Find my fight with my voice
Abducted mind, do I have a choice

Breathing in with scabs on my lungs
Irritated heart, sweet tooth rot, everything’s stung

Like blood stain track marks of crimson residue
Killing myself in the silent echo of the ways I hurt you

Lost in broken reflections when pain is my default setting
My demons haunt me with my sins, there’s no forgetting
When life is beauty in betrayal to moments worth regretting
Honesty wallows and I’m having trouble swallowing reality upsetting
Taking chances on a lost cause, I’m not worth the risk of all you’re betting

Redemptions plea, my soul on trial
All the ways that I defile
Tears trailing down a broken smile
Trending heartache when healing is going out of style

Idol of our scars as we revel in the suffering
Obstructed streams of consciousness still buffering

Waiting for the ending because the journey is ugly till it’s done
When everyday feels like I’m face to face with a loaded gun
Is the light lost on my eyes when I can’t see the sun
Dismissing all reservations, I’ll speak every word till my heart is one

Two sides of the mouth in vain repetitions
Am I made of hope or bad decisions
My world torn in two like double visions

Left undone and without resolve
When my mind is a problem that I can’t solve
Self centering gravity, I’m in orbit as I revolve

Going in circles again I spiral and feel like I’m out of control
Can I reposes myself from all the ways that I sell my soul

Is it too raw to be to real
When I have to process the pain just to try to feel

To escape the numbness of silence
When I live subject to these ways I kill
On the altar of a better violence
Sedate my wandering and tell me to be still

Authenticate peace when life is a matter of love at war
Part of me is casualty and the other part is the spoils
It’s a question of what’s worth dying for
As I sleep with snakes and I’m lost in the coils

Tell me you love me and prove to me what’s worth the affection
When I fall prey to my own sense of self-rejection
Cooking in the microwave gratification of micro aggression
I burn myself in my own convection
Give me a vote of confidence in the fraudulence of a rigged election

Lost in these patterns of bad behaviors with the best intentions
In the conflict of unspoken contentions

When the pressure mounts and I keep on going
I’m not giving up, praying that it’s not too late when it feels like there’s no way of knowing

When I feel like a sand castle in disintegrating waves
The empire of my own madness finds my heart enslaved
Every second in passing like moments to graves
Doing all I can to keep my head up, can I be saved

I know me but I don’t want to
When all that I see is the ways I fail
How do I see beyond my own self hatred
When I’m far too aware of my own betrayal

Write a path to grace from the plateau
When tragedy is the boast of an empty echo

Traumas instigated of memory and stresses that I bring upon myself
Looking for heaven on the other side of a self made hell…

(I think the significance of this poem despite the way it echoes things I've expressed in other ways in the past as far as the nature of my struggles with lust and self-disappointment as a result is just the raw honesty of it that proceeded a recent encounter at my church with a minster that had a history with drug addiction in his past.

The weight of my lusts has been a difficult burden to bear that even in despite of my honest reflections and confessions I hadn't felt a full release of the shame of especially as it has interfered with my relationship with my wife. As men in our culture I feel as though it's only recently that the eyes of the church and world alike are opening to the reality of how truly devastating an addiction it can be.

Not only do you feel shame but it feels like there's a certain level of shaming about it that's more harsh to sin of this nature as opposed to drugs or alcohol. I mean I know that addicts are all viewed as people who make excuses, live in the past, and play victim to everything, but beneath all the symptoms of the mindsets that justify self-destructive behavior patterns is a reality that something beneath the surface is broken and as much as tough love is necessary to kind of slap people of it, so is compassion not about telling people how broken they are but loving them through it.

We often define better the diagnosis than we present an adequate representation of a love that cures because if we were honest, while it's easy to point to more obvious sins and addictive behavior patterns we've all got bad habits and vices that are harmful to various degrees, some perhaps more socially tolerable or even acceptable in our minds than others. Whether it's sugar, caffeine, shopping/materialism, gluttony, gossip (drama addiction), whatever the behavior or case may be there are certain ways of thinking and self-justifications in the human reason whereby we excuse ourselves and look down on others to avoid personal accountability.

If we think of others as worse we can feel better about ourselves, the thing is we often chase the will to feel better about ourselves but not love ourselves better. If we learned to love ourselves even in the midst of our mess we might be more geared to mercy towards even the ugliest realities of a morally defective humanity.

The way we scale our sins and ostracize others that sin differently than we do is perhaps one of the most broken mindsets that we operate by. On a side note it's funny how people say that church people are any more judgmental than others. Anywhere you go people judge you, church is just full of imperfect people just like the grocery store or any other place of business or crowd/congregation.)