Built on sand.

You said:
"I woke up when you left.
Not at the sound of the door,
but at the feeling of your having gone."
I said:
"If you were a tent,
I would drive all of your posts into my body
So you would stay beside me"
And I felt your chest empty;
sighs pull you deeper into the bed
and my lungs become places where I store you.

When you were here, your body moved around me like sand:
weaving its way in between my fingers and legs.
Your wholeness was cut up into tiny smallness
that I could bury myself inside. Beneath.
You found your way to curl into every cranny of me.

When you left, I found myself, in spots, eroded.
small spaces, new coves in my bones,
  places where the sands had scraped.
  Grinding in my insides, Like how the ocean can make pockets out of stones,
Somehow, you carved out shelves inside me,
made a lovelier dwelling of such a grateful cave.

Now you're gone I find myself a room of empty shelves.
I say:
"What used to live here? In this cavity I have never seen inside me?"
and I tell myself that the answer is
"Lamps. Coal. Jars of earth. A terrarium. Keys."
And so I fill each empty place with feathers and spices,
ceder, sweetgrass, sage.
I say: "How clever that I have made shelves for such things"

You said:
"When you try to leave me,
I will refuse to let you go.
I will always have your warmth beside me."
I said:
"When I leave,
I will fill the place of your warmth
With lamps, coal, spices, and a fireplace made of Independence.
I suggest you do the same".

  And when I wake up at night,
I look at all the places I've filled inside me
Where you, small, invasive sand, used to live.
And the sound your your being gone keeps me awake.

"Yes, Nicole, breathing is good for you."

Underwater, your song fills my mind,

spheres full of oxygen, racing, glittering over our heads.

I try to catch your racing breath

as it rushes out of reach.

I think to myself "this must be the atlantic"

because inside my blood is getting cold and slow

and it's nothing like the volcanic ocean I love back home.

But as the waves come, they roll me far away

and I feel myself lose sight of your face.

Your face - and the pockets full of air and light.

Echos of your song, breaking the surface of the sky

with tangled seaweed and sweetgrass and clouds and Chronos keeping time.

But I let the dread stay inside

because eventually, I'll come up for air,

and find the land you promised would be there.

Move on.

I think sometimes

of ending this romance I have had with religion.

I want to sign my name at the bottom of the

list of things I've learned,

fold it up and put it in a box somewhere;

resting on top of old macaroni art projects

and forgotten, angry songs.

I want to walk away from this part of who I've been

hang it up like a winter coat in spring,

let it gather dust while I just

shed layers, let myself wander;

hold the palms of my hands, upturned, out spread,

to the warmth of the sun, and get

horribly sunburned again.

Because you get so tired of the personal, you know?

You get so tired of people being so sincere.

You get tired of the stories, the anecdotes, the internal evidence.

You get so tried of "women! guard your hearts!"

and "men! remember how He lay down his life for her!"

and "if it's meant to be, God will make it happen."

and all the bad advice and transparent platitudes

and shocked divorcees and secret teenage abortions.

I'm tired.

I'm tired of the pressure to write "He" with a capital "H"

and I'm tired of the same subjects being discussed

with the same people in different contexts.

I'm tired of internal struggle to drag myself through this interior castle,

and I am tired of how overwhelmingly lonely friendships become

when they are forged on dogma.

I am tired of using words like "overwhelmingly" and "lonely",

and I am exhausted by attempts to chart my own spiritual progress,

and economical progress, and personal progress

and measuring out in my mind

how much attention I pay to myself

vs.

how much attention I pay to the poor.

I think sometimes

that I want to be something else

then what I already am.

Live life with people who believe that

it's better not to marry and that

life can be fulfilling, without striving for perfection or

waiting for another to fulfill us.

Oh, heavy woollen coat,

how I yearn to put you away,

but for you to still keep me safe.

Because all my friends are getting married.

You are like a star, shining so brightly, so far away

and I am like a child, covering the entire sky with her outstretched hands,

pondering how the moon could be so small

that she could blot it out with her thumb.

You are like a star, a flash that lasts thousands of years, a flicker of bright light and sound

and I am am like an old woman, squinting her crinkling eyes upwards,

mourning that she can no longer see the map in the sky that would once guide her

and wondering if the same lights that

punctuated the path of her life

are still there, tonight.

But tonight, you are you

and i am Me.

And I write my name in kisses

across your ever-fading face

as you draw my future in pencil and in shadows.

This poem is not about the Ocean.

My beloved ocean.
Your cold kiss stings my chapped lips,
but you and I both know
I will give myself to you,
regardless.

Violent, beloved ocean!
Keep me preserved in your salt and sand.

Disasterous waves.
You tell me stories in frantic morse code,
I understand little, but I can hear
shipwrecks and mermaids,
iceburgs, coral.

Beautiful, terrible ocean,
when my body is yours, hide me in seashells
which my children will collect from the shore.

I wait all year for the fall.

I have lessons to be learned from autumn;
You do not die gracefully
but you die with passion
and when you have clothed the streets
with your
fire-scented blush
we look up to see
the sky shattered by
the angry arms of empty trees.

Teach me, autumn!
and I will break every heart
that has ever loved me.

For honesty's sake (first draft)

I have given birth to a half-breed of utmost honesty and straight up lies.
For months, stumbling past Spanish street signs in my summer disguise,
I speak to the ghost who follows me, him with impassive eyes,
and snowboots always. Wearing a woolen cap and mittens to defy
my sunscreened skin and tries to convince me, despite bright, sunny skies
that he is not, but it is I who meets the other in unseasonable attire.

I helplessly watch the trees I adore turn to the brightness of fire
and their blood coloured ashes, like leaves, rush towards the roots by which they were first inspired
and conceived. As though praying, I press my ear to the concrete, so tired
and worn thin through the seasons so I may hear the root's longing and desire
to embrace those rose peddle and sun-coloured leaves, who once aspired
to kiss the yawning sky, and now, rejected, return to the cement ground to die.

I tell the ghost that the tree is searching for my heart in the soil, and cry
bitterly, knowing she will not find me, for my heart had long before died
in his hands. My heart; pierced by arrows like icicles which time had tried
effortlessly to melt, was given to my then-living love who had lied
in action, vow and word to protect it and hide it from the howling winds outside.
Ashamed, he offers the gift of my life back and I
refuse. What use have I of this heart, now only able to remember and mourn.
Instead of the steady pulse of love and blood my heart once sang through my now-torn
veins, she is capable only to do this: remember and mourn, remember and mourn.

I toss myself from the limbs of the empty trees, for a moment airborne,
now, I rush to the ground, falling upon a crown made of thorns.
I allow the wounds of that accessory twisted from mockery and scorn
to tear through me. I lay over the roots of trees and I adorn
them with the same colour as the autumn leaves that, from the very same tree, were shorn.
The winter threatens to bury me here, but I stay, for
Underneath the concrete, my new heart swells through the season, warm with forgiveness and reason
and by Spring, I know I will be reborn.

For home.

I've been feeling nostalgic, lately.

I love the cities where I live.

when I grew up, I live on an island

and I loved it.

In the summer everyone in town

would be on the boardwalk, the beach

eating shaved ice and fries.

My family and I would bring a bucket of

cold chicken and ice cream - sit on the sand

watching the sun drop

into the pacific

to light up the cities of

mermaids underneath.

But while I was growing up, all the other kids would complain

because:

we wouldn't get enough snow

we didn't have anywhere cool

we had nothing to do after 6pm

because everything was closed.

Now I am grown up (I think)

and i live on the mainland

all on my own, while my

family still happily eats ice cream

on the beach - they can even see the lights of my current city,

or so they say.

Anyway now I live in the big city,

and I still listen to people complain

because

it rains too much

there are too many poor people

there is no place to go after 3 am

I don't understand those kids from my hometown

because

one year it snowed 3 ft. and that was enough for me

(also, the city had one snowplow. Any more snow would be chaos.)

after 6pm I didn't need to be anywhere but home, with my family

and I could think of nothing better than

my father, my mother, my brother, my sister

on the beach, with a bucket of cold chicken

watching the light fade into

finer points of stars

and the glittering of the mainland, where

I will end up

in the rain

watching the island

disappear after 6 pm.

For Vancouver.

In this city, there are no stars; no
points of light or reason, no
song to hang above our heads, no
brightness pierces through this silent shroud of night, no
reminder of the hopelessly ineveitable.
We see only the dark blood of yesterday's dead dawn
bleeding black as midnight, blocking out the sun.

In this city, the winter is violent and long; no
grass remains alongside the sidewalk to redeem this weather, no
women or child can hide herself from the mercyless rain, no
break in the clouds no,
warm, rebellious ray of stray sunlight finds the cold,
angry homeless people, hiding from a grey sky under blue tarps,
while small children watch the glass jars on their verandas
collect the constant tears of Demeter for Persephone.

In our city, though the darkness blinds us,
we remember we never needed eyesight, anyway
but our faith is in the fact that the stars exist and
we live as though the night lay divided before us,
like the red sea or the crowds on the way to Golgotha.

We believe, you
are our home, and the stars that guide us there; you
are the crisis of springtime, that erupts in the midst of a sky-darkened season; you
are the only reason we know the sun will rise again; you
watch the rain run through the cracks in the sidewalk, watering future daisies; you
pull our mud-soaked hearts from the city and you
set them above the dull, reaching expanse of city skyline. And we
watch, with wonder, the beauty of the ineveitable sunrise.

The hum of the airplane's engine.

I've often wondered which would be more painful; the loss of a child or the loss of a spouse.

May God bless me that I never suffer either.

To put words on the feeling inside

I fear often for my stagnant, static soul
but He is the crisis that triggers the effect of becoming ever more like Him

I fear often getting lost,
but He is both my home and the stars that guide me there

I fear often that I will, in a moment of blinding passion end my small life too soon
I am rash, but He is patient and I am His.

On the city and how it swallowed me.

I love looking through old blog entries,
here is one from this day 2 years ago that I never published:

So, four weeks now and counting. If you're wondering how I'm dealing, the
answer is really weirdly. I'm really stressed and I'm arguing with everyone,
I guess. I just announced the final Hosanna, I'm giving my two weeks at work
tomorrow and I've started packing the stuff I won't need between Nanaimo and New Life. I typically run to the beach for my solace, and the other night where I normally
saw only the expanse of water reaching out, all I could see were the
flickering lights of Vancouver: the city that will swallow who I've always
known myself to be and will teach me to look like someone I've never seen
before. I will die next year, moreso than ever before.

I am terrified.

I was a kid: young, reckless, and wildly arrogant. I set out to conquer the world with love.
Now love is conquering me, and my only attack on this world is loudly refraining when she asks me to change. I am still dying, I am still being resurrected; I am still terrified, I am still hopeful.

on music and my desire to be deaf.

The only explanation for this is that it is both how I feel, and how I wish I would feel.
It's also too heavy on metaphor, but honest.

your heartbeat and mine
are keeping time to a perfect rhythm
that has yet, to ears, been heard.
But now the song has slowed
and my blood's metranome knows
that I can not keep this beat alone,
but it seems as though your thrumming pulse
has stilled.

fr
anti
cally, I change
the song
afraid, that
you were
growing
tired of sing
ing a
long
but I not
ice
I am
the only one
making
sound

AGAIN I attempt a melody of my own:
but AGAIN it descends
into sounds with no
tenor, time or
tone.


it is only when i am silent, do i hear again
the steady pulse:
your heartbreakingly beautiful,
silent and steady song,
and I see:
my complicated harmonies and
stac
cat
o beats
are what really kept me from singing along.

Again, I quiet myself,
i swallow my empty, prideful vocal tone
and surrender my heartbeat
to be a part of your song.

On life and love.

I think about this a lot:

Our imitation of God in this life must be an imitation of God incarnate: our model is the Jesus, not only of Calvary, but of the workshop, the roads, the crowds, the clamorous demands and surly oppositions, the lack of all peace and privacy, the interruptions. For this, so strangely unlike anything we can contribute to the Divine life in itself, is apparently not only like, but is, the Divine life operating under human conditions.
-CS Lewis, The Four Loves

Living a life that expresses our sonship, inheritance and experience with the Holy God means we read the Gospels and do everything God said and did when He moved into our neighborhood. This type of life, devoted to servanthood, compassion, justice and mercy may seem very unremarkable to the average, temporary eye, but the otherworldly love that propels each of these small, seemingly insignificant actions will move with an inexpressible, invisible force that the momentum will draw all attention to the compulsion that drives us: that is, Christ Himself.
So, let's do that.

Moving Mountains - Thrice

I give my body up unto the flames;

And never once have I denied your name

But I don't know the first thing about love.

Twelve Dancing Princesses

In writing class a couple of years ago, we had to write poems inspired by fairy tales. I wrote this one based on the story of the Twelve Dancing Princesses.
I don't really know why I'm posting it; I just like it.

OH! And how my feet do ache by morn
And how the sisters’ shoes lay worn
And by come evening, in the dead day’s dusk
There are king’s sons heads gone from bodies

Because oh! While they slept and slumbered so
We escaped and danced under leaves of gold
And if, for one night, we stayed at home
One more man might have lived.

But the title of heir is too great to decline
And the mystery of where 24 feet escape in the night
Too great to forget
Despite lost heads.

Girls, for the price of shoes and boy’s lives we dance.

"I can't call a blog that, Jeremy!"

In high school, I took a class called Comparative Religions; one of the units was on the branches on Buddhism. I remember learning then, for the first time, about sand mandalas. Huge, intricate designs made on the floors of Buddhist monks utilizing nothing but individually placed grains of dyed sand. I thought for months about old, patient monks with wise and withered faces and clad in orange robes devoting the hours of their days to the colourful reality of sand at their feet. Every grain of sand is delicately placed into the patterns; the process can take days, months, even years.

A finished mandala is always breathtaking - both for the beauty it gives to the world and also the dedication it represents.

When the mandala is done, the monks step back, take a look at the result of hours of backbreaking work, pick up a broom and sweep the whole thing up.

The monks call mandalas a discipline in release, a teaching that beauty is temporary and fleeting, and they much be as able and willing to let go of it as they were to create it in the first place.

In my life, I am currently cleaning up the remnants of my last mandala.

I am learning to be free of my grief for what was once beautifully layed out at my feet, and is now swept up and given to the winds.

Musings from the overpass

here i am,
small,
conceited and arrogant . and
Here is You
the King of Glory,
Alpha and Omega,
Love.
and You, kneeling,
remove my battered shoes,
and begin to clean the wounds
that inflicted
while i was running
from You.

His arrow has pierced these hands.

My life is full of empty things;
so much so that His footsteps resound
as He sidesteps His way through
tone deaf love and
graffiti-littered tombstones

like unbridled morning glories braid their way
through fence posts and tree bark
so does He choke out the sunlight from
the roots of my once admired, though now dying
fruit trees.

And I lay in the potter's field and
wait for the inevitable
sunrise.

Whatever is honourable

A small portion of the poem The Sacrafice by George Herbert:

Now heal thy self, Physician; now come down.
Alas! I did so, when I left my crown
And fathers smile for you, to feel his frown:
Was ever grief like mine?

In healing not my self, there doth consist
All that salvation, which ye now resist;
Your safetie in my sicknesse doth subsist:
Was ever grief like mine?

Betwixt two theeves I spend my utmost breath,
As he that for some robberie suffereth.
Alas! what have I stollen from you? Death.
Was ever grief like mine?