Who are you?
What are you becoming?

Who am I?
What am I becoming?

You can't question the
mystery of death
without questioning the
mystery of life.

What are we all becoming?
Is death the climax?
The peak at which
we have reached our destiny?
At which we have reached
what we will all become?

Or do we continue becoming,
continue shaping and changing,
always learning, even after
we have passed on?

If so, the question remains:
What are we becoming,
the living and the dead,
the total of all the beings
that are in (were in) existence?

Answer.
We are becoming beautiful.

How many times
have I sat here,
alive,
and wondered
what it would feel like
to not be alive?

Why do I waste my aliveness,
as limited as it is,
in this way?
Why do I waste this precious breath,
this precious, continuous
beating of the heart,
pondering what I will be like
without it?

Answer.

Because my mind has an
unquenchable desire
to know
what is can not know..

and this is my demise.

Maybe, just maybe,
the spiritual part of a person
is indeed the most vital part.
Maybe in our spirit lies the fullness of who we are-
spiritual beings that occupy
a physical body for a short period of time,
then we are released from
that foreign body upon death
and we become free and alive and right
for the first time,
and we understand the reasoning
behind the madness we deem "life".
And everyone that we left behind on Earth mourns,
but we now know that there is a world
so incredibly beautiful waiting for us
when our physical functioning ceases.
And we desperately want to share
this crucial information with our loved ones below,
but when we open our mouths to speak,
God intervenes,
"My sweet child, do not spoil the secret.
They, too, will learn of what has been
waiting for them all along when they
arrive and stand beside you. So let their
tears flow and their hearts break -
one day they will experience this no more."


*inspired by T.S. Eliot's quote, "We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time."

There's something inside of me that is filled with hope - it cannot be ceased under any circumstance. I have seen tragedy, I have seen death (touched death), I have questioned my sanity, I have doubted my belief, I have fallen apart, I have been broken to pieces, reassembled, then broken again.

I am makeshift.

Yes, I am makeshift. Every day, every moment, I am changing, twisting, turning, building upon what I learn and know, becoming different, becoming new, morphing into myself.

There is an all-encompassing theme to who I am - a being filled with hope. A hope that there is more; there is more than me and my limited human experience. There is a creator of me, a creator of us all; a creator that isn't anything but madly in love with us. For all that we are - our broken pieces, our makeshift lives, our shittiness, our joyousness. We are a sum of love; built by love, broken by love, reassembled by love.

The creator fills the cracks where we've been broken and torn. In the midst of darkness enters the goodness, the fullness, of light. A shining, dazzling, beautiful glint of this feeling identified as hope - a feeling never fully depleted, for it is what gives us the faith to carry on.

the two infinities 

This is life
and I am existing
in this moment
suspended in time.
My breath sustains me,
my heart retains me.
I feel an overwhelming
presence of something
bigger and wiser
beyond me.
It brings me peace.

I lay beside you.
The sun shines;
it warms my skin
but you are under the ground.
(Are you able to feel the sun?)

I want to feel you here,
present in this very moment
with me, but I am unable.
I feel bothersome;
I feel incredibly anxious
as to what life will
become without you,
but I trek on.

Death is a funny thing;
life is a funny thing.
And oddly enough,
they are strikingly similar -
they both keep going,
creating the only infinities
that we know
(we are either alive
or we are dead).
They propel us to feel,
to dream, to create who we are.
You will live
and then you will die:
and who will you become?

The limiting reagent of life
is time.
Time is limiting, fleeting, fearsome.
Your time has run out.
My time is ticking
as I lay here,
sun shining, breeze blowing,
inspiring thoughts
of existence.

Sometimes
life is ridiculous.
I ponder as I sit beside your grave...

This is what will come of me,
what will come of all of us.
We will one day lay in the ground
in a prestigious wooden box
(well, our body will, that is).
And where will the soul go?

So many souls. So many souls that are
gone, going. So many beings - individual,
beautiful, beings that have been
conquered by death. And more to come.

I've grown to hate this part of life -
the part where you're utterly forced
to face the fate before you,
that death is your destination.

I pity those who live but never acknowledge,
never surrender to the truth that we are fleeting.
Their thoughts of what is to come are scarce,
afraid to let their minds wonder, ponder, and question:
"With an impending death,
what will I do with my life?"

The brevity of life
is so incredibly horrid;
they say it's what makes life sweet,
I've tasted it - it was sour.
It was putrid, repulsive.
I'd rather eat a flaming bagel
with protruding knives
than be up close and personal
with the brevity of life again.

One flick of your switch,
and you're snuffed out.
Death doesn't care of the plans you've made,
of the aspirations and dreams you had.
It only cares to claim another victim;
to feed its uncanny desire
to mess with the mind of the living,
to make them question.

If I could kill death,
I would kill it with compassion, kindness.
(Isn't that what God did, in body form?)
I would approach subtly, yet pleading softly,
as a noble night would be chivalrous:
"Please don't take the ones I love.
Please don't take me.
I'm unsure of what's to come of me."
As the terrified wayfarer that I am,
death would look me in the eye
and deliver the final, crushing blow: no mercy.
Never mind a shield of armor;
it will not save me here.
The armor is but a tactic, anyway,
to appear tougher than I actually am.

Now, I have discussed death
and the thoughts that I have on demise.
But we have yet to discuss God;
who I believe is the beautiful, opposing
force of the universe
that likely has a mesmeric and radiant
solution to overcome
our unwilling grapple with death.

The story it to be continued.

thoughts by the graveside - 4/26/14

By the graveside
you cannot hide.
You are beside death,
and who, when they are beside death,
can distract their mind?

No one. You are forced
to face the reality that
this mound of fresh dirt,
these fake flowers,
they are your destiny.

You are returning to dust.
Every day you live,
you are a little closer
than the day before.

2.
You will one day leave your home.
You will one day leave the only home you've ever known,
often unexpectedly.
And where will you go?
Of this I do not know with assurance.

3. 
Sometimes I wonder
how life is even real.
There are so many surreal moments -
or is that just life?
A web, a collection
of unexplainable moments
that morph together and
equate to our reality.

Such is life.

4.
Life is equal parts of living and dying.
We are living everyday and dying everyday.

5. 
I am very much in love with life;
I am also absurdly preoccupied with death.

6. 
You must believe in God
in a place such as this.
What do you think of all this?
Was it meaningless?
All these lives, lived and lost.
And look what they amount to.

this new skin

this new skin
this new skin
this new skin
that I'm in
will take some adjusting,
I suppose.

But I did not ask
for this new skin;
I did not willingly
shed the old skin;
it was ripped off me
as I cried next to
your lifeless body
on the living room floor.

With each tear,
with each touch
of your hand,
feeling it grow
colder and colder,
life as I knew it
was ending.
Death likes to take
sanity along with it,
and skin - involuntarily.

I am not living
my life anymore.
I am living in
a new skin.
A skin with the
absence of my
faith, hope, and love
(as I knew them).
These were ripped
off in death.

this new skin
this new skin
this new skin
that I'm in
is not enjoyable,
but in what other
skin will I live?

This is my fate.

a brief look into my mind on 4/1/14 (scattered thoughts)

1.) The way I see it is this -
grief can create a fool of you,
or it can be a way to glorify
the life that was lost,
and to express your love
to that person by living
a brighter and more
beautiful life.

2.) I sat
and I saw
a long journey
ahead of me,

a necessary journey
with light at the end.

3.) I took a step
to start my new life today.

As a new being,
a new spiritual being,
a new life with one less,
but in the process
of gaining much more.

Your death will be glorified.

One thing I really hate about life
is that other people are losing theirs
while I am still living.

And I am left wondering -
where do I go from here?

part two of my confused mind 

One the outside:
normal.
On the inside:
turmoil.
I'm leading two
separate lives,
neither of which
are satisfying
or give me any answers
or sense of comfort.

Neither of which
are true.
Both are a lie.
If one was "more true"
than the other,
it would be the turmoil -
the tossing and turning
of the Deceiver
between the ears.

I don't have
control of this anymore.
Being myself appeals to me
but so does reinventing myself
to be someone who
knows the reason
behind death.

Do I remain, normal,
unknowing, regarding death
as an unanswerable demon?
Or do I break free,
in turmoil,
and let my mind run wild
at all the possibilities
of why the Power in the sky
let's us live here,
making connections,
making lasting love,
then takes us away?

It's a terrible process.
Especially for the ones
left behind on planet Earth,
orbiting and thinking,
"what's the meaning behind this?"



I'll take turmoil any day.
It's a little more satisfying
than normality.

I haven't posted in awhile. My thought process has been changing; I feel as though my mind has grown darker. I don't know whether this is good, bad, or necessary. We'll see where it takes me.

the two month mark 

My mind is a whirlwind
with no peace, and no comfort.
My mind is haunting
evoking feelings that are daunting.

I don't want to do this anymore.
I'd like to wipe the slate clean
and start new,
like a child ignorant
of the world
and all the cruel
people that live here.
I'd like to be ignorant
to the process of dying,
not knowing that it
will one day come for me.

I see dying a lot now.
I see minds dying,
I see faith dying,
I see brightness dying,
I see hope dying,
I saw my dad, dead.

No one should see that. Ever.
If God is good
then I have been believing wrong
this entire time.
Please, define for me
the true meaning of
the word "good".

The world is very different now,
characterized by questions
and thoughts, unanswered,
unimportant
to anyone but the thinker.
Think think think
for two months
and your mind gets you nowhere
except darker than it was before.

My mind is a whirlwind
with no peace, and no comfort.

Written at Midnight

Life can kick you down,
and - trust the unfortunate here - it will.
It's going to declare that you're
wrong
Wrong
WRONG!
Some advice - kill your life!
Do not become enslaved to
negotiating with your demons.
Tell life that you will NOT
bargain with it,
that you will NOT sell your soul
to worrying and comparison.
KILL THE MIND AND THE
DEMONS THAT LIVE INSIDE.
You will no longer be consumed
by detrimental thoughts
(but they won't escape) -
ESCAPE THEM. FLEE.

Run to the distance -
where the Sunlight lives.
Separate yourself from
this cruel, cruel life.
Float high above,
in the clouds, with love,
in It's unadulterated form.

Be free from this life -
you'll be compensated in a
fresh, lovely world,
where minds are at peace
(not on edge!).
I promise you this -
you'll dance, alive and new.

Hurry -
time is slipping, hope is depleting,
ESCAPE NOW.

Have you ever looked
death in the face?
Have you ever thought
of this stark reality?

We are mist.
We are shifting
and moving
and changing
and then we will be gone.

Does the brevity
of our lives
intimidate you
or does it
intrigue you?

Does our impending death
inspire you
or inhibit you?