This blog has undergone some pretty drastic renovations...
not that I regret that it has turned into a storage spot for some of my poetry, but I miss the purpose it once served as a spot for reminiscing of what the Lord had been doing in me.
not that poetry isn't a reflection of the what is ordered and what is awry in the spirit.

haikus are poems
I love, for they are simple
and misunderstood

frick, there I go again!

I guess I wouldn't really know where to begin if I were to revert back to my old blogging ways of this being more of a place for open journalling, inspiration and encouragement. Again, perhaps it still is all of the above, yet just within a situation shrouded in the ambiguity of things.
I think one of the main reasons why I blogged in the other style is because i knew that i was a part of a type of online blogging community that included my closest friends, such as Jess L, Shannon, Jill, Jeff, Christine, Katie... to name a few.
not that I blogged for you. But I guess I sort of did. My inspiration for a blog often arose out of a word, phrase, idea, or entire post of one of yours.
it's wierd how life changes (*note: I'n not sure how to spell "wierd/weird." I should get on that.)
not weird in a bad way.
just different, I guess.
not different in a bad way.
but sometimes bad, i guess.

sometimes i feel like i've come so far, only to turn around and realize i've been standing in the same spot all along.

The Knot

What moves with the sleeves raised to greet the secret eyes
Lips and nails to fend them off
Who belongs there?
Have they raised a red olive tree? We can’t think nothing leaves
… and then we said magenta
He wasn’t listening
It is you, the romantic paper doll
…in paper cups
A little curiosity, some awe,
Black and white blasts of colour
Are no longer silhouettes
To life. An Ambiance.
Also add fine photographs haphazardlyThe urge to get it all
Baby, it’s cold, in days as well
Ask any sexy and enduring collection of luxury stuffed in shoe boxes
The flower girl, your very own, starts the moment
Could you wish the romantic recapture that retreats in abiding pleasureSlow down, but for a moment—I’m breathing in…I’m breathing out—
Let the ocean be scrumptious cocoa—to enter and for the whimsical,
Beautiful without a fragrance, a promise: recapture that
Shade as your sand disappears.

Am I One Alive?

I am not yet formed; I remain a shadow
The waters slap at my skin
They roll and lap and swirl within me too
My lungs breathe these inky pools
Before I am
But am I
one: alive? Or yet to be
Silenced either way
I drink you in with every breath
And you need only close your eyes to have me
disappear
But I cannot escape you
Unless it is in forceful extraction
Or pains that push me down
Either way I am subjected
To your wants, your needs, your pleads
These deeds you do
That do me in
or in me do a death
Either way I am subjected to acceptance
or rejection
If I could choose
I’d drown in these prison waters
To keep the pain
from you

Salmon Run

Not much more than nine years on my hide
you took me on a five hour drive
to the riverside once oft visited
by you as a lad, with your Daddy, I suppose

Your hands pointed here and O! over there!
Remembering a limp tire swing slung over
that old Maple's arm
and how the glassy water reached to pull you in

Then you would surface like a slimy fish-boy, laughing
And your Daddy laughing too
Cupping your hands within his own in the shallows,
patient as the minnows hurry through your fingers
until
you catch the pudgy one
and your father drops it in his mouth,
swallowing it alive
your eyes open
wide.

You are remembering.

But now there's pain within those eyes
and your wide shoulders droop with a burden unfamiliar to you
Like a vagrant stranger roosting on your porch
As you skip
a stone that
shatters
any smooth reflection.

And
your
memories

sink
with the rock, for these waters
do not gush with what you recall when you were nine

Your Daddy's gone and you've returned here
Like the salmon run upstream
Past times struggling as you fight the current
nearly drowning in the change

But you have spawned my own memories
and so I revisit with my son
that he may be immersed in his own wonders
His mirth drenching my distress of finding my seasoned mind’s pictures do not match
these sketches here

So wade these ancient waters here with me
Even if those hundred seasons passed by

still, as your Daddy rooted you on this shore and
you carved me
in the bark
So my son's son will bleed his name into the sap
beside his Daddy's and mine and your Daddy's and yours
And we'll all drink from these

As the river runs

Where does this dormant dragon choose to sleep?
Within the flames of desire’s volatile heat?
Where ashes are birthed to rise up to their feet
To caress the air and then begin to weep

Like dark streaks from eyes to cheek
Mourning that this beast withstands such fire
Content to leave his passion to inspire
Emptied tongues that cease to speak

If he knew that opening an eye
Could arouse a fleet of intensity
Stronger than unyielding gravity
[Beauty of butterfly]
That chases apathy into the sky

And frees him to be alive inside
The fire that threatens to subside

She does not strive to capture beauty
for far too much already
is imprisoned on their mantles and
in their lacquered frames or
between the dusty pages lining shelves
which hide that which weeps
behind glossy covers
for far too much already
has been raped and shamed hanging
naked from their walls
all that stood glorious holds
its breath refusing to die by
their lusting hands
and she cannot rest
until beauty sets her
Free

Deactivation

May there be joy within the sacred places
Between the anxious wrinkles of their faces
Behind the shrieking baby’s fears
And the stranded widow’s tears
Beside the raging torrents of the falls
And in the lurking falcon’s calls
Upon the graves of silenced men
To tell the secrets of now and then
That wring your spirit dry
Shriveling a wanton cry
Which knows no flame of inspiration
Stifled in its desperation
To smile and smile and smile, more
With the face than inner core
Clouds shift and shudder as they burst
But muddied waters immobilize this thirst

The Wall

Outwardly calm here on the floor
My charging heart begins to drum
I hear you breathing by the door
As expected, you have come

I slip my magazine aside
While you fumble with the lock
Like a mouse I cannot hide
And you the snake begin to stalk

Your grip is firm and rough and cold
But warmth settles like a dust
In my core as I do as I'm told
To satisfy your raging lust

For as I caused your thirst
So I quench you until
Your dry tongue starts to burst
As it tastes its fill

Over my chest you run your hand
Disguising a caress
With a touch I can neither stand
Nor hasten to repress

For a blink I think
You are attracted
To my hips
But I am distracted
By the whispers from your lips

Away my thoughts drift into the hall
I see you, and me, and my face is on the wall

I see the blanket's patterns; red
And white intertwine around
I lose myself in each thread
As I count the stitches bound
Together forming paths of pink
That run from end to end
Nothingness that lets me think
This moment here is all pretend

I see you push your body off my own
From the wall I want to scream
At your voice that drips a honeyed tone
To awake me from my detached dream
Your words contain both fear and threat
I "cannot tell", you say I'm "fine"
You know our secret will not get
Divulged, for shame, in truth, is mine

In my soul I know it's true
That I could never think to tell
Of what goes on with me and you
And how my life is living hell

My ugly frame I twist and clutch
And shudder your thick scent away
Tomorrow again I'll know your touch
But for now I slip into the gray

As you leave this darkened room
I feel a tear begin to fall
One half stifled in my tomb
One half raining down the wall

Today was my last Writing for Publication class. The professor gave us the same assignment he gave us day one: start with "I write" and carry on from there, for 5 minutes. Go. Incidentally, last night I re-discovered my journal and delved somewhat into this question of writing. Anyway, the first section was my class assignment, and the second was my journal entry. Merci.

I write because I can, because I want, because I love. If the trees didn't so persistently torment me into inspiration, I would not write. If the lake were not so green and blue and greeny-yellow-blue, I would not, could not write.

I write because I like to find
Rhyming words of different kind.
From yellow chicks hopping in their nest
To when the sunlight takes its rest,
I write.
For if I didn't I might
Explode.

Freed from stifled thoughts, my words sometimes dance or drip or stumble or collapse onto pages and books and volumes. I write because who listens? No one can listen, no one will listen. The pages listen, for in their silence they cannot interrupt me.

I write to be remembered. I write because I fear I will forget. And if I forget me, who then can recall me? I desperately write to leave my mark, my authorship, my name up something no one can interrupt. I will not go away. That is why I write.

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I hear your whispers, but there are voices all around me... and they are friendly voices. But they are not listening. No, indeed they babble on and on and never cease. There, again! You speak too, but I don't know if I like it. It's so different, and I truly fear that which I do not know.

I think I write because I want people to listen to me. When you're filling lines and pages and volumes with ink and words and sentences, no one can interrupt you. They can put down what you've scrawled and walk away, but even then the pages cannot escape your thoughts. Why am I so determined to leave my mark, to sign my work, to claim my authorship? LISTEN TO ME! I always feel unheard. You'd think for someone so desperately longing to be heard that I would be one who listens well to others and to the Lord. Not so. Always speaking but never heard. Truly, I am both blind and deaf.

"I will not forget you. I have swept away your offences like a cloud, your sins like the morning mist. Return to me for I have redeemed you" (Isaiah 45:22)

He will not forget me! Why should I be so concerned with leaving a mark? I have been cleansed and redeemed...

So I stop my desolate wanderings and sit and cry, my face angled away from the city lights before me. Sometimes this is me returning.

I lift my left, you lift your right
Your eyes peer at mine
I reach to touch you and can't quite
Connect, although we do align

In you I see behind me
But behind you is dull and black
So your rear is faced away that we
Can trust that you have got our back

Identical we are, but do contrast:
I have your hips, your smile, your nose
But your features appear more glassed
Than mine, although it vaguely shows

You walk and turn and spin and mock
Me as I prepare for the day
And when I start to speak you talk
Over me forecasting what I'll say

Some look at you for days and years
Needing your curt nod to leave
You show them all their greatest fears
Though what you say they must believe

For you cannot lie, yet we want
Your scrutiny to be more mild
Instead you mimic and you taunt
And your judgments drive us wild

Our dearest friend and greatest foe
We are mesmerized by your stare
That tells us all we wish to know
But, O! wished more we didn’t care.

i made the most vile cake today.
Kjer helped.
the icing was gorgeous though.
but that just goes to show you that something
that is so beautiful on the outside
can be full of crap in the middle.



ps: i didn't mean for this to be deep.

—What say you, Rogue? Tripping through the rumbles of the night. Cacooned in another’s cloak, displaced of faith, aye, strong in faith! With mortal persistence and shallow perception have you now come? Seek freedom’s window, delayer of soiled garments. Release the sound of waiting; its chasms of transparent harmonies. Address thy soul and the stalker of thine heart. Dismiss all darkened footholds to collapse into ecstatic benevolence.—

I write.

I write before I realize there is a pen in my hand. Before I yank up the blinds or eat my breakfast, I write. As the clock's hands change from seven to eight to nine--oh gosh, I'm late!--I write.

Because he strolled so deliberately across the road with shadows in his eyes, I write. For who would tell his story? Surely not I, for we have never met. But he screams to be known! And so I write.

Beacuse the plump finch springs lightly on the lawn, I write, for she cannot.

Because there are pages and pages to fill and thoughts and words and laughter and emotion and expression and frustration and ugliness and humanity. Because we are, I write. Because there is and there was and there will be, I write.

And so I write. And so I always will, as long as there is time, I will write. As long as there are seasons and naked trees and clothed trees and the smells of the damp earth and the noises of the rivers... I will write. And even when these fade I will write, of what they were and how they change and what now I will write of instead. For as long as there is life there is inspiration and as long as there is inspiration will be canvases to fill and pages to flood and song to compose.

So may you take your inspiration and do what you do. Dance. Paint. Play. Create. Explore. Today is alive--that is all we can know. Tomorrow may slink up as darkness, so find in your imagination and reality the ideals and impossibilities of your dreams and let them meander out of your soul and watch them explode into sprints. And then do the same thing tomorrow. And then again. And over and over until you realize that you can never return to any sort of mediocrity. Allow yourself to become pregnant with uncontainable possibility and, for the love of it all, spill over.

I feel like I have no words to express what my heart is bursting with right now... but I'll try.

I have never in my life faced such a long time of question and confusion, where I resented all that I said I believed and fell into a place of wanting to be free from this Christ. I wanted out. I felt lied to and deceived by the thing I had clung to the most in my life. I was so hurt and frightened. And was clearly being sucked in by lies and facing Satan's oppression.

I can't say that I've achieved enlightenment now (or whatever it may be), but I have been chased and caught, and it feels so great! Guilt is EVIL. Shame is NOT from God! It never will be! We are so afraid of turning back to Him because the devil has whispered to us that the Lord is angry, or worse, disappointed in us. That He is pulling the plug on our blessings because we failed. That He is revoking the gifts He gave us. That He will punish us. Or that He will remove His presence from us. NO NO NO, this is WRONG! HE ADORES YOU! and ME! He looks at us in our most F-ed up situations and picks us up oh so gently in those moments. He. wants. to. free. us. Satan wants to destroy us! If we opened our tear-swollen eyes and looked up we would see that God is standing over us, fighting for us, breaking the arrows of the enemy in mid-flight. He. is. fighting. for. us. period.

Go. Go to Him and worship, no matter what state you are in. Proclaim His goodness. No "buts!" Stand up and tear off the layers of guilt, shame, lies, deceit, fear, anxiety... tear them off like clothes. Stand naked before Jesus and watch as He walks to you with a gorgeous purple robe to re-dress you in. Stand and be healed, for He already looks at you as clean and pure. Accept it! Why would you want to continue to stand in the hopelessness of life? Please, go and be free. Go and be healed and know that you are so dearly dearly loved.

Early this morning--like early early... maybe 2:30 or so--I was just settling in to bed after a rowdy night of fun new year's action. As I turned over to grab my bible, I remember thinking about some of the past conversations that I have had with friends, just sorting through my heart and all the questions that I have come upon. I have been reading in John, but last night I wanting something a bit different. Here's how the conversation went (one that, I'll admit, seems like I had with myself, but it could definitely have been God... I really never can recognize His voice because it sounds a lot like, well, mine.)

Janelle: Hmm, where should I read? I want some good ol' truth.
God(?) : Does it matter? Isn't the entire Bible truth?
Janelle: Uhh... yes.
God: Do you trust me?
Janelle: Uhh... yes.
God: Read Chronicles. 16. 2nd Chronicles 16.
Janelle: Uhh... ok.

So I read it. And FRICK it was just what I needed. JUST what I needed. The thing that struck me the most was verse 9: "For the eyes of the LORD range throughout the earth to strengthen those whose hearts are fully committed to him."

I long to be found as one who is fully committed to the Lord. Despite my doubts, and lack of faith and insecurities in Christ, I want to be found undivided in my committment to Him. The eyes of the Lord wander to and fro, looking for the faithful. And when they are found He gives them strength. I think I need to toss aside my intellect and spend a season chasing Jesus in blind faith. That has a negative connotation to it, but... where is my child-like devotion? My unhindered faith. I have let the reason, intellect, and critical thought of this world--all aspects which have their time and place, even in the faith--crush the simplicity of belief. May it never be so again.