Texas is Weird

I had a classic Houston moment last night. I ate dinner at the bar at Oportos in midtown between a Dutchman who liquifies natural gas on a first date with a Waloon journalist who just moved from Luanda and an off duty Cuban chef by way of Buffalo out with a Guadaloupian (opian? ipian?) engineer. We were served by a Parisian bartender who just moved here from New Orleans and a second bartender who swore he was Mexican but I think he was just a Tejano embarrassed by his lack of exotic street cred. The shrimp piripiri were very good but they inexplicably put mint and those stupid juniper berries in their Gin and Tonics. Which were pink. I kid you not. I told them about my high school locker trauma with tall dutch girls, and that my mostest favoritest Waloon of all time was Tintin. Texas is weird.

Everything Everywhere

Lord, I'm never alone,
wherever I go, you're there.
It's a double edged truth,
but truth all the same.
You're everywhere I go
and everything to me.

I went home the other day.
Been years since I left.
But Mom talked of You
like You'd never gone.
But how can that be?
Because you were always with me.

With me in my tears and
with me in my fears 
With me when I was wrong
and headed way down.
You're everywhere I go
and everything to me.

I don't see You but
I feel You everywhere.
Filling everything
with life and hope.
Even when I can't see.
Even when I can't believe.

With me in my tears and
With me in my fears 
With me when I'm wrong
and headed way down.
Lord, You're everywhere I go
and everything to me.

Lord, I'm never alone,
wherever I go, you're there.
It's a double edged truth,
but truth all the same.
You're everywhere I go
and everything to me.

You woke me up

You came and woke me up
To say you'd  had enough.
Enough of the loneliness and the fear.
Too much of the road and not enough of here.

But the hole in your soul is too big to fill.
And mine is bigger still.
I don't have the love you need.
And I never will.

We can't fill our souls with us.
Tossing holes into holes.
My empty can't fill you full.
And we both feel so alone.

I've heard there's a man with love to spare
who died and rose again.
Maybe if I can get his love.
Then I can share it with you.

He came and woke us up.
To tell us He was enough.
To banish our loneliness and fear.
And to make our pathways clear.

And my hole is still too big to fill.
But he filled it all the same.
For he died to fill us up with love.
And he forever will.

Yes he rose to save our souls for love.
And he forever will.

.

Look at me.

Look at me. Can you see me?
The real me?
Every day I trade my honor 

for nothing but dross.

I say I'm free
but I enslave me.
See that bird she's free.
I want to be like her. 

See my soul through all the dust?
See how I treat myself?
How can you believe in me?
When I'm not even free?

I want to to be free.
I want to be free from me.
He said that to save my life
I must give it up.

Look at me.
Really look at me.
I want to be free.
Lord, set me free.

Lovetruth

Like most of my love poems this is theoretical at the moment.  But here's to hoping.

Is my love true?
They're not the same, you know.
Love stands on truth's shoulders
And truth without love is dead.

So do I have something to say?
Something I want to say to you?
Because without truth my love doesn't reach.
And right now it's killing you.

Is your truth love?
One's not the other,  you know.
Without love truth is buried and dead.
And without truth love's a song in your head

So do you have something to say?
Something you want to say to me?
Because without love your truth is dead.
And right now this is killing me.

So if there's anything left of us.
Some small measure of truth,
a tiny trace of love.
Could we try again?

On being True rather than Right

I confess that I spend too much time trying to "win"  arguments for my own pride.  To lord my superior..... what? Intellect?  loquaciousness? Bloody mindedness? - over others.  I realized what I was doing wrong after reading this:

You know, the older I get, the less I care about being right. I remember when being right was everything. You wanted to win every debate, to brutalize your opponents in any kind of argument, to force them to acknowledge your superior knowledge and experience. It was, in essence, a matter of narcissistic supply, of the confirmation of self-worth through demonstrating superior intellect..... 

Something changed over time. Call it maturity, or wisdom, or understanding of self. Or call it, as I do, a certain intellectual exhaustion. Whatever it is, I just stopped caring about appearances. I didn’t care to prove myself right, or to prove the other wrong.

I wanted to learn. I wanted to understand. I wanted to know truth — regardless of whether or not anyone believed me. It came to the point that I wanted to be proven wrong, in fact, for that would mean I would have discovered a new truth. My own knowledge would have been expanded. I was still emotionally invested in the outcome, per se, but not in the same manner. If the debate granted me no new knowledge, no new perspectives, it was useless. It was a waste of time. It didn’t matter if I had demolished my opponent’s argument. It was still a nothing....... 

I’m much too old for that sort of thing anymore. It is exhausting, chasing after perceived rightness. It is a path to madness. All I want to know is what’s true, and what’s false, so that I might live my own life by those truths, and share them with those I can reach. 

Me too. 

The End

The end comes quickly.
It always does.
He's gone.
It's over.
I'm sorry.

Sundering once strong bonds
- as if tissue.
Of life,
friendship, 
love.

But death cannot erase
the fact of life.
Once there,
the memory
lives on.

And what once was,
always shall be.
Ever shining,
evergreen.
In our souls.

"I will always remember you"
"I will always miss you"
"I will always love you"