Hiding In Plain Sight

     For a decade almost, I've had seeds of anger, cultivated under the soil of my past in regards to my original church. Entrenched in tradition, I went majorly to please my parents. "Honor thy father and mother", right? I knew what not to do and avoided them. Pretty simple operation for a naive child, over-protected and smothered by the fabric of pews every Sunday. Then, my world opened up and closed off at the same time: I graduated to the youth program, if one can call it that.

     I didn't have a full set of social tools to bridge gaps between myself and others easily. I was quiet, reserved, wanting acceptance, but the way to achieve it was unknown. In the Real World of my group, it came as no surprise that I was cliqued out of that channel of the upper echelon. In hindsight, I could've tried more instead of isolating and victimizing myself, but I didn't know what I know now. With three to four leadership changes in our youth group generation, there was no one to cling to for tangible comfort; by the time they got close, they left. This made us detached from the church; we didn't have much of a voice, our teenage outcries squashed by wretched indifference and assumptions of us being okay.

     We spoke of camps being the end-all-be-all of our spiritual unrest. Like throwing preteens to a babysitter, it seemed that God could only be seen or experienced at places with colored flags flying high. We got a spiritual adrenaline rush for at most a week, and  then we got a one-way ticket back to topical relationships, half-hearted attempts, luke-warm pursuits, self-fulfilling prophecies, and holistic unfulfillment from the one place we could've utilized as refuge and sanctuary: the bride of Christ.

     There was a sinful virus that ran rampant in our group; its symptoms being legalism, social barriers, superiority, and pride. It incurred deep spiritual wounds in a majority of us. Out of the 30-40 people that were in the youth, 4-6 of us still go to the same church. Though unbiblical, I understand why people leave places they were hurt by.

     ~80% mortality rate. Impressive, Satan.

     To all who knew me, I pray you can forgive my reclusive nature, my selfishness, and my pride running so deep that I breathed in the pollen of my anger in full bloom in silence rather than pursuing hatchet-burying.

     To all who can empathize with this situation at all, I pray that whatever sin, shame, hurt, anger, or judgment you were subjected to can be given to the One who died for all these things. I pray you can let go. Healing is a time-staking, painfully aggravating process, but it's far healthier than harboring pain and allowing it to fester and ferment into the heady brew of bitterness.

Before I came to understand

Excuse my diction,
It being dissimilar to society's depiction
Of fact and fiction;
But who has the authority to that kind of restriction
Of yeses and nos,
Rights and wrongs;
Who gets to draw the line between states of elite and dereliction?

My very opinion: a complex contradiction
Of what the secular world considers to be the way;
Like curds and whey separated by vinegar,
Take this with a grain of salt.
My voice, my truth, my witness-the way I exalt
My God, though always at fault.

Because of my humanity;
My ability to sin.

My soul in spiritual warfare,
My mind in constant doubt,
My heart and morals deflecting temptation,
God, make me a demenstration
And show me the light, so I may take the darkness out.

Mama Monster's Hysterectomy

Kaleidoscope hair, lightning bolt eyes,
Bandstands of dramatic, it's no wonder
She hides her true identity.
She grinds and howls in the shadows,
Hiding in plain sight, her mask painted upon
Her face like a make-shift masquerade.

P-p-p-p-please spare me from the sultry slitherings,
The auto-tuned siren song, the sex-infused pandering to the masses.
The broken record that's sensationalized, the individuality
So explicit, like a moth to a flamethrower;
Forced uniquity so domineering,
A man-eater straddling an asexual,
Refusing to be ignored.

The trinkets of spirituality and the crosses adorned
Are flagrantly exhibited in flippant ceremony.
Under the guise of subtle 'worship', the only
Thing she she puts her paws up to is her own vanity.
Her own god is her mirror; her sacrilege, unapologetic and trendy.

Her lust-inducing, chameleonic hip gyrations act as hypnotic metronomes
to the club-thirsty, drink-drowned, and naevity-laced populace.
Her ovaries ooze out deception & strobe lights;
Her uterine wall is clung to by sin;
Her fallopian tubes are the roads to destruction.
She prepares to pop out another stillbirth,
And it's time for a doctor's visit.