Battlefield Songs

I received a telegram last night.

I opened it, not knowing what it would say.

My lover a fallen soldier, sacrificed his life that day.

“He died bravely, honorably, won the fight.”

 

I opened my eyes this morning.

Sunlight streamed inside, the birds sung their song.

Don’t they know that I’m in mourning?

Don’t they understand that everything’s all wrong?

 

Today they’ll be sending his body on the train.

Nobody will be here to understand my pain.

But the birds will keep singing when they lay him in the ground,

Their song will guide me to a light I will have found.

For they sing of hope, a song bright and true;

A song that he heard on the battlefield too.

 

 

 

Andrea Gibson

Andrea Gibson is everything I hope to be as a writer.

The Nutritionist

The nutritionist said I should eat root vegetables
Said if I could get down 13 turnips a day
I would be grounded,
rooted.
Said my head would not keep flying away to where the darkness is.
The psychic told me my heart carries too much weight
Said for 20 dollars she’d tell me what to do
I handed her the twenty,
she said “stop worrying darling, you will find a good man soon.”
The first psychotherapist said I should spend 3 hours a day sitting in a dark closet with my eyes closed, with my ears plugged
I tried once but couldn’t stop thinking about how gay it was to be sitting in the closet
The yogi told me to stretch everything but truth,
said focus on the outbreaths,
everyone finds happiness when they can care more about what they can give than what they get
The pharmacist said klonopin, lamictil, lithium, Xanax
The doctor said an antipsychotic might help me forget what the trauma said
The trauma said don’t write this poem
Nobody wants to hear you cry about the grief inside your bones
My bones said “Tyler Clementi dove into the Hudson River convinced he was entirely alone.”
My bones said “write the poem.”
The lamplight.
Considering the river bed.
To the chandelier of your fate hanging by a thread.
To everyday you could not get out of bed.
To the bulls eye on your wrist
To anyone who has ever wanted to die.
I have been told, sometimes, the most healing thing to do-
Is remind ourselves over and over and over
Other people feel this too
The tomorrow that has come and gone
And it has not gotten better
When you are half finished writing that letter to your mother that says “I swear to God I tried”
But when I thought I hit bottom, it started hitting back
There is no bruise like the bruise of loneliness kicks into your spine
So let me tell you I know there are days it looks like the whole world is dancing in the streets when you break down like the doors of the looted buildings
You are not alone and wondering who will be convicted of the crime of insisting you keep loading your grief into the chamber of your shame
You are not weak just because your heart feels so heavy
I have never met a heavy heart that wasn’t a phone booth with a red cape inside
Some people will never understand the kind of superpower it takes for some people to just walk outside
Some days I know my smile looks like the gutter of a falling house
But my hands are always holding tight to the ripchord of believing
A life can be rich like the soil
Can make food of decay
Can turn wound into highway
Pick me up in a truck with that bumper sticker that says
“it is no measure of good health to be well adjusted to a sick society”
I have never trusted anyone with the pulled back bow of my spine the way I trusted ones who come undone at the throat
Screaming for their pulses to find the fight to pound
Four nights before Tyler Clementi jumped from the George Washington bridge I was sitting in a hotel room in my own town
Calculating exactly what I had to swallow to keep a bottle of sleeping pills down
What I know about living is the pain is never just ours
Every time I hurt I know the wound is an echo
So I keep a listening to the moment the grief becomes a window
When I can see what I couldn’t see before,
through the glass of my most battered dream, I watched a dandelion lose its mind in the wind
and when it did, it scattered a thousand seeds.
So the next time I tell you how easily I come out of my skin, don’t try to put me back in
just say here we are together at the window aching for it to all get better
but knowing as bad as it hurts our hearts may have only just skinned their knees knowing there is a chance the worst day might still be coming
let me say right now for the record, I’m still gonna be here
asking this world to dance, even if it keeps stepping on my holy feet
you- you stay here with me, okay?
You stay here with me.
Raising your bite against the bitter dark
Your bright longing
Your brilliant fists of loss
Friend

if the only thing we have to gain in staying is each other,
my god that’s plenty
my god that’s enough
my god that is so so much for the light to give
each of us at each other’s backs whispering over and over and over
“Live”
“Live”
“Live”

Car Radio

Because I feel the need to post these lyrics. Car Radio by Twenty-One Pilots.

I ponder of something great
My lungs will fill and then deflate
They fill with fire
Exhale desire
I know it's dire
My time today

I have these thoughts
So often I ought
To replace that slot
With what I once bought'Cause somebody stole
My car radio
And now I just sit in silence

Sometimes quiet is violent
I find it hard to hide it
My pride is no longer inside
It's on my sleeve
My skin will scream
Reminding me of
Who I killed inside my dream
I hate this car that I'm driving
There's no hiding for me
I'm forced to deal with what I feel
There is no distraction to mask what is real
I could pull the steering wheel

I have these thoughts
So often I ought
To replace that slot
With what I once bought
'Cause somebody stole
My car radio
And now I just sit in silenceI ponder of something terrifying
'Cause this time there's no sound to hide behind
I find over the course of our human existence
One thing consists of consistence
And it's that we're all battling fear
Oh dear, I don't know if we know why we're here
Oh my,
Too deep
Please stop thinking
I liked it better when my car had sound

There are things we can do
But from the things that work there are only two
And from the two that we choose to do
Peace will win
And fear will lose
There's faith and there's sleep
We need to pick one please because
Faith is to be awake
And to be awake is for us to think
And for us to think is to be alive
And I will try with every rhyme
To come across like I am dying
To let you know you need to try to think

I have these thoughts
So often I ought
To replace that slot
With what I once bought
'Cause somebody stole
My car radio
And now I just sit in silence

I ponder of something great
My lungs will fill and then deflate
They fill with fire
Exhale desire
I know it's dire
My time today

I have these thoughts
So often I ought
To replace that slot
With what I once bought
'Cause somebody stole
My car radio
And now I just sit in silence

 

 

Europe

So in approximately one year I will be heading off to Europe with my friends and some classmates that I tolerate and call acquaintances. It'll be a wonderful time and we will be there for about 10 days. I looked at the itinerary today and I'm really excited. We go to London and Paris and Rome and probably some other places I can't remember. I'm really looking forward to the Eiffel Tower. I am pretty much in love with the Eiffel tower and yes this is an exciting thing. But what I'm really looking forward to is seeing Les Miserables. When I saw that on the schedule I literally started crying out of happiness and running around my house (yes that is a thing that happened) and listening to the various soundtracks and singing in the showers and I'm probably going to cry throughout the entire show whilst fangirling because yes. Les Mis. In Europe. Is a thing. That is going to happen in my life in less than a year.

Motivation

I have 7 more blogs to do, some math problems, and 2/3 of an essay to write before tomorrow. It's almost 7 PM and I have no motivation to get any of it done. I kind of just want to lie in bed and do anything else but I have to get this done.
And then when I get home tomorrow I have to study for my history exam on Tuesday and then when I get home on Tuesday I have to study for my math exam on Wednesday and then after that I have to study for the SAT on Saturday and then I'm free. But not really because next Tuesday I'm getting my wisdom teeth taken out and I'll have to recover from that which will not be fun so...there goes the first week of my summer. At least I can lie in bed and read and watch TV shows and be lazy and drink milkshakes.
On to more interesting things, I've been listening to Car Radio by Twenty-One Pilots for the last 3 days and it is so much more than a song it is like a religious experience and words cannot describe it and yeah, I swear if it weren't for music I wouldn't be here. Music keeps me sane when other things can't.
The little things in life are important. Including finishing my homework and going to bed.

The Jesus Agenda

Every Sunday, I go to church, sit through 3 hours of youth group and a sermon, and return home, very confused and a bit sad. I thought Christianity was about following Jesus. I thought Jesus was all about loving others. Therefore, shouldn't Christianity be all about loving others?
Then why don't I see it at the very place that bears His name in its title?
I see judgment. I see a bunch of people who are very alike and a few who are very different. I see the many casting judgment on the few. I see the many casting judgment on each other and on themselves and I don't think God meant for things to be this way. I think He meant for church to be a safe place for anyone to be able to go. I think He meant for us to love Him and others and ourselves and for that to be what's very important. Let God do the judging.
I listen to sermons and come away with the sense that this Christian life is very restrictive, with all these rules and regulations about what you can and can't do in order to be "holy" and "set apart". You have to be really careful with what you watch and what you listen to and you can't cuss and it's dangerous to hang around non-believers and no, you can't ever do things just for yourself because that's selfish and you have to read your Bible every day and pray like all the time and go to church at least every week and volunteer and go up to people and tell them about Jesus.
Last thing I heard, all you had to do was believe.
Just believe.
This is the God I believe in, the God who just wants everyone to believe in Him and acknowledge how awesome He is by doing stuff to love other people because they love Him and He loves them. The God who doesn't focus on building your life inside a "Christian environment" but focuses on spreading the message about Him to the world. The God who just wants us to love everybody we can because that's what He did.
John Muir said it well: "I'd rather be in the mountains thinking of God, than in a church pew thinking of the mountains."
And so, no, I will not be a "Christian girl". I was not made to read devotional books and frequent Lifeway and listen to K-Love and Instagram pictures of my modest yet fashionable outfits. Not that any of those things are bad. They just aren't me. And if you say that you can only connect with God through a certain step-by-step way, well then, I think that limits God. A God of infinite limitless power.
And so, what I will be is a Christ-follower who relies on Him, a Jesus-imitator who tries to love people.

Aquarium

At the aquarium, I wander from tank to tank, watching the fish swim back and forth. I wonder what they're thinking, if they can think. I wonder if they miss the ocean, if they're lost like Nemo was, or if they never knew any different. But most of all, I envy them, because they can't know what it's like to drown.
And I wish my lungs were gills, because maybe then I wouldn't be drowning in waves and waves of self-pity. Maybe then I would know how to swim. Maybe then I wouldn't feel lost in this great big ocean that is life.
But my lungs are just lungs and they do not know how to carry on underwater. They burn and they fail me and suddenly I am coughing, drowning. I need oxygen. Without it I can't breathe. Maybe the fish will show me how.
I sit at the bottom, on the ocean floor of life and I wonder how I got here. How I arrived at this hostile environment where a two-lunged no-gilled human like me cannot possibly survive. And then I realize, I'm the only one making myself stay.
It takes pushing away from the bottom, swimming upwards towards that ever-hopeful light, breaking through the barrier, gasping for breath, to realize that you knew how to swim all along.
Just keep swimming.