I found an old favorite poem and I believe in sharing.

To Walk the Knife

I cherish quiet friendship more than anything I own,
And love the sound of laughter, yet I long to be alone.
A solitary spirit on a never-ending quest,
I roam a twilight forest as a strange, expected guest,

Or watch a new horizon when the darkness turns to run,
And stare with blinding wonder at the beauty of the sun.
A knife of dreams and visions is the price of what I do -
I walk its edge with bleeding feet to bring that world to you;

For sometimes in the shadows or the early morning mist,
I stand between the worlds and know that all of them exist;
And if I were to stumble or to put a foot astray,
Then I would fall to madness and forever lose my way.

The earth is filled with wonder; ev'ry hill and secret brook
Can be your inspiration if you take the time to look.
Exhilarating moments just beyond the blade of life
Will change your soul forever if you dare to walk the knife. 

M. Teresa Blaylock

10 of 10

I have two tool boxes.
One I use to fix airplanes
And the other?
I fill with colors and all of the tools
I need to explain how I see the world.
I keep painter’s tape in both.
Not that I have ever tried to tape an airplane together
Or even that I use it so often in art.
Rather, it is a reminder that these two worlds
Are not so far apart. 

Artists need tools and precision.
They work in this same world after all,
With its limits, tangibility, and laws.
Mechanics need imagination and creativity and longing too.
Who else made the impossibility of flight possible?
It was not for a love of law,
Though maybe for love.

Or maybe just to tell gravity
That it was not the only authority we may appeal to,
That the ground does not own us,
And that we will decide how far is far enough.
So I keep painter’s tape
To remind me to always question
If the limits that are set
Are the limits that have to be.

Do they serve a purpose?
Can I color outside of those lines?

Painter’s tape is such a brilliant blue
That I cannot look at it
Without wondering if I too may try
To sail straight through the sky into the sun
In a last glance with only smoke
And wax tears to show behind me.
Perhaps not,
But only if I find my bearings.
Fly over the prison wall,
But stop at the sun.


My two worlds are held together by this blue
This brilliant, unmistakable blue.
And each gives the other context,
A strong foundation to build on
And a little something to look forward too,
If only in my mind's eye.

5 of 10 *Note: I did not know who this metaphor was for or where it would be used, until today.

The bottles clatter outside in the trash can.
I know you are home and what you are doing
Before I ever see your face.
I feel the plates of our world buckle and bend.
I hear the rumbling of tectonics,
The shifting of the way things are.
When you finally stumble in, fall up the stairs,
Everything I already know is confirmed.

And I smile like nothing is different
Because, in a way, nothing really is.
You must feel like a Greek god
When you move the Richter scale.
At least, that is what I figure.
I know, much more than you realize,
How hard a man has to fight for control
And what it feels like to have the world against you.

But that will never make you right.
You are sorry every single time
And that helps.
That helps until the next.
There always is a next time.
More bottles. More words. More shame.
Yet, it only takes one good night's sleep
In the arms of forgiveness to forget.

I should probably thank you though;
But I think that you would assume
That I was making fun of you.
I mean it though.
Your earthquakes have taught me
So many things like what disaster really is,
How to pray, where exactly I stand,
And the deceitfulness of ideas like security.

It has taken years of growing up,
But I have finally learned
How to be more than a survivor.
That, also, is something I am thankful for.
Getting by was never enough for living.
However, I am not fool enough to thank you.
You, sir, cannot take all the credit.
May I remind you, that things do not have to be this way?

Things do not have to be the way they are.
God forgive me, then remind me,
If I ever, ever let go of that.
And the way they are is wrong.
This constant shifting but never changing
Will not be forever.
You may be the Greek god of plate-tectonics
But no one worships the pantheon anymore.

I do not have to grow up
And I know it.
But I cannot keep the world young.

That, I realize, is what I really want.
It is a tragic case of miscommunication
Between cause and effect.

Digging in my heels will only make me
Terribly alone
--and covered in dirt.

Life is not ever one single thing,
That's just how our memory records it,
Editted and glamorized.

Instead, it is the quiet pounding
Of a thousand hearts
Headed hopefully home.

And every one of those hearts
Spins ever onward
At full tilt with our globe

As we race ever and always
Around the only star
That gets to rule and reign time itself.

We can stop all of the clocks
And break all of the alarms
But the world will never stay young.

Brilliant Archimedes wrote,
"Give me a place to stand,
And I will move the Earth."

But that is not the problem, is it?
Try to hold this Earth
Stationary.

Try to keep her still.
Yes, unwind all of the watches
And let us together lose track of time.

But neither you nor I can stop it.
And we will never be free
So long as we spin.

So shake the Earth from orbit,
If you can find a place
To stand so far away from home.

Or better yet,
Let us sail
Straight into the sun.

Let us make it explode
With all of the star light and wonder
Held in our own aging eyes.

There, in the dark of newly emptied space,
We will finally be free of time and change;
But we will also be left with no where to go.

the world as it should be

There is a world that is and one that should be, and they are not the same.

And I think that one sentence explains so many of the problems that make and mar our lives. The more I walk through this particular year, the more I realize life really, really, really is not about me. I've been told this all my life and believed it in varying levels, but this last year I am gaining yet another perspective there against the back drop of a world that should not be.

Life is so much not about me, that it is not even about me trying to pay my rent, buy groceries, feed my car, get to class on time, pray, be healthy, be a responsible citizen. Those are just things I do and they aren't really life. That and, when I let him, God more than takes care of those. They aren't worth the stress they cause. Ever. And every time I find myself giving my time to worrying about them, I am missing the point.

But it's hard. I do not always know what the real point is, even when I can define what it is not. I know that I am not alone in that. Is it about alleviating pain for others? Is it about giving? What does that have to do with the world as it should be? Where did we even get that idea? What matters?

It is near impossible to answer any of those questions without a fixed and firm foundation. Today, I am reduced to saying that the answer really is Love. If I fail to love the people God puts near me, I fail supremely. And I think that trumps personal risks and nagging worries. I am so tired of being afraid. I am so tired of doing nothing. I am so tired of living like I can keep myself safe if I try.

I cannot.

People you trust have untrustworthy moments, and it is not your fault for trusting them. Sickness and unhealth may take you regardless of any caution. There will always be reasons to stay locked up. Safe. Secure. Invulnerable. But as a member of the human race, you have to admit that you live in perpetual weakness wrapped in the illusion of strength and control that you are allowed to keep because of the goodness of God as he never gives us more than we can handle.

One day at a time. Practiced vulnerability. Indiscriminate but wise love. I think this is where I'm headed. I think I'm getting closer to what it means to be human.

If we believe these stories...

I was sitting in church the first time I followed that thought: "If we believe these stories..." And my black pen met my black book because I liked the sound of those words and I wanted to inspect their truth later. It has been a month or two or three since (not more than three though) and I still like them.

The sermon was on Psalm 105 and it asked us "why do we focus on the one thing that God has not done and ignore all that he has done?" Verse 14 talks about how God has moved kings for his small group of sojourners. It was good to be sure, but I think the most I got out of it was this phrase that would follow me..."if we believe these stories..."

I look at my Bible and I tell the world that I believe the words written in it. I promise to live by them and, perhaps, to die by them. But I forget.

Tonight is heavy. It doesn't have to be, but there are forces and people beyond my control making decisions, and they do not care that I am wrapped up in their story. They do not grasp the depth of their own significance, especially when one names them family...and that is ok. It is not good; but, quite simply, it is not the point. It is a symptom, not the problem itself. And so, tonight is heavy because I am waiting and hurting and trying to guess at the end. And because I am human. A woman living on a planet under a curse.

And I want to know what to do. I want to know how long this will last. I want to catalog all of my complaints and deliver them to heaven with a final request of answers in the same orderly fashion. Most of all, I want a promise that life wont always be this way, because, quite honestly, it has been just this for such a long time.

So I am sitting again, this time, weeks later, in my room. And just like that, I am holding that black book and looking at my Bible and hearing those words, "if we believe these stories..." Then what? At the time, the first time, I wrote: "If believe these stories...we should realize that we do not stand upon the shoulders of giants only, as the saying goes. But we stand and fall by the breath of God. A God of ancient goodness. We should have fallen a long time ago; but we forget our frailness and think ourselves invincible."

I wont get all of my answers delivered to me in bullet point form--that's hardly a way to live. But I get what I most want. It's truth. And it's a promise that life wont always be this. I forget what has been done and I get so afraid of something I know is not true. "There is a time for everything, for every activity under the sun." "Hope that is seen is not hope at all. Who hopes for what he already has?"

If I believe these stories, it changes everything. There are hundreds of people in that book who have fought their way through living. It is not a plan in black and white with diagrams, but it takes care of the bigger issues. It makes itself useful to all people in all places at all times...and it answers my fear and my humanity. It gives me just enough.

deepest green

We all smile and pretend to know of something that has lasted forever. I do not know why because it makes us all liars and we know it. But we want to believe so very badly,

so we do.

Against the rules, against logic, against experience, against every guiding agent we have ever known, we believe. It is more foolish than a mere fool's hope

and we know that too.

But we have resigned ourselves to this because we do not want to live in a world without some sort of enduring reality. And we suspect, that we alone have nothing that will last. We cannot stand being alone. Not one, but two jealous eyes, fall upon everything and everyone who might have it better than us. We feel returned jealousy and become terrified that they will find out everything we have has been lost.

This is the fear that is becoming us.

It leaves so little room for anything else. We are equals who sell our equality for insecurity.

But our world is not big enough, or did you not hear? There is so much out there that does not make sense, and it does not speak a word about our value. It is beautiful and not. It is a lot of things, especially more than any of us.

perwinkle

A few years ago, I looked at various pieces of prose I had written and I realized how much pain there was. I wanted so badly to write something different, but every time I wrote it came out the same--or worse, it sounded forced. It is only now that I see how dark a time I was living in my life. Having come out of that time, I see that I longed to write about what I did not know. I could not write with the honesty I desired when my desired subject simply was not my reality.

I had been asked why I thought it was that it is easier to find dark poetry that is good. I did not have a real answer then. Maybe I do now. It is likely to be because pain forces us to be real. Humanity is seldom happy long enough to record it and deep enough to communicate it genuinely and deeply. It is a world at war, and, when we are honest, we cannot pretend any differently. We all carry our weapons beside our wounds in one form or another. Even those who find true joy, cannot honestly deny the evidence of an inherited curse. It weighs on us all, but it is not eternal.