers his hammer,
A hawk hangs,
Perched between heat waves
And rushing storm,
Floating.

Dimensions

We dread the immortal unknown,
Because we cannot grasp its reality.
God does not seek to pacify us,
Or destroy who we are,
But to clarify, purify and intensify
All that we were meant to be.

Pro Patria

A scrap of dead pride
In patriotic colors
Trembles in the dust.

Rural Recipe

Out here in Oklahoma
We have learned to improvise.
The recipes of fancy chefs
We serve in slight disguise.

I've never seen tamari
In my local grocery store.
(And even if I found some,
I don't know what it is for.)

When they want capers, goat cheese
Watercress and coarse-ground wheat,
I just buy bacon, cheddar, flour
Lettuce...and I cheat.

I come up with a meal
That tastes...almost, but
Oh, not quite...
Just like the recipe I found
And thought I'd make tonight.

Love's Dominion

She is a princess
So he is her king. They reign
One o'er the other.



Sorry. I pulled one off the sappy rack.

The Pilgrimage: Part 1

Dr. Grimble walked down the lake path, grumbling and sniffling, and wishing he had remembered his handkerchief.
“Winter always makes me sniffle. Where is that handkerchief? I know I had it this morning.”
Dr. Grimble often spoke to himself just this way, because he was the only person who listened just the way he liked.
“And really,” he continued, in the same grumbly voice, “I wouldn't be sneezing and dripping at all if the clouds would go away.” He glared out at the lake, and saw some geese leading their young goslings out for snack time. “Oh, and if horrible, little children wouldn't keep coming to my office with their horrible colds and making me catch them.”
Which was quite unfair of Dr. Grimble, after all, because he was a doctor, and where else should little children go when they have horrible colds?
And then something amazing and important happened, only Dr. Grimble never knew it, because he never really paid attention. A breeze lifted off the field nearby, tumbled over and over through the trees until it was quite dizzy, and then pelted right on down the lake path, and into Dr. Grimble's big, white umbrella.
And since Dr. Grimble was being very naughty, and wiping his big doctor's nose on his overcoat sleeve (just like your mommy says you shouldn't, and she is right) he was not holding tightly to his umbrella, and the wind stole it right away from him, and tossed it out onto the lake.
Now, if Dr. Grimble had been a big ,strong fellow, like your daddy, he would have kicked off his shoes, and splashed out after it, because it hadn't gone very far, and the water was clear as glass, and the rocks were very smooth and round.
But Dr. Grimble was not a big, strong fellow, or at least he didn't think he was, which is the same thing. Do you know what he did? He grumbled again.
He said to himself, “Typical. Typical. It's just that kind of day. The whole universe has it in for me, that's what. I forgot my handkerchief, and now my umbrella is gone forever.”
And he left the umbrella, and walked on home. And that is all we need to know about him, because now is when the real story starts.

This is a story about ants.

This is obviously not the whole story. It just couldn't be, and that's all there is to it. I will finish it when given another appropriate picture. The picture here is by Nilgunkara and is our Thursday Tales prompt from Leo.

The Yoke

In this moment
The sun shines on my face.
I lose what I was:
Fear
Pain
Anger
Hate
Ignoring the crowds and the clamor,
I trade my burden for yours,
And I am weightless.

Courage

He stares at empty fields, and waits for rain.
The earth below him cracked, and iron strong.
The dry wind whistles, moans, a sound profane,
As desolation sings its mournful song.

A child that cowers hopes for peace, for rest.
She huddles, soul and body, bathed in tears.
The anger swirls around her, and the rest
Is hidden, just a future wrapped in fears.

And two hands, borne by desperation, rise.
Two souls lift their pain and sorrow higher.
One strong, one weak, but both shorn of disguise,
Are held, redeemed and strengthened in the fire.

For in this world we work, we cry, we strive
And sometimes courage only means...survive!

The Time Between Times

The thick, black bowl of heaven presses down,

To hold, preserve, suspend the earth below

The shuttered, secret faces; field and town

Hide mystery, expectancy and hope.

The arms of lovers, captured, intertwined,

The sundered, barren heart strains, aches to hear

The soul who sits and seeks to never find

Find, in the black, eternity draw near.

And unaware each soundless voice they raise

In answer to the enigmatic night,

In curses, desperate penitence or praise,

In consecrated fear of just and right.

Then all the world, dissatisfied, sin-shod,

Holds its breath, eyes wide, and waits for God.

Eventually

The more I grow, the more I realize that the biggest events in my life were only discernible after many years had passed.

The ceremonies, the official moments of recognition, required attendance...those are not what changed my life, or made me who I am today.

Some of my clearest moments, were uneventful...but binding, and lasting, and huge in my own tiny life.

Standing in front of my mother, as she sits in a big chair, and feeds my baby brother...she says, "Hold out your hands. That is your left hand, and that is your right. Always." And I got it! It stuck! And today in my mind I stand in front of that chair and hold out my dirty, sticky little six-year old fingers for a mental moment, and I remember.

My father hands me a hatchet, and puts my hand right at the curve of the handle, and swings my arm, stopping at just the right point. "That is where you release it. See? Do you feel it?" and I do. I try it myself, and the hatchet flies and flips through the air and hits the wooden stump on its stand. I can do it! The neighbors teach their children to play baseball, but my father teaches me to be strong, and to be accurate, and to be different...and I love it!

Riding a bicycle down a country road, young and silly and hopelessly in love, and waiting for a sign, just any little sign, that this time it is not my imagination. It is real. It is forever. Please, God! And he smiles as we stop to rest. He tells me about the birds I can hear, and shows me the wheat, and what it says about our weather, and he gives me the countryside as a gift...and then I know.

Two little hands grab mine. They are dirty, and they are precious, and they are trusting...so trusting! "Mommy, I picked you this flower. It's beautiful." Yes it is, the most beautiful Dandelion in all of creation. And I place this event on the shelf with all the others. And I cry.

Espiritu

This one soul, like all the others
Full of anger, atrophied but foul
Driven by animus, doubt, fear, hate
Wretched, rotten, roaring, raucous
Pain-filled howl.

Runs, stumbles, falls against the stone
No more- numbered, nameless, no one
A lightning flash, a flare, a lick of flame
That burns the whole, the soul- ignites!
It is done!

And now...to work, to wait, to win! But the heart
yearns for peace, rest...the end...to depart!

Dinner

Food bores me to tears.
That's how I know that I have
Never been hungry.

Part 2

This is a continuation of sorts of last week's 3WW post.

As he stared blankly at the wall of progress zipping by on the dirty freeway, a small metal box ambled into view. It rolled in front of his little hole, bumping against the broken speeder and stopping.

The box was black...and nothing else. There didn't appear to be a port, any method of movement even, although he knew it had thrusters on the bottom just as he knew what it was here for. In his haze and confusion, amidst the sound of the acid rain rolling off the shed, came sudden cognizance; no it was recognizance. He had seen this thing before. Without time for more thought, he ran.

Out into the burning rain, slipping in puddles of oil and filth, and dodging grounders on the freeway ahead. He dove into a hole on the other side, and pressed his body into a crevice of the building there.

Behind him, like a horrible, infernal rose, his shed exploded. White hot flame incinerating it where it stood, and sending warmth even to this side of the freeway. The grounders nearby were lifted into the air, and as they began to hit one another, the man ran again. The speeders above sailed on, not unaware, but unaffected.

"They've found me," he growled to himself. And he turned to the alley behind him and ran. No destination in mind, only anger, hate and fear.

My Mentor

My path is darkened.
You walk beside me and shine
A light on the road.

Good Friday

We are each the love of Someone's life.
Someone who is willing to sacrifice everything for us.
Someone who will walk through death for us.
Someone who will wait for us, follow us, call for us,
No matter how far we roam.

Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.
John 15:13

One Moment

He sat on the edge of a broken speeder, and watched the filthy rain falling down around him. It rolled off the roof of his metal shed, and dripped into the street, trailing a caustic film that revived and deformed the weeds in the cracks as the acid sank into the ground.
He hunched his shoulders under a dirty coat, and stared out at the expanse of the city. Speeders and Grounders raced by, each ignoring the other, and all ignoring him. A pitiful human sacrifice on the altar of progress.

Dawn

Screaming crowds call out his name
With shouts of joy and songs of praise
They honor and they marvel,
For they've waited all these years.

A quiet night of heavy dread
He kneels there, burdened, bows His head
They sit, they sleep, unknowing
As the angels wipe His tears.

Once again the crowds cry out
But now they jeer, they hate, they shout.
He bleeds, he prays, cries out, then dies.
Earth waits, dark, cold..and then it hears

One rumbling stone, one bright descending star
The cry of death, destroyed by Life,
Love's Avatar.

Divine Alchemy

One soul
Base, defiled
Poured into
The fires of Redemption

Pain, death, hate and fear
Filthy, useless ashes
Fall away, leaving
Gold

Nostalgia

A child sees brazen skies,
A cloud that nuzzles the sun,
On an August day.

I only feel heat,
And hunger for my lost youth
And innocent eyes.

A Joy to Sing?

Daven sat with his back to a large tree. Its base was thick and scarred, but its massive boughs, that began as if they could hold the world, ended abruptly with a flurry of thin, young branches growing in all different directions. He tried not to look at those branches. He needed no reminder. He looked instead to the land before him, and the new trees that held no evidence, no remembered shame.

The sun began to set, and it burned through the atmosphere, new and brilliant and freshly scrubbed of all the horror and filth that had filled it for so many years. The hills were lit up, and the flock of granos before him shone momentarily, like so many tiny points of woolly light: red and orange and yellow, then dark.

He lifted a thin, white flute to his mouth and began to play a melody that he pulled partly from his own memory, and partly from the collective memory of the fields that surrounded him. A melody that came straight from the Creator, but was filtered through man's finite capacity to see and hear the Truth. He lowered the flute, and continued with his voice, singing in a language that few people here had ever heard, a deep, sobbing warrior's song.

It spoke of terror, anger, sorrow and then suddenly, peace, and when Daven sang the last note, he felt as if every part of his body and mind cried out to the vast heavens above him. It was the shattered cry of mankind, which had almost killed itself. Torn itself to pieces until only tiny threads of life remained, until the only unifying thought left among the criminal and the innocent was, "Dear God, end it all, end us all!"

And then, suddenly, it had been over, and yet only beginning. Humanity had been allowed no suicide, no ending, only another chance. Survivors stumbled to their feet and found that life remained. Beauty, Love, Truth - though trampled and tortured until they were almost unrecognizable - remained.

For one moment, Daven felt that surely the very ground echoed his pain; the tree behind him reverberated with the anguish of the world and its inhabitants, but all was silent. A song is but a little thing, and when it ends...nothing. So it was as Daven finished, and the sun disappeared over the edge of the horizon. For a moment, there was no sound. No wind, no insect, not even the gentle grunts and lows of the granos. Only the brief emptiness that comes in the wake of beauty.

With the return of sound came the return of responsibility, and Daven stood to his feet, letting the chained flute fall back against his chest. He pulled a massive sword off the ground, and tested it carefully with his fingers. He stared at it, as if at a new, frightening thing. Without the light glinting down the blade, it seemed dark and useless.

He tried to summon the feelings of power and strength that he remembered from the day he earned this sword, but the glory of battle had faded away to a thin shade of the horror of war, and he felt the earth cry out again as he grabbed the pommel and swung the sword through the air. This was not yet a world where beauty could be the master. There was still so much left to do as humanity tried to atone for all that they had already done.

He turned to face the ridge as darkness fell; his senses heightened and his body ready to fight or hide or scream at whatever the night would hold.

Delving

Knock knock

Who's there?

Aura

Aura who?

Auran't you going to let me in? It's freezing out here!


That's right folks, no deep thinking tonight. Just a laugh. If I'm lucky.

Free Will

There is no demand
There is only what must be
Once you know the truth

God does not demand
Only shows me what is real
And I am impelled

Grasping

Beauty only murmurs in my mind, it doesn't shout.
I wait here for a clear, strong signal,
Flash of vision, Bar of brilliance,
But it whispers, and it mumbles,
And I can't quite make it out.

It breaks up, starts to crackle, then it fades.
A glimpse of green and fizzy gold it shines
And melts away, it drips away,
The melody is just one note,
One rest, one line of shades.

And here I sit, with dreams of what might be,
As my mind, that idle Judas, laughs at me.

Weary Fate

While the sounds of the city thrum and pulse through my head, I gather up the shards of my dignity, and stumble to another hole, another meal, another little bag of joyless bliss.

Raison d'etre

"No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the Continent, a part of the main; if a Clod be washed away by the Sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a Promontory were, as well as if a Manor of thy friends or of thine own were; any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in Mankind; And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; It tolls for thee."
- John Donne