hope.

soon, i will sit and listen to a suited up fifty-something with no sense of skepticism. i will be adorned with a graceful charm, taking only his words to heart, not feeding my inner demons with doubts about how much money he has or if he really means what he says. i've got age on me, and it's tearing me down.

i will find a love and stick with it. sacrifices will be made, but every gash will be sewn up by this relentless greed to pursue what i was made to pursue. uncertainty can strangle a man, but mercy only shows up when she finds that you've thrown your heart into this again, and again, and again.

i'll find a good woman. our hands will touch and our heads will clash, but this one will be a God-given truth that even the most incredulous would applaud. forgiveness will find us time and time again, reminding us that a bond isn't made to be broken, beaten, nor bruised. rather, a gift from the heavens that God has sent to concrete his unshakable, incontestable existence.

i'm joyful in hope. and when the day is done - when every tear has dried, and every note sung - i thank my beautiful God for never failing to restore my hope in what is to come.

mouths to feed.

beat yourself into the ground.
welcome the callouses. let them moisten, let them swell, let them bleed.
you've got mouths to feed.
sweat and don't stop sweating.
work and don't stop working.
plant, reap, sow your seed.
you've got mouths to feed.



i hope to be half the man my father is.

sounds.

they drop like hammers. they float like hummingbirds.

from grandfathers to digitals.

been thinking about time recently. not so much on a scientific level. but on the other level. on the better level.

i hear about it from blues guys all the time. how it's always coming down on us. it's a kind of demise, really. i hate it, every now and then. i think because we're this nation built upon speed. see? the word. it even looks fast. we've always got to have the fastest something. and i'm not just talking about cars.

the other day i was in the supermarket, and it took me 45 minutes to buy a toothbrush. a toothbrush. why? because i wanted the one that would clean my teeth a pearly white in the least amount of time. i wanted the one that would do it overnight. i wondered silently if colgate would ever manufacture some sort of freak, robot brush that would put all of my plaque-related fears aside forever and ever and ever.

so i stopped myself. mainly, because i realized that i heard that thing. that thing that tells you to buy this or buy that, because it will fix you. "you want what we're selling, because it will complete you" is what supermarkets and malls promise their subordinates everyday. and i heard it. so i went off-brand and i still see no difference. which is a good thing.

things just need to slow down, man. i know i can't stop the clocks. but sometimes i wish the clocks would stop us and tell us to give up staring at them for a while. they would say that their minutes move fast, and their seconds even faster. and they would say that if we spend too much time listening to the crank - if we meditate upon each second that's ticked, and curse it for being gone, never to rear itself again - we may miss that something. that something that will dazzle or amaze us. that something that could, quite possibly, change us from the inside out.

john donne.

Batter my heart, three-person'd God ; for you
As yet but knock ; breathe, shine, and seek to mend ;
That I may rise, and stand, o'erthrow me, and bend
Your force, to break, blow, burn, and make me new.
I, like an usurp'd town, to another due,
Labour to admit you, but O, to no end.
Reason, your viceroy in me, me should defend,
But is captived, and proves weak or untrue.
Yet dearly I love you, and would be loved fain,
But am betroth'd unto your enemy ;
Divorce me, untie, or break that knot again,
Take me to you, imprison me, for I,
Except you enthrall me, never shall be free,
Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.

sunshine and marshmallows.

i've gotten somewhere.

i may be witnessing progress.

it may be too soon to call it that.

to avoid an explosion, let's just write it off as a good day.

supermarket wisdom.

i believe i may be falling in love with the theory of cynicism. let me rephrase that - optimistic cynicism. not because it sounds fancy, because it is a sharpener to my blade that has become so dull. in a world where people and ideas are black vertical bars trotting in their black vertical formations, i am that really annoying horizontal reddish-orange beam that scans and scans until some sort of blindness occurs.

but hang with me - the good part is coming. the part that doesn't make me look like a half-crazed hater.

like i said - the cynic in me is the same one who keeps me up to date. it keeps me fresh. i have a better understanding of things around me when i use cynicism. this theory paired up against a conventional thinking process produces nothing but question marks. but what i mean by all of it is that if you tear something down until you can't tear at it anymore, and a piece of it is still standing, you know it was a structure that was supposed to be erected. no matter if you like it or not. it's like once you point out every wrong thing, the right things just glow. they glow.

this idea has it's flaws. but what doesn't?