Poetry Sunday ~ Autumn's Gate

Matt. 6:22 "The light of the body is the eye: if therefore thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light."

Autumn's Gate

The pumpkins sit

nestled in the cold

surrounded by dry

leaves gone old.

The empty feeder

lonely and bare

swings to and fro

in autumns air.

The wind lifts death

skyward bound

places it gently on 

the frost-kissed ground.

The season seen

as ill-spent time

the leaf now burrowed

in mud and grime.

The secret's hidden

in the sleeping season

with eyes on the sparrow

gives Spirit new reason.

Matt. 25-26 "Therefore I say unto you, Take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink; nor yet for your body, what ye shall put on. Is not the life more than meat, and the body than raiment?

Behold the fowls of the air: for they sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feedeth them. Are ye not much better than they?

They'll Never Know

Gen. 18:21 “I will go down now, and see whether they have done altogether according to the cry of it, which is come unto me; and if not, I will know.”

They’ll Never Know

They’ll never know the loneliness I felt, the emptiness that resided in me. They did nothing and could have done everything. They left me, isolated and alone, out in the pastures of life.

They’ll never know the hours I spent staring out the window, chasing birds with my mind wanting to fly away from the very sedentary life I live. I wanted to live but no one, nothing gave me options, they left me alone.

I am the plague that they fear catching. The disease that they’d rather keep away from their life; the very fear that festers inside of them that they’ll one day have to face alone. It’s no fun this solitude that haunts my mind. It saddens me to think I will die and they’ll never know of my life, my real life.

They’ll see the pictures I painted for them, the fragments as breadcrumbs dropped on the ground for them to follow. They’ll never find the real source of my pain because it is dwelling in them, they’ll never know. They’ll never know that the picture is false; the painter is never the painting it is just an expression of what they see. I am the artist creating an illusion of a world you’ll believe. I am the game endlessly played never to be won. I am your addiction, the one thing you need to be real.

Deep down I am the smear, the painting went wrong, the mistakes you’ll never see. I am the routine never to be broken. I am the vase sitting on the shelf with no flowers. I am the desert, dry and never to be rained upon. The hour never to be changed, the life day in and day out staring into a windowed world sharing a love for people I’ll never meet, a spiritual family that deeply cared from afar.

They’ll never know the turmoil I faced. They’ll think I was strong because I never allowed the shards of glass to cut them open. I only allowed the brokenness to shut me down to leave me vulnerable to what it is that surrounds me in my physical world. Alone, I am alone and pained by my surroundings. 

They’ll live thinking they did everything and knowing they did absolutely nothing. They’ll never know I was used, abused and diffused; a live wire with no connection to sustain the energy that thrives within me. I loved too hard, I shined too bright, and I was everything they were not nor ever could be.

There can be no healing as long as I’m demeaned, pushed down into the box and smothered. I spring forward like a jack-in-the-box daily with my polka-dot suit and painted smile I show everyone what they want to see. I make them smile waxing nostalgic over the times of their youth when they cranked the music and watched as the toy came bouncing into life. They never saw the real me, they’ll never know.

The blood, they claimed to love but they’ll never know that it was only I who loved and they shed me like dry skin to be swept away from the scene. I became the disease that they dreaded to see; they dared not look at. They went on in their fantasy playing charades and showing the world their imagined perfect life. They lived while I died, but they’ll never know.

To sum it all up, I was flourishing in the warmth of the sun, growing and turning towards the sunlight as the orb drifted overhead and I carried the rays like a candle into the night to show me the way. Then one day in all my splendor I was mowed over, severed and left in mere rubble, kicked about and wiped off the bottom of the shoe, I was done. To them I am nothing, to me I am all, to Him I am worthy. I am everything. In their obscured selfish bliss, they’ll never know.

Who are they? They are the ones who sat in their passive state and said they cared. They are the ones who did nothing as my body slowly withered and decayed. They are the ones who afterward wondered what they didn’t do carrying guilt like a different handbag of the week. They are the ones who went on, to live, to breathe. They know who they are but then again, they’ll never really know.

Ezek. 39:8 “Behold, it is come, and it is done, saith the Lord GOD; this is the day whereof I have spoken.”

I Think Too Much

Matt. 26:53  "Thinkest thou that I cannot now pray to my Father, and he shall presently give me more than twelve legions of angels?"

Wow, Joni thinks too much, who’d a thought that? Well, my dear, sweet friends that’s who! Boy, when you’re feeling discouraged or depressed they make sure that frown is turned upside down! Apparently, I think too much and should just write about it so here goes. 

I could allow memes to speak for me but where is the originality in that? I could also allow a copy/paste guilt trip to speak for me but where is the sincerity in that? I mean a meme here and there but a constant stream of memes becomes tedious in just the action it takes when my fingers could be used typing a blog post or writing a novel.

I’m not judging the people that do the meme stream, sometimes people have nothing to really say and it can become easy to allow someone else to do the thinking for you via the meme-stream. I was once that person until I was God-slapped into waking up. I usually try to allow bible verses or quotations to express the way I’m feeling or sometimes I open my mouth and my fingers let out what is considered truth-nobody-wants-to hear. Is that a bad trait? Nah, its justice to my soul is what it is!

The meme-stream opened my eyes when ‘your memories on facebook’ popped up every day. I’ve tried to close it down but it keeps popping up but you know what, they’re not my memories. They’re just some beautiful meme I shared years ago and I realized I allowed someone else to speak for me and that isn’t a memory because I can’t for the life of me know what I was thinking or doing when I shared the image. 

We’re living in a world where we’ve grown accustomed to others speaking for us because basically, that is all that social media is, a stream of thoughts, even if they’re the thoughts of people you’ve never met, the meme stream is the ‘in’ thing. Now, what could be wrong with a society that is full of people not thinking for themselves? Well, we’ll see when November rolls around, won’t we?

We’re all so pre-occupied with the meme-streaming that something is happening out in the REAL world that has gained control and nobody has the time to take action because the reins of the meme-stream are ruling over them. The reason people believe the lies are because they are fed the lies in ticker-tape fashion through memes disguised as truth. Society disappoints me more and more on a daily basis than it does in giving me hope for the future. 

I love the pictures that people take of their family (pets are family), their gardens, their weekly excursions with camera in hand. That gives me hope as I visually see the beauty being flooded in from their lives into my little neck of the world. A meme doesn’t give me the same hope in the world since more times than not they’re just used to click-bait the naïve so some megalomaniac can make money off of ad revenue. A vicious cycle if I do say so myself. And the language, goodness gracious me oh my, people post anything! The F-bomb, S-bomb, A-bomb; I realize so-called Christians could care less what they share with the world and allow people to see who they REALLY are. Yes people, Christians curse like sailors and drink like them too. 

Now back to my thinking too much. This is clearly the truth. Why should I care if people live and love the meme-stream? Why should I care what the so-called Christians are doing? I only care because I see a diminished society being ruled not by their world around them but by social media. I love my friends and care a little about facebook since all of my friends reside there. I love communicating via the written word (my blog) but I am totally done with ‘this day in history’ because guess what, nothing happened five years ago that I can share, that are my own thoughts.

I have one or two, five friends tops that convey their day via WORDS, the other eighty some friends meme-stream and I have to wonder, do they even know I exist? They probably do but more than likely block me so they don’t hear my tales of this God and Son that I’m addicted to. I’m okay with that. I’m okay with screaming into the emptiness of space and time and no one noticing. 

I try to lift the spirits of other people but sometimes I get bogged down and distracted by the meme-stream so I have to withdraw for a bit so I can rebuild my strength. I live to write and share my words, uplift not bring people down. I live to live and embrace whatever God throws at me on any given day and no friends, my days are not spent on facebook, twitter or any other meme-stream forum.

The season of slumber will find me reflecting on the previous months in the year, the truths that I’ve shared, and what’s going on in today’s world means to me. When you look at me and read my words, don’t see a hypocrite, don’t see a so-called Christian, see God in me and that’s it!

God bless!

Competitive By Nature

2 Corinthians 4:8-9 (NIV) “We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed.” 

I called my mother the other evening, like I always do every night and twice on Saturday and Sunday, but this time it went to the answering machine as she waited to hear my voice and then pick it up. 

I asked, “Why the machine. You have caller ID?”
She retorted, “Why all the questions, you writing a book?”
I sarcastically replied, “Well yes, yes I am.”

I could tell right away she was in ‘a mood’ the kind I tolerate since my dad has passed and she clings to so much bitterness, for his death and for her being left alive, alone. I just try and be the relief pitcher and comfort her in any way I can. Since I’m the only child of six who talks to her on a daily basis, I take the brunt of her moods from a distance. 

To be honest, I cherish these phone calls to my mother because I know there will come a day when I don’t hear her voice on the other end and I’ll be alone without any communication from the family I once had. I don’t miss my family like I do my mother because we were never really a family in any sense of the word; we were competitors in the field.

You see, when I was born, I was the sixth child of a family all vying for a prize, the prize being the attention of my mother and father. My sister had held the baby position for three years and here I come into the fray as the fresh living competitor baby, the new attention getter, the new baby with a nickname, the baby that would, in her mind, replace the love my parents gave to her, and so she set out my demise from the day I was born. 

I can tell it was a bitter competition to her from the stories she’s told all of her life, I guess in a way to make me feel guilty for being alive? A way for maybe getting me to go far away from the family so she could take her position as the center of attention? I don’t know, I just surmise an intuitive guess. And yes, my writing will hold the story whether they ever see it or not, this is MY story, not theirs; my truth, not their jumbled mess of perception.

Granted I was a tattle-tale brat but I did not deserve, at three-years-old to be pushed on a swing so high that I’d fear for my life and jump off the swing to be caught by a chain link fence, the kind with the barbed-wire looking top? Yes, I have the ugly memory and nasty scar to prove it and over the years my sister vehemently denied it was her doing the pushing but my brother. Gee, that didn’t make me feel any better.

She gave me my first cigarette at eight, my first joint of marijuana at I don’t know what age, the damage is real though, it was young. My first beer, my first jump in a raging river, my first kiss from some boy she set me up with. Also the first voice I overheard whispering when I was sixteen, “She should’ve just had an abortion.”

This was a real competition, not some contrived imagination of my overly drugged mind that went right into my twenties when at the time I was closer to my brother and she wanted that position but he didn’t want a relationship with her. My entire family fought with the battle of Dad loved me more, mother liked you best, neither of them liked me and there I was the baby, the relief pitcher who would try to bring a broken vase to the table and try to glue the pieces back together. And it bled into my late thirties when I finally left home and left all the bad memories behind and never looked back.

While the world is busy bustling with sharing all the beautiful moments of their family, pictures abounding of happy times, I often wonder when people say that they too had a hard life or trying times where are THOSE images? Mine are either in a box somewhere or lost in the portals of time. I understand it though when people aren’t as ready and willing to share their trying times as I am. It’s okay, we all have our own way of healing or hiding behind masks.

People are not willing to share the ugly times, that’s ‘their little secret’ that they’ll carry with them to the grave. Sometimes they’d rather people only see the good and happy posts spread out on Instagram and Facebook so that people visually see the good life they had or have when deep down the pain and hurt comes out in snide remarks.

I myself sometimes use humor to hide my pain but really it doesn’t hide it too well, I think humor, to ME, is just a form of medicine I use to help with my healing. I love to laugh, I love to see people laugh, I love to share my pain and most of all my GROWTH, through smiles and laughter. Some may see it as me letting too many skeletons dance freely out of the closet but hey, we all need to let them free some time or another, I’d rather do it sooner rather than later when they decide to jump out of the closet as regrets. 

It all boiled to a steep head last year in October when my father passed away. I no longer wanted to be the relief pitcher. The last straw was the poem that I wrote for my father to hear on his deathbed since I couldn’t be there for one of the hardest days in my life. My sister held the poem in her hand and withheld reading it, a scar that singes burning hot to this day at just the thought. 

Don’t say I’m mean and unforgiving for not sharing any love for a lost family. Respect me for the forgiveness I HAVE shown and chose to move on from it all, in a healing place for ME! The best thing I carry with me from my past is my son! And I will continue to give him the best part of me and we’ll have our very own memories, good ones that outweigh the bad ones. He said to me this morning, "You're not a phony like everybody else, you lay things out in the open."

Wow! Thank you, son. Not only does he see the real me, YOU see the real me too! Nothing phony or fake here, people!  

The Angels Called

Ex. 23:20 Behold, I send an Angel before thee, to keep thee in the way, and to bring thee into the place which I have prepared.
***
~~The Angel’s Called ~~

The angels came from mounted high,
cradled his soul I don't know why.
Wrapped in fleece-like softened wings;
silenced now he no longer sings.

Nestled within a tidal womb
fertile bed becomes a tomb
Shrouded in the serene abode
a vacant place his body stowed.

Earthbound duty not his call,
a rain of stars on him did fall.
Whisked away before I could hold;
a lifeless body lay there cold.

Summoned to be an angel himself.
Journey of breath put on a shelf.
Though I miss his earthly duty;
I savor now his angelic beauty.

Today is the BIRTHday of my son, whose eyes I never saw, whose heart that didn’t beat, whose arms were never touched, for we never did meet.

Happy Birthday to Christopher Alexander
born -- 12-2-82  moved on 12-2-82

Isolation

Psalms 34:17  The righteous cry, and the Lord heareth, and delivereth them out of all their troubles.
***

As a writer, I enjoy the quiet still mornings where the only sounds I hear is the refrigerator kicking on and off, the creaks of the bed where slumberers are still resting and the wind gently tapping on the window, stirring my muse.

When I was kid, I would go to the park and that is where I would never be found on a seesaw, or a maypole, or sliding board, I could be seen swinging high into the clouds. I’d go so high, I often imagined that I could fly and sometimes, with my eyes closed, I did. In the air of the swings forward motion, I flew off of the swing and soared above the park and saw all the people below laughing, giggling, inane behavior,  while the grass swayed, the clouds spun and I was free, finally free, until I realized, I was just sitting on a swing.

Even as a child I liked isolating myself from people. Maybe that is why I chose to write at such a young age, because no one really liked me, I had few friends, and life was isolation for me, reading and writing.

I don’t isolate intentionally. One day I’m happy go lucky, then I turn around and I’m alone in my thoughts with words bouncing like ping pong balls off the page. Words in a sea of foam, go crashing front and center and elude me but I catch them and toss them onto paper and then, it happens, I’ve written a thousand words that I didn’t even know were lurking in there.

I have this thing with wanting sincere people around me. Whether online or offline, I like people who are sure of where they are going, know where they have been, and have found that God is the only thing in life that will get them from point A to point B.

I can count my genuine friends on one hand, and that’s if I had a few digits missing. The genuine one’s reach out to me, comfort me, and make me feel loved, the others use words words words to convey their sincerity and to me, it is more hurtful than actually comforting me in my time of need. And most, who claim sincerity, wave me off like butter on a piece of toast.

Isolation to a writer is a place of contemplation. The small things run off the shoulder like water off a gooses back, (Canadian friends inside joke there.) It’s the larger and grander things that aren’t so easy to just let roll. They’re there, and you have to face them, write about them and move forward! So today, as my friends whoop and holler and have a grand old time, I will cherish the ones that embrace me in my isolation, love me in the darkness of the day, and bring sunshine and light to a cloudy day. Thank you!

Poetry Sunday ~ The Fullness Therof

Deut. 15: 13 And when thou sendest him out free from thee, thou shalt not let him go away empty:
***
The Fullness Therof

***

A part of me is missing
just where I do not know
I’m dangling from a branch,
I swing high and low..

A part of me feels empty;
cold and all alone
I’m lost amid the plenty
no place to call my own.

I hurt inside; my sanity frayed
Why do I feel this way?
Like a broken bottle
all parts have gone astray.

I’m caught between a fullness
and a barren empty cave.
life is on complete dismantle
with everything I gave.

Crowded in my mind is love
it fills my every nook.
loneliness has filtered in
a page from my own book.

Where to turn I do not know
I have my only source.
God will grant serenity
and set me on my course.

On my way with His hand
I’m heading to the hills
He leads me to a stairway
my soul he always fills.