In the wild, searching for my soul, I met a lone messenger. "Are you but a blackbird here in God's green fields, come to pick your worms and fly home?," he asked. "Are you a dancer, here to make love to the grass and sky? Or are you a seed, come to sleep in his soil, take root and rest until you've grown tall enough to give shade to others?" I had no answer for him, but I knew I was welcome, whatever the case.

"I broke my tooth," my boy said with a sob

I calmed his cries, Mom took him to the doc

When all was done, and they had fixed his gob

I sat him down to have a little talk

"Did you feel something 'fore it was too late,

the seconds leading up to when you fell?"

He had, of course, heard Instinct tell him, "Wait"

The softest voice speaks true, so hear it well

Raindrops patter on the glass

Wipers slosh through windshield grime

Feet scrape softly on the grass

All together, marking time

Wind-rocked limbs creak, forth and back

Blown together with the chime

Puffs of smoke beat from the stack

All together, marking time

Love the rhythm, loathe the ways

Moderns move with Clock's cold pace

Bland usurper of our days

Turns our cadence dull, stiff, base

Don't eat, then, from twelve to one

Nor do work from eight to five

Eat when morning's work is done

Only in life's rhythm strive

The smooth, tidy turn of the mall carousel calms me, so I sit, and I stare. Pleasures are few for a shattered mind like mine, and they are simple, and they are fragile. I feel it close again, so close... Like if I stared a bit longer, it'd all come together. I'd finally be one again. I'd feel my own soul again.

But I'm not blessed with that blessing, no. The feeling fades, slips back out of reach, and God and self seem far away again. The innocents and adversaries are now ceramic dolls and demons, respectively. A hard, wicked hand touches my shoulder. I don't fight it; demons are far too common to fight them all. His voice asks me to leave, and still, it seems all too common.

I grew up with eyes fixed on the flickering god in the corner of the living room, but at seventeen, like so many others, I was thrust into a dusty tan reality that I didn't even understand. And this reality had feelings and fatigue, screams that couldn't be turned down with a remote control, and smells.

Smells, like fear dipped in sweat and blood.

Yeah, I'll leave.

When rank sarcasm burns into your skin, when teeth spread out in smiles that are, in truth, hungry grins, when close friends' laughter turns cruel and cold, take it all in, and take it down deep. Take it into your belly, to the seat of your soul. You'll see, in plainness and truth, that your deep can't be offended by sneers and snickers, nor even by pain and punishment, any more than the stars can offend the sky. Then, forgive.

The wind whips frozen needles at my skin

Each breath an icy iron in my chest

The black woods tell me with their chirp and din:

The time has come to end this hunter's test

By day this world is mine to roam and rule

But nightfall means this man is no more king

And campfires must be built against the cruel,

wild tooth and claw, but most of all the sting

of mem'ry red and raw this Texas night:

Of Mother bawling blood beneath these stars;

Of my dear father's body, cold and white;

Of fallen fields and all my soul's old scars