In Your Own Words — July 2018
So Lost
By Raelene Johnson, VOICE vendor
Raelene Johnson. Credit: Giles Clasen
When you live in the streets you feel so lost. When you see people walking into their home, all you see is lost hope because you can’t get inside.
Out in the streets people don’t see you, they turn their head away from you. You are so lost, nobody to help you, and you become like the walking dead. Death tries to take you away from life. You are all alone, fighting to stay alive.
“Why does nobody see me?” you wonder. “Why don’t they talk to me and help me?”
The soul is a funny thing. It fights for you. It knows help will come someday. Some tiny hope deep down keeps you going! Loneliness is part of the streets. It’s hard to find someone who you can really trust to be with you. But if you have no one…believe me , you will really be lost.
Who will help you when others look away from you? When they make you feel like there is no hope? That is the way people get lost. No hope. No kindness. No love.
Let’s change things. Wake up and make a change in someone’s life. I feel that if half the world did this, we would have no broken and lost people walking around. If everyone just helped one person, the world would be a better place. ■
Surviving the Sea of Loneliness
By Brian Augustine, VOICE vendor
Brian Augustine. Credit: Jesse Borrell
As I stand in the middle of the desert of loneliness
Looking over the sea of love
Watching the boats of relationships
Some in calm waters
Others fighting terrible storms
While some find the calm waters again
Others are wrecked on the rocks of selfishness
Watching two people walk out of the clear blue waters
Each going in different directions
I feel both sorrow and envy for them
For they have lost something beautiful
Something I haven’t gotten to experience
I look around at the men and women that populate the sandy hills
I see their defensive masks
That protect them from the hurt of the world
Each looking as strong as steel
But all of them are made of the sand that surrounds us
All of us are looking for the person to join us
To build a relationship
So we can set out to see and ride the clear blue waters
To build the boat is simple
Yet it’s the hardest thing to do
Just show your true heart to the other
And you’ve built half of it
Then the other person shows you their heart
You’ve built a beautiful boat
I don’t know how many half boats I have built
Each time only to have the harsh sands of loneliness
Burn my heart anew
Every time the pain as intense as the first
It becomes harder to open my heart to another
Because of those memories
But each morning
I trek to the fountain of hope
Drink its refreshing waters
Because my memories of being on that sea
The joy and wonderment
Is the feeling that I crave every moment of my life ■
To Von, With Love
By Virginia Bryant, VOICE vendor
Virginia Bryant. Credit: Sarah Ford
Carry thou with me a forward pass, Interfere, for me your beloved, this downward, spiraling fall, capture me within your arms of embrace, an eternity of tackled empathy, grounding me within your prayerful space, cascading within your circuitry of condensation of your fevered pace.
Deliver unto me your fragrant follies, aloft and singing with me on your angled knee, luminaries that thou and your team be, soaring into Denver’s cloudy misting ways, avenues of utmost delicacies, progressive flights. For I am of multiple extremities, your football of VOICE, your quarterback of escape from tunnels of tyrannical atrocities of absurdities.
Float with me above this crowded air so our visibility is such, linking geographically, our hunger and thirst, bringing us softly to earth as one.
This be, this womanly veteran’s request, an honorable one, I suggest.
From Love, Virginia ■