Call me “Driftwood.”

I’ve been all around the world,

offering my flesh as a sacrifice

to the highest bidder—

a loved-starved sinner—

stretching my skin

and my limbs and my sins

till their breaking point 

to fashion a sunburned sail—

a jib unlike any other headsail—

pulled up high-and-tight

by my lustful entrails.

The reason EMGs are so destructive, no matter how great the accomplishments, is because the person who is unaware of who she really is, sadly, is merely a shell of a person like an oyster that creates a pearl from an irritation inside itself. No matter how many layers of beautiful minerals that give it its shiny iridescence, it’s still a foreign object to itself at the core of itself. Perhaps Socrates was right: “The unexamined life is not worth living.”

“…or we can explain further

that story gives truth meaning 

like Aesop’s fables 

and Lewis’s Narnian Chronicles 

or better yet

think of Christ’s agrarian parables

that strum the soul

on a spiritual level

with a celestial harp of gold 

and hands of clay that bleed when cracked.”

Friends feed the inherent desire in every single one of us to be seen and heard and remembered. And that makes us feel immovable and immortal as if the universe itself came alive to witness a miracle. And nothing we say or do will ever be forgotten. (This hints at the foreshadowing of a personal relationship with the ultimate Being—immovable and immortal—who is closer to us than a brother and who created us to know Him and to be known by Him.) But what if this convivial concept of friendship escapes us?

God: “Truth is self-love that sets you free and enables you to see your sin as an opportunity to talk with Me about why you sin so we can have conversations like this one and walk further down life’s path together. This is My heart. This is discipleship.”

We need to hear and heed this NOW more than EVER! Be kind. Be understanding. People are fragile, whether they show it or not. Learn to recognize the frightened child in everyone by listening rather than speaking. Just as you were when you were a child—afraid of failure—you will undoubtedly be tempted as an adult…

A carcass with a pulse,

a miracle dipped in myrrh,

perfumed a Jewish beard

and consecrated a blameless soul…

Sometimes monsters

of our own making

show up relentlessly

until we look introspectively

at the mess we’ve made

when we’ve felt incarcerated

without the possibility of parole

as both our own judge and jury.

Kindness is more than a word,

although all words have spark of light

because words bleed meaning,

infused with divine birthright

even out of the mouths

of mortals and neophytes.

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.