Here's the next poem. It's called "Mercy", and it was written during and about my quiet time with God. This one was not shared on my previous poetry site, but was only sent to my close friend. My friend is a counselor, and printed this to place in a counseling office. A client asked for and took the poem at some point, and so the text of it is floating around out there somewhere.

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in your arms i am drifting away from myself
and toward your purpose for me
the person who i so long to be for you

my heart is a hot iron
branding my chest from the inside
sealing me to your ownership

i can't open my eyes
because joy is overwhelming my soul
and to see anything would be too much

my tears soak into the pages of your word
and i am so sorry that i wasn't
the person i should have been

please don't send me out alone
because i might sin again
and i only want to love you

let me sleep here, and cherish
listening for your heartbeat
in the safety of your embrace
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As promised, here's the short description I wrote alongside the poem in my immediately previous post, when I sent it to my friend: "Ok, so now that you've read it once. Here's what it's really about: It's about God teaching me to look for the beauty that's hidden in my circumstances. Although the poem has kindof dark overtones, I tried to write into it a warm undertone that dominates the poem once you find it."


In addition to posting the poem today, I want to talk a little about gender identity... I have several times heard homosexual persons talk about how they "found out they were gay", and more than once I've heard them talk about how all their lives leading up to the discovery, their school friends (presumably public or private school. and explicitly including those in elementary school) repeatedly pointed out to them that they seemed gay because they were into art, wrote poetry, or played an instrument uncommonly played by men. I myself fit that bill. In fact, when I was very young, I went through a time when I seriously wanted to be a girl (looking back, it was because I thought my older sister was really cool, and my sister habitually excluded me from all the mysterious and cool things happening in her room with her lady friends). Back then, I sometimes even dressed up like a girl with my sister, and I think there are some funny pictures of me as a 2 to 4 year old in a tutu. My parents responded to this by simply explaining to me the functional differences in male and female anatomy, without necessarily encouraging or discouraging the behavior, and they let me dress pretty well however I wanted back then. I think they just sort-of trusted that I would figure myself out, and as a result of their very empirical approach to the topic I can happily say that I have never been confused about my gender.

That said, the point I wanted to approach was this idea that being artistic is unmanly. I think that a brief look at the history of art (and the history of artists) soundly explodes any such thoughts. I'm tempted to rest my case by telling the story of David, the poet, singer, musician and dancer with 6 wives and 20 children, who single-handedly routed Gath. He's the most evidently manly and heterosexual person I can think of. But besides that, poetry, music, and art were dominated by male figures throughout history up until only a couple hundred years ago, and that's indisputably not because those same men in history were homosexual. Now, that said, the people I mention in my previous paragraph who said that others had correctly identified them as homosexual for a very long time due to their interests or candor, do in the same breath decry the "societal stereotypes and pressures" which push them to be either male or female but not both. The irony, if I have to point it out, is that they themselves utilize those stereotypes as markers of effeminacy in men or masculinity in women to the effect of labeling such men and women as latent homosexuals.

What bothers me is not that I myself might be accused of effeminacy on account of my hobbies, but rather that I might have a son who loves to dance, and that if I send him to a public school he'll be subjected to people telling him, "if you like dance and want to be womanly, that's quite ok, we accept all sexualities here", as if sex had anything at all to do with it, especially in the mind of a prepubescent individual. To be honest, it's upsetting to me that sexual education is even held in elementary schools rather than in the home, but that's another topic. I guess my only recourse is to home-school my children.

Now, I hear the chorus singing, "but won't they be underdeveloped socially?". That is to say, all the years leading up to the invention of the automobile, during which the average person knew those on his block and rarely, if ever, traveled more than 5 miles from his home, and during which the modern conception of public school was actually rather unusual, there was not but a few people who developed healthily. This is, of course, to spit in the face of the authors of the great classical works of literature, many of whom were home-schooled themselves. (all this to over-simplify the issue)

Maybe I'm more venting than explaining.... I'm glad I got that out of my system.

"Could you please explain to me the relationship between active, reactive, and apparent power?"