A Day

You were a stranger without that look,

a hidden flickering game
of indifference that hits me with

a shrouded pathway from the eyes.

I didn't know you, but I knew you didn't

need my sanity to stay. You'd stay anyway.

And when you didn't ask for conformity,
it shattered, fell limp.

You stayed awake for me that night
and took nothing but my gentle presence
to breathe relief to deep hollow.
I buried my head, you swayed.

My ice and your stone broke well before the sun
came up through the window where I first left home.

You didn't alter, strong current set us eye to eye.

I hid my upper lip, you told me it was perfect.

You permanently stand in my thoughts
and you didn't try. But I see you even now.

I was in, you let me be there.
No doubt you saw all of me.


For a day. Then you didn't care.

Questions

This quote by President Ezra Taft Benson made me feel diminished and then pigeon-holed. But by the last sentence I was made to feel superior to men, to balance out the previous pigeon-holing.

"You were not created to be the same as men. Your natural attributes, affections, and personalities are entirely different from these of a man. They consist of faithfulness, benevolence, kindness, and charity. They also balance the more aggressive and competitive nature of man. The business world is competitive and sometimes ruthless. We do not doubt that women have both the brain power and the skills to compete with men. But by competing they must of necessity, become aggressive and competitive. Thus their godly attributes are diminished and they acquire a quality of sameness with man. The conventional wisdom of the day would have you be equal with men. We say, we would not have you descend to that level."


I asked myself one question. And then the questions wouldn't stop coming.


But what am I meant for?

Does my sex determine my destiny? Does sex determine every individual's destiny? An individual's Purpose? Even an individual's personality? How is it that my personality can be pre-determined and recited to me, simply because my genetic code lacks the Y chromosome? How is it that the nature of my spirit is decided for me? How can they tell me what my spirit is like? How can they tell me what my personal divine attributes are, when they have never heard of me? Just because I "am" what they call a woman? Do they know what a woman is? Or do they only know what they think a woman should be? How can they tell us not to descend to the level of a man's characteristics, when those are divine in nature as well? Must we only strive to become half of perfection? Must we avoid development in certain areas, and cling to it in others? Are "masculine" divine attributes detrimental to a woman's divinity? Are only decidedly feminine characteristics beneficial for my personal progression? Why would two individuals sharing an attribute weaken them, or weaken the the union between them? Can not I, and my brother as individuals work toward being nurturing as well as powerful? Must people artificially divide themselves in half so that the sexes need each other more? Can we not all be complete people? Can a union between a man and a woman not function with well-rounded individuals? Must I base my marriage on the fact that I am incomplete? Wouldn't it be more powerful for two people to be whole and use their agency to choose to unite themselves, rather than to compensate for the attributes that they have neglected, or that have been socialized out of them? Why did I feel uneasy when my three-year-old nephew carried around a doll in public? Why are we told it's not natural for males to be nurturing? And why, in turn, do we make that characteristic unacceptable from infancy, deterring any natural nurturing instincts? Would a man be un-manly if his culture had allowed him to cultivate a "feminine" characteristic? What benefit to society is there in discouraging gentleness in males, when they are considered the ones responsible for the majority of crime? Would a woman be un-feminine if her culture had approved of her being an "aggressive" participant in society? What benefit to society is there in encouraging passiveness among women, who then so often let themselves be taken advantage of? How can we attribute our own silly, human, mormon, modern american culture to the way the universe actually works? How can we assume that the traditions and dysfunctionalities of our time and place have anything to do with how divine people function? How can we think that the way we've learned to be women, mothers, and wives reflects in the slightest what it means to be a Goddess? How can we believe that the way masculinity is taught and implemented here is in any way similar for Gods?


Foolishness.

What. On earth. Am I.

What on earth am I, really?

I am a woman.
I am a feminist.
I am a mormon.
I am a disciple of Jesus Christ.

(Am I?)

I am a capitalist.
I am a conservative.
I am an artist.
I am a daughter of God.

(Am I really?)

I am human.
I am intelligent.
I am capable.
I am equal.

(Am I, really?)

I have a purpose.
I have a destiny.
I have divine potential.

(Do I?)

I have a specific role and set of duties that I must perform.
I carry within me certain feminine attributes that, by nature, all women share.

(Do I really?)

I am more nurturing than my brothers on earth.
I am less competitive than my brothers on earth.

(But, am I... Really?)

The current, orthodox path my life is on will bring me the most happiness and fulfillment.

(Will it?)

I want to be a mother.
I want a husband.

(Do I?)

I am an individual, not a product of my culture.

(Am I so sure?)

I can feel truth when it is presented to me. (Can I?)
I have the ability to receive direct revelation from God. (Do I?)
I am guided by the spirit. (Am I?)
I can gain a relationship with higher beings. (Can I?)

The gospel is the reason I'm so happy.

(Is it?)

I know who I am.
I know why I'm here.
I know what I can and cannot do.


I know what I am.

(Do I? Really?)

I'm one of those

I'm one of the odd ones
the different ones
the other ones.
the ones set apart from the usual
the dominant
the norm.
I'm one of the ones left out of the story books
the history books
the religious books,
making way for every character
every leader
every great mind.

I'm one of the objects of poison
of seduction
of temptation
for the normal
the orthodox
the prevalant, who spend their lives attempting to overcome our magnetism.

I'm the butt of a joke.
a punchline.
a stereotype.

I'm one of those who are unconsciously ignored
who have no power
no position
no destiny.


I'm one of them.

We are

disconnected attachment
untangled enmeshment
unraveled and intertwined
Our nature Our intellect
Our perception of the present
the conception of Our future

steady without an anchor
devotion subjected to authorized freedom
friction between promise and the elimination of ignorance
holding tenacious to an intangible bond

memories endure
dreams thicken
generating a flicker in two minds deprived of light
the darkness a product of
divided connection
isolated union
unbound dependency



that's what we are

Enough

I can never have enough of you.
Just as I am most hungry, there's nothing there to fill, and I thirst for everything out of reach.
I touch your face
It disappears
I breath in your reality
It dissolves
I perceive your beauty
It leaves me cold and burns a memory in my mind that cannot be satisfied.
Overflowing promises are neatly amputated, but It leaves me gaping.
There's nothing clean about an open wound.
The world gave an alluring taste it had no intention of letting me savor and it pulls
it pulls

it pulls


my heart out with a string.
I fear the emptiness could pull my insides right out.
Desperately compelled I search to substitute your missing love but there is nothing without you.
like death
like taxes
I can never have enough of you.

Strange

Strange how a human is unable to fully give their heart to one person, before trying to give it to a few others.

Strange how love is a word that describes countless contrasting emotions.

Strange how natural territorial tendencies, which are born out of love, discourage so much love.

Strange how one can possess jealousy, and simultaneously have the desire to do the things which make jealousy erupt.

Strange that I feel the need for socialization, when the point of such socialization is to obtain what I already have.

Strange that so often in order to have the one you want, you have to give them up.

Strange how people you don't know very well can cause unbearably strong emotions inside of you.

Strange how human beings inexplicably gravitate toward certain people, whether they want to or not.

Strange that it is possible for humans to forge powerful, meaningful 1-way connections with each other, while the other person feels nothing at all.

Strange that we humans spend so much of our time trying to control the nearly uncontrollable.

Strange how the thing I desire most is the thing I am infamous for not having.

Strange that everyone is running around like crazy looking for a partner, and still most people are single.

Strange that a relationship is so difficult to ignite, because so much energy must be put into not "scaring the the other one off".

Strange that secrets perpetuate secrets, and that honesty is socially inappropriate.

Strange how so few people realize that being in love is actually a decision, not a supernatural phenomenon.

Bewilderment

The phenomenon of forgetting yourself on purpose, and for no sane reason loving the deepest part of a separate entity, therefore grasping the reality of another individual for the first time, is utterly bewildering, nonsensical, exhilarating, wonderful, staggering, and it's existence is evidence that perhaps not everything is solid logic, but that the driving force responsible for the creation of the universe is simply a sweet emotion, unexplained by the most respected thoughts and theories, bringing what seems of great importance to insignificance. Blinded by it's brilliance all else is a silhouette.

Don't tell me

Go ahead and diagram your sentence all across your lips
Try as you may to project it to my water-logged ears,
all I hear is the sloshing of a repetitive beat
Regardless of how genuine
Because words are lost if the feet don't follow,
Your ideal unravels if the hands don't move,
don't prove.
Ironic that the cup after cup I'm supposed to chug
is served especially to convince me,
When all I desired was for the letters of my name
which trip off the tongue so easily
to be caught in the movement of your arms.
Your absence accelerates
the duality between words and deeds which twists my insides.

Unsafe to receive your sentence through anything but a coffee straw.

I can't
I'll drown

Love kinda feels like this

K, i don't like to pretend my poetry is some great literary achievement, it's just what comes to my head.

Joy.
A love most magnificent,
the aspiration of happiness,
Our genuine ambition
Breaths from you.
It takes command of my heart and
Within It's grasp
I know true love.
It stays with me when we part,
It walks with me when I walk away.
It follows me into the night, and is the
Companion to my dreams.
My love for you remains
the cause
the reason
the essence
of Joy.

Cliff

There is a Cliff right after

.........one more
.......................
.......................
.......................Where the sound viewer sees that
Power


falls

and turns into

CH EE S E

Today

Today I am bored.
sick.
tired, but not that happy sleepy tired.
The tired you get when you don't have anything left.
When you can't think of anything else because you already thought of everything, and frankly, you're sick of thinking all together.
When you go from the frantic search to the dull realization of life, which turns out to be fiction after all.

My mouth is not clamped shut.
But tiredness empties the giddy slap happy need to explode with nothing of any real importance.
So I sit quietly with the back of my throat pulling at words that don't exist, unable to say anything at all.


Who I want to be

Unclouded
Perfectly Free
Undeceived
Loose but Steady
Strong but Open
Whole and Clear
Transparent to my Soul
Spilling with Power
Pouring out Wisdom
Overflowing with Love
So that darkness cant abide
And falseness can't survive where
Truth enters the Heart and Mind.
Not so Black and not so White,
The Universe is not made of
Eyes glaring
But is as crystal glass
And placid water.
No mind knows. No eyes see.
Power is created by perfect Unity.
Perfect Individuality.
Together and Unique.
Alone and not Lonely.
The Knots untied
Centered
Balanced

Full

Fastwalking

(It)

takes over.
It consumes.
It controls.
It has a mind of It's own and It comes and takes your life whenever It pleases.
It uses adrenaline wisely.
It's own little tool.
It shuts off your front brain and empowers the back.
The adrenaline makes your legs move fast, and It controls your direction.
It chooses a subject.
Something for It to hide behind.
It deceives your mind.
You faithfully believe It's choice is dangerous.
But It's inside of you all along.

I didn't know It was there.
I didn't mean to fight It.
I certainly didn't mean to win.


Maybe I didn't.

Consciously Slipping

This poem goes with a pretty intense picture I drew at 2 in the morning after some pretty intense stuff happened with my family...

Consciously slipping

Sitting on the Pickets
balance perfect
Swinging your Legs
Shoes falling into the fire
And your eyes are open

Letting go of the Handhold
face backwards
Let your little legs slip
Singeing your toes
And your eyes are open

Hanging from the Pickets
hands weak
Dropping an Arm
Kicking from Boils
And your eyes are open

One Finger Left.
Black and Charred.
Sigh and Surrender.
Screams of Burning.

There's a body in the fire
I suppose he tripped.
though his eyes are still open.

Happy Bubble vs. Reality Stick

Stupid, mindless, self-righteous, self-brainwashed, empty.
False humility strapped to your forehead.
"Afraid" of a cartoon Devil.
"In love" with a marionette God.
Connected to yourself three thousand times over,
While you forge connections to reality like a fantasy novel.
A white bubble of rainbows and unicorns covers us all,
created by default of atrophied minds.

Wake up and turn your brain on

Your pride is strapped so tightly to your forehead the blood doesn't flow.
You used your box of crayons to color the Devil.
When you move your hand God speaks.
Your same ideas circulate repeatedly until the mass of connections
is too heavy to be carried by anything but ignorance. It has no foundation.

The Bubble smothers.
The Rainbows constrict.
The Unicorns stab anyone who tries to pass.

Wake Up And
Turn
Your
BRAIN ON



I dedicate this poem to the following:
Laura and Israel, Rick Koerber, Maynard, Tori Amos, Orson Scott Card for his character Gloriously Bright, and all the people in the mormon church who act like Gloriously Bright.

Monkey

This is a bunch of weirdness that makes no sense whatsoever. Enjoy.


I'm either a monkey or I'm not.

If I am a monkey, why should I care?
There's nothing special inside screaming WHY except for a brain too big for It's own good. Changing any sort of outcome is beyond my reach, so worry? No. We acquire the need to be more than we are, to have something special, to be able to control a bigger object than ourselves so intensely, that we believe our thoughts can change the world. But If you aren't something special, and if they can't change the world, why care? If this is all there is, and I don't exist beyond the extent of, say, 60 more years, then I don't exist at all. Life is one big OH WELL. I don't remember not existing. That's because children have no connections or frame of references and so their memories are bad. Why is it that you can disprove everything, except that there is no afterlife. We all rush to make a way for us to live forever because we can't comprehend not living.

If I'm not a monkey, marvelous. I exist. Therefore, I exist forever. There's something special inside whispering WHY because we're supposed to find out. What is it? It's the thing that makes teenage boys cry. It's the thing that feels at peace even when the body is hanging on by a thread. Why do you die when your body is injured? Is there a point where the body has too many leaks to keep the spirit in? Enough will power will keep it in. The science book definition of what is alive is pathetic.
My final thought: Monkeys exist. Monkeys are alive. I don't care whether I am one or not. I don't care if I stay like this for eternity. I don't care if I have to be a polygamist for eternity. I just want to live.

The difference between music and books

Music enters my whole self completely because I invite it freely, and it fills every cell in my body. It occupies my subconcious, and animal mind which is pure instict. Music satisfies a beauty that I lack and penetrates the dark and empty places of my spirit.


Books enter into me, far less freely for they don't just pass though my ears and into my body: books pass through my mind and connect in flashes of lightning to every connection that makes up my brain, and diffuse in my mind luminescence. Books alter the processes of my thinking, so that every contemplation and reverie that occur, pass through the words that I have read in a modified and transformed state.

absorption

I am absorbing so many things right now that I just need a place to keep it all straight:

Hope is the opposite of anxiety. At least for me. We always talk about hope in church and stuff, but no one realizes what a cool and important thing it is. Especially in my fam fam. For me, Hope translates directly into happiness. It's the thing that I live on. Sometimes I think, "If I could just get some HOPE right now I would be totally fine doing the crap I have to do."

Pride (another word for insecurity) absolutely makes every situation 100% more un-solveable. If the whole world was humble (another word for self-confident), you wouldn't believe the problems that WOULDN'T be going on. We're always told to be humble in church, but I don't think anyone actually understands how to BE humble. I've heard some fights/conversations lately that absolutely BLOW MY MIND! I can NOT believe how blatantly prideful certain people are. I sit there and think, "If you, YOU, RIGHT THERE, would just huuummmmbbblllleeee yourself....... don't you understand that if you humbled down a bit right now you could save this from being a screaming session? Or you could keep your spouse from silently resenting something about you, that you don't even know about, that they thought they forgave, until one day all hell brakes loose?! It's amazing to me the things people didn't learn while growing up. One of the most important things I am going to look for in a husband is humility. I just want a humble guy. Some time my passion for hating pride gets out of hand and I actually say something out loud. I hope I'm not making people resent me.

I don't know why, but sometimes I'm the biggest jerk you ever knew. I think it has to do with my lack of patience. Also my hyper focus thing that I do. Especially during movies. I've decided that I am absolutely the worst person to watch a movie with (other than..... dad) because I get so involved in the movie that if you talk I'm ready to slit your throat! Other than movies and books though, my hyper focus thing is kinda nice. If I decide to focus on something, I can do it better than anyone. Like the bop it game. I WILL beat you at bop it. I beat the game easily. I will beat you at guitar hero. I also WILL beat you at a hula hoop contest.

Music again

I've been thinking about music again. I've been wondering why I can listen to Tori Amos and literally, i'm not exaggerating, nothing else and I don't get sick of it. Instead I keep hungering for it over and over and over again. I believe this is because something in her music resonates in me. There is a gaping hole in all teenagers and her music resonates within it. Like when you are humming in the shower and you hit a certain note that makes the whole shower buzz. It's almost like the shape of the hole changes throughout teenagehood and when you hit a certain age, around 16, (Me, Laura, Wendy) or if you have the maturity level of this age (Brian), for some reason or another Tori amos fits with your pain, your hole in your chest, and while you're listening to it you feel like you're full, like you're actually whole again.

I'm sure that it's pretty rare to find an artist or genre of music that resonates so perfectly, but once you find it, listening to any other music is a flat experience. You almost don't hear it, because it bounces off you. There was a time when Incubus filled in the whole in my chest that was shaped like anxiety. Then after that bands like deftones and tool filled in the hole that had shifted into a cold, dead, passive, apathetic sphere. I tried listened to Incubus the other day. It was as flat as the mormon music I described in my last post. And that's when I thought something that had never occurred to me before in my obtusity: There probably comes a time in your life, when your brain is freed from the bonds of it's previous teenage stupidity, when the gaping hole shrinks, and changes its shape so that church music is exactly what you need, and why should I force those adults around me to listen to something that fills me up but not them. That's why parents hear our music as loud, irritating, noise. Because that is literally what they hear. Just like Incubus sounded like irritating noise to me.

When does the hole open up? As soon as you start feeling pain, I'm talkin emotional pain, it starts to eat its way from the inside out. Some get in while they're still children. Most get it when they hit teenagehood. There's probably the few exceptions who never get rejected, who never feel lonely, who never want someone out of their reach, who never fight with anyone, and always have a good relationship with God. Those people might go through life and never feel the emptiness. I'm hoping that eventually as time goes on mine will close in on itself and leave nothing but a scar.

All of this is metaphorical of course, but sometimes it feels strangely literal. When I have to dance with Steve Gashler and watch a boy that I'm in love with flirt relentlessly right in front of my face with another girl, knowing that it could have been me he was touching if i hadn't been such an idiot, it takes all that I have not to grab my chest in agony right in the middle of class. And when I'm at home thinking about it I actually do it. I moan and hold my chest because it hurts so bad. I do wonder if other people feel feelings as strong as me sometimes. Does it hurt so bad for other people? Probably not. I'm a Lowe.
The strange thing is, is that though all this, I don't wish it would go away, because i'm finally feeling SOMETHING. I finally know something, someone that I want, instead of being passive and cold. And I think I've been passive and cold for a while. The pain almost feels good. It's like sweet pain. I must be really sick or something. But sometimes the hole gets too large and it's not sweet anymore, and I really need people, a lot of people, and I need to be close to them. My best friend has always needed me but I didn't need anyone so I didn't understand it, and now i'm as needy as anyone. I've never had to lean on anyone till now and I'm grateful this is happening to me because I have compassion now, and I desperately need it, being by nature the least compassionate little ENTJ you will ever know.
I'm so thankful that I have such a huge tightknit family because I think I'll need all of them to keep me afloat before I can built a boat for myself.

I know what I have to do.

Music gives the illusion that you're full.
Relationships allow you to use other people's fullness to fill in yourself, and so you are emotionally draining on other people.
Where can I turn for peace? Where is my solace?

This is what Christ came for. God is infinite and can fill us all up. This is why I have to believe. This is why I have to gain a relationship with him. It's the only way out.