place-holding.

She caught her reflection

like a firefly,

diagonal, forward on a street window.

The city made her feel

wide and alone.

"Skin"- the occasion for the torture

Capability of bondage, of compliments, of magic

His to believe I am enough:

a firefly hysteria upon a blemished city.

I used to dream

in the shadows of white horses

In thunder, in concrete

But your bouquet is a diminishing real.

Scrape me more, that I might know how to live.

In the name of a light.

In the name of holding a place.

We would have been safe.

"I'd have said 'Nothing' backward. 

He'd have said 'Yeah, buddy?' backward.
I'd have said 'Dad?' backward, which would have sounded the same as 'Dad' forward.
He would have told me the story of the Sixth Borough, from the voice in the can at the end to the beginning, from 'I love you' to 'Once upon a time...'
We would have been safe."

-Jonathan Safran Foer

-- Dedicated in remembrance to the fallen of 9/11. You are never forgotten. --

Silent Storms

Age is a blinding net.

If my words are safer

inside my pointed tongue

Even every so often

As poisoned by yours,

then there they shall stay, hibernate.

They will rest as the sunken vessels,

company of the sea floor,

whispering its black secrets.

You'll hear them talking-

in the squalls,

the currents,

in every breaking wave.

I remember you

You stumble to me,

regaining your breath.

I cradle you, your

twisted nets,

shredded sails-

damage of

the audacity of she,

your barefoot ocean-

the pollutant composing you.

I waited, I listened, tangled,

drowning in your currents,

deep crying out to deep.

Mending

and ripping and mending the net,

empathy and sympathy claiming

each respectful stitch.

Until my vulnerable siren, my "I think..."

completes your restoration,

turns the tide, and

activates your savagery.

Unanswered questions meet

your wordy pretension

composed-

this,

this supposed inverness,

this vast sea,

While I am

your silent storm and

your anomaly.

a message in a bottle

for anyone:

S.O.S.

I'm more insecure

 than I've ever understood.

Bleeding Roots.

My opening eyes blink away

the acidic pockets of space and time,

the vastness of bleach, the tectonic folds,

cracked in wealth through the mountainous ridges of soul.

I am laced in stillness through the moving air of night.

Until   

Concrete meets the proxy earth.

His frame, his shadow,

fluorescence, lava.

My eyes, the stars.

A galaxy alarm confirms my suspicion.

Channeled magma chases my breath, my aspirations,

It leashes my freedom to infidelity.

My heart is erupting, anxious,

pounding against the hells that so presently enslave it.

It hounds and counters the bricks, the mortar, the cement,

the undulations of the door spring,

tables shaken to Sunday.

oh for

the pulse that

my vulnerable

heart

is crawling

into silence

Until

Light's beckoning hands, awakening me

Silenced, eliminated, the anti-moon

In my rude, emergent night

The heir of dawn 
rises into my earth-swim,

I tread the dirt

As my cells, my blood

my heartbeat of twigs-

the bleeding earth, her bleeding roots.

The remains in my pool are filth,

filth, in this scar

the pistons churning and grinding for

my potent prison tattoo:

those shoes, that damn plastic mattress,

window paint, our dead tree,

all shrieking

proclaiming the sirens and echoes

into the conquered sky

the stars, a debutante of vagabonds and thieves.

The siren camps in the divots of my every sense-

And memory meets tattoos of agonies in unconsciousness:

nuance, fluency, stairs, tables,

blood, stars,

earth.

So I count the cracks on the sidewalk,

I count the tectonic folds of my soul.

And gape for my bleeding and slipping roots.

Magma blinds me again

and the stars are gone.

With blood on my hands

I understand so little.

-CB, 7/6/13

"We owe it to ourselves to try, so we aim and ignite."

The "it's always necessary" of Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close comes to mind, as I drive, hurt with myself for failing to seize opportunity. My courage was doused by the group, by timing, by the fear of being stupid, by the fear of being wrong. I was aligned, and ready, and maybe our hearts were reciprocal. My feelings are delicately ablaze. I'm panicked for time, and in this ache, my body communicates deep peace. 

Tonight I'm aiming at the right thing, and I just can't ignite. 

I don't want to have to wait another 6 months, year, decade. And if time is love, I'm increasingly, impatiently late. 

He makes my soul feel so known, so understood. And we said goodbye for now. 

And yet.

I'm comforted. I know our story is not over. 

I find solace and beauty in the mountains, the flowers, the clouds, and in knowing that his heart seeks beauty and art and God and knowledge, and that we are the same sky. He is trying, and so am I, and tonight I pray for the day that we aim for one another, and ignite at just the right time. 

For Sojourner Heart.

I ask God for the mercy of tears

And instead-

I am stabbed

with the incoherence

and ambivalence

of my own neutral eyes.

But you!

I knew you-

Blooming to me

with every swelling wave,

unfolding to me against the current,

despite the wind, upstream,

with some sympathetic depth of loyalty.

Drowning in your own conscience,

I braved the sea with you.

The oceans in your body,

exhausted in incompletion,

deep of memory and failure and death.

I, floating, drenched in sun,

Bathed in the vein of light,

Continually urging you,

Pushing you 
up and through
the arid harshness

of blood’s deserts.

And imperfectly,

we wounded our messy feet

Upon the jagged edges of truth

and the merciless corners of reality.

So I am an atrocity to cognition.

I am poisoned by faithfulness.

I am blinded by reserved judgments, hopes,

And in my outpouring,

chained within my own disaster,

I find that I am

addicted

to the maintenance

of a fangled illusion.

Still, I will your healing in between each passing second,

Longing for the day 

that I am 

your cause and your effect.

Loving you in 

your twisted mind and scarred neck,

through 

your wordplay and knuckles and toolkit.

I dry my eyes from your guilt-water,

to realize

that yet again,

I am at your mercy.

Oscillate Red

We thrived under the umbrella of assumption.

The unstated feelings,

the overused words.

the thickness of denial,

reality was akin to the discomforts of a velcro scar.

Self enforced and forbidden eye contact, 

let alone focus, 

consciousness- our timed retreats of the sunfall, 

into the covers, too far apart.

I'd breathe and wish your oscillations,

To cup my hands 

and succumb to your beckoning red lights, 

only to get lost 

searching for the promise of adventure, 

for the fruit of loyalty, 

to fall asleep 

with a mangled heart and lonely mind.

Hope in "Scarred For Life."

A few weeks ago, I had the opportunity to talk to a new friend, and we quickly opened up to one another about some of the similar issues that we've faced in our lives. We were sitting in the library, I was doodling in my blank sheet music notebook, and our conversation got deep- and quickly. I met this friend in one of my music classes, and I was immediately drawn to his sweet and beckoning personality, kind heart, and infectious attitude. He is the kind of person that asks the right questions. He is the sunshine-in-your-day kind of friend. He has been through much, has overcome much, and I respect him a whole lot.

We talked about bullying, school and learning disabilities, depression and self harm, drugs, friendship, loneliness, family dynamics... growing up. A lot of my frustration through all of these experiences comes down to people making assumptions about me: telling me who I am, that my feelings are illegitimate, assumptions that assign perfection to my life that is non-existent. I get put in boxes way too easily, and my response is always this: "How do you know that about me? Have you asked me? No. You don't know. I know you don't know." I think I hyper react in defense against people that try to wound me by saying my invisible bruises and scars are nothing. And this attitude from my peers and other friends that demean me, has created some serious walls. I have felt like an assumed standard. But God there is so much more to me than what meets the eye.

I was telling him about some of the things that I experienced last year at Chapman, and it really surprised him, and about 1/3 of the way through my story, he stopped me, and half-sarcastically said,

"How are you not scarred for life?"

I didn't know how to answer. What came out of my mouth was:

 "I... I am."

I am. I am scarred for life. What I have been through CANNOT and WILL NOT be undone. 

And there are days that that terrifies me. 

But somehow, in some twisted trick from God's brain, he is planning to use my scars to glorify him. I hate believing this, but I think he intended for me to go through the things I did. He needed me to. He needed my trauma for something. He saw and still sees a greater picture.
He is wanting and earnestly redeeming me, bathing me in a fire that rids of the impurities of these scars. He is so patient with me. He catches my back-step and gently places my foot back on the ground to surround me with grace in his promised land. He is healing my eyes to see him, teaching me how to see him in that room instead of my marred eyes that can only see the hurt. 

My favorite verse ever (probably) is Romans 8:28- "And we know that in ALL things, God works for the good of those who love him." My sister and I have mediated on this a lot and always remind ourselves, all means all. All means ALL.

All includes my year from Satan's hand, sitting in the barren wasteland, aching for life. All includes the trauma and panic and depression and tears and loneliness. All includes the poison, the memory, the sex, the sounds, the dead tree, the window paint, the shower.

God is bringing life into my scars. 

Yes, I am scarred for life. 
But I am also redeemed for life. 
REDEEMED for life. Redeemed for LIFE. Redeemed FOR life.

All means all.

i.magination map.

I find a deep lust

Within the leaves of lives unlived

The bark of the cautious,

The dew grazing the grass of untold stories

The magic of ten below

Of down feathers, drying skin

Scarred feet and knees

I have become too acute.

Too receptive,

A post of observation

A filmless camera.

My imagination

Must remain my map