This poem was inspired by Cornelius Plantinga’s book Not the Way It’s Supposed to Be and the lyrics to Cake’s song “Rock ‘n’ Roll Lifestyle.”   Bellyful.   Passive-aggressive bomb Or self-medicated napalm?   The neglect of this rhyme Revives the justification of your dime   Spent on supersized fries While kids in the Congo…

My superhero alarm clock

Double-dares me to suit-up

For PE’s mile hike

Up life’s strange coming-of-age,

A call to braces, acne, and puberty.

I look outside my window

And wonder why others’

Faces aren’t melting,

Feeling the nuclear devastation

Of your leaving

I felt like Icarus, whose hubris led him to fly too close to sun, which melted wax on his shoulders, causing feathers to unfasten, and thus his hope of freedom to come crashing down like one of Zeus’s lightning bolts.

“Redeem and restore
What the locusts have eaten—
O Lord—
The schemes Satan’s woven,
Our innocence … stolen.”

True happiness is biblical, moral, pleasurable, historical, and necessary for Christian character.

This poem was inspired by my friend and pastor, Matt Whitlock, and his sermon on “The Silently Simple Life.”

Mystery of Tears is about redemption and restoration. More specifically, it’s about the sufferings (“spasms”) of Jesus that “broke the curse” for our benefit (i.e., “substitutionary atonement”).

It’s time to release the kraken for Christians to look inwardly with contrition in order to love courageously.

Is your view of human nature Stevensonian or Shelleyian? Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde or Dr. Frankenstein?