hard to be soft, tough to be tender...

I cannot help that I don't buy into these systems, I can't help that I'm alive while everyone else is too busy jostling each other and faking their faces, because I love beauty and God and people and the smile is mostly true and the laughter genuine.

If I spent all my time trying to please people I'd go crazy because I'm either too negative or too happy or too Madonna/whore or whatever, everyone wants you to be something else, assumes one thing or another. I can be more circumspect maybe, but I won't change who I am, if past life is any indication, couldn't if I tried.

I try to live out this whole quiet life, try to live out what I believe and it's hard as anything to treat others the way one wants to be treated when they don't do that, to love enemies, to pray for those who make your life frustrating. Trusting in something that still seems so abstract is hard for me, my faith existing and yet so fragile and small.

It's not that I have any reason to doubt, especially after everything else that's happened. I sometimes wonder if the reason that people get all crazy and fundamentalist is that it's easier to hide behind structures and rules than actually deal with the interior of one's soul in relation to God and others.




I tremble
They're going to eat me alive
If I stumble
They're going to eat me alive

Can you hear my heart beating like a hammer?
Beating like a hammer?
Help, I'm alive, my heart keeps beating like a hammer
Hard to be soft
Tough to be tender

Come take my pulse, the pace is on a runaway train
Help, I'm alive, my heart keeps beating like a hammer
Beating like a hammer

If you're still alive
My regrets are few
If my life is mine
What shouldn't I do?
I get wherever I'm going
I get whatever I need
While my blood's still flowing
And my heart still beats . . .
Beating like a hammer
Beating like a hammer