My head rest in the nook of your crossed legs as our eyes lazily drifted across the sky.

And the sun was warm and the grass was soft and there was peace in the absence of everything.

And the wind blew slowly and gently, ethereal, peaceful and misleading.

There was both a provocativeness and an innocence between our anxious lips.

And maybe there was an ounce of truth in all the emotions produced by penitence and youth

But we existed in a space between childhood and morality and there just wasn't a space for figuring

things out. In a different world emotions may have existed apart from worth and exploration apart

from pride but in this world it was all the same.

I've figured out the meaning of life... it's a series of isolated incidents that sometimes mean everything in the moment but only leave behind a reflection. Sometimes these reflections are low lit lights that sparkle and fade in a pale shimmer. Sometimes these reflections are a dull ache left behind from a tragic heartbreak or stiff shot of reality. The reflections glean a story and sometimes they are emotions but mostly they just end up stories that we tell ourselves before bedtime. And sometimes people come in our lives and they stitch together those isolated incidents into a small web so our new experiences have more meaning. They're plucked like chords on a beautiful harp and the plucks they resonate through the web, through the reflections and they become a song. And our lives become a series of songs strewn together to make a melody that's rich and full and diverse. And this album represents our lives and all the isolated periods of things we went through and events we experienced. It represents all the pleasure and all the pain and all the people woven into that beautiful, beautiful mess of our life. And somewhere in there there's God and he takes all of our songs and he plays them together and we become the soundtrack to his creation... his creation and his restoration and all that is good and holy and blameless and WE are his inspiration and THAT is the meaning of life.

Old one updated...

The Decay

I’m staring at the boxes of paper Strewn across the floor. The contents of which are supposed to represent A hell of a lot more. It’s all the knowledge that I’ve gained here. My time and sweat and tears, It’s just a few dusty boxes, Whose contents span the last eight years. There’s a lot of information on what I shouldn't do with someone’s head. As if I was even capable Of rewiring all the sickness they’ve been fed. But nothing in there has showed me How to fix broken souls. There’s nothing in there but tiny bandages To cover up some holes. I’m sitting here in my room that’s A little bit bigger than the one I had before And all I can think is “Oh good, Now I’ve got a little bit more”. A little bit more room. A little bit more stuff. A little bit more furniture to hold the little bit more stuff in the little bit more room. And I start to feel the burning. I start to feel the gap. I start to really register how sometimes my life really looks like this crap. Some days I get up and I do so many little mundane things That I can’t tell whether yesterday bled into today Or if was just a lack of definition between the two in my eerie, purposeless dreams. I can’t tell whether I’m suffocating from the inside out Or whether the dry rot’s just working its way in. Is this a small forage through the desert of doubt Or symptoms of a bigger sin? All I know is that freedom can shine dull like the pillage of a foreigner forgetting his homeland. Our value quickly trickling out like quicksand. Our identity stands neglected like Joseph as a Midianite. We sell our soul to consumerism and tomorrow looks just a little less bright. We slip rather quickly into the 9 to 5 trap like Sampson’s head lulled asleep resting on Delilah’s lap, slowly being sheered of all his glorious might. Had we seen our slow decay we might have put up a fight But the rot was too slow and our allegiance too trite.

Neat Little Boxes

I sit with my hands folded, neatly,

neatly to contain the insanity

neatly to pretend that I have everything under control

neatly to ground the left to the right

neatly to let the emotions peel and curl in a nice, neat pile

neat stacks of emotions forming orange peel ringlets at my feet.

Neat like the letter piles, crumpling inward, glowing orange, brown, and black.

Neat like the memories, semantically arranged in my mind.

Neat like our bodies lying next to eachother, this limb neatly folded over that.

Neat like our good-byes, softly spoken through streaming tears and damp hair.

Neat like the phone calls, the deafening silence, the words sticking to our throats.

Neat like the sickness in our hearts, the nausea, the confusion.
Neat like the ghost dreams of ghost feelings in a ghost house 
with a white picket fence.
Neat like the numbness holding back the tears.
Neat like the promises that echo back the lies. 
Neat like the lingering pain tied up in neat little boxes, 
someone else's mess. 
To you I was always someone else's mess.