The Uniform of Freedom

You didn't look scared.
I looked into your eyes,
and it struck me
how young you are.
You couldn't be much older than me.
You are the stars and stripes,
the blood sweat, and tears.
I wanted to say something,
so we could be alone together.
Because I wanted a friend and thought
maybe, you wanted one too.
But I didn't.
And I'm sitting in this tunnel,
thanking you without you knowing it,
for being braver than me.

Forgiveness

FORGIVENESS

Scraped knees from falling to the ground in defeat.

Raw, torn fingers from scraping and pounding the walls closing in.

Salty cheeks, dry riverbeds when no more tears can come.

I can’t do it, I can’t be perfect, I can’t even come close.

Bruised and battered, soul sinking to the ground.

The eternal agony of falling short.

this is the pain of humanity.

Trying to follow Christ, but finding you are so far behind

that ahead, the road is empty-no one is left.

But next to you, the light illuminates the dark places in your mind.

A hand lifts your soul up, dries you tears, and you can stand.

Power is in you, a love and hope so bright

you forget the pain.

You are still hurt. Your torn fingers, though, willingly take His

You find the pain is gone when your knees bend to follow Him.

The road is no more empty, but you can see angels on either side

they smile. They know you.

As you walk, you learn from Him, and it stirs a memory.

Your bruises are gone.

He points out their memories on you-memories, no more, just

loving reminders that here is better.

As you walk, your heart gets lighter, the hiil becomes easier,

and the once harsh heat is cooled by a breeze.

You ask why it feels familiar, all of it. He turns and shows you,

fluttering far behind, and then, turnilng again, far ahead,

a white curtain.

Beyond here, He said, from forever to forever, I was with you.

I am with you. I will be with you.

Come home.

Olivia Madsen

Winter-Spring 2013

I've Never Done That Before

Here you go.

You don’t deserve it, just so you know.

You should be begging for it.

No, thank you.

Now that you have it, I’m beginning to see how precious

I am.

Really though.

If I don’t stain the grey matter inside your head deep enough,

it’s time to take myself somewhere else.

I think it’s too bad that for you, I’m not good enough.

Ouch. Whey did I do that? Here, let me borrow the knife-I can

cut myself faster than you can cut me.

But there-all the dirt is out. Just me, tearing that last skin

off for you to see me wrapped in what imaginary protection I have left.

Why are so you strange?

Hmmm…I’ve never wanted to curse in a poem before…

What now? It’s foolish to hope anything different.

I hope your heart explodes so fast that all of this goes away.

I hope the heavens send me someone that’s good for me, for once.

that I can be good to.

What if I cork all those holes with cement?

My heart will be ugly.

What if people look at me and say,

What if they don’t say? Or think? twice.

I can feel myself closing. I think I’ll just stay that way.

It’s lonely in here.

Please send me someone who cares enough to open me up.

Olivia Madsen

May 8, 2013

Courage

Standing at the edge of eternity I look

at the minutes spread before my eternal gaze.

The bright sphere of light cannot hold me forever if I am to 

become as my mother and father here.

I have watched many came and go, I have watched their

triumphs, and all Heaven has ached at the falls.

Some I know will not come home.

My soul quails at pain, fear, and sin awaiting me.

I am so clean here.

I am hugged by my family. My friends say, “See you soon”

I absorb the light. I get to take it with me, and I will

never be alone.

I know that I want celestial glory more than I’m afraid.

When I am imperfect, He will heal me perfectly.

When I am scared, He will be brave.

When I am broken, He will be whole.

When I am sometimes, He is always.

I take my guardian’s hands, and together, we step

into Earth.

Into that bright glaring light, noises, smells, feelings.

The loving eyes see me, but they don’t know that I know nothing

yet except that I can still see a little bit of Heaven

And in just a few minutes, I’ll take my guardian’s hands again,

And again my eternal eyes will see.

And through the formerly insurmountable pain and fear and

sin,

I will kneel before my Father and receive a crown of eternal

righteousness and glory.

And I will be clean there.

Olivia Madsen

Spring 2013

Written the night of the General Young Women Broadcast

the first one i ever did

Can You Be OK With It?

There is no mass-produced human.

Money doesn’t grow on trees and as soon as you spend it, it’s gone.

Trees and brick walls and snowflakes don’t change but for us they do depending on who’s watching them.

One size doesn’t fit all

and sometimes sizes don’t fit at all.

When our hands meet they say something different than they did yesterday and something better than when they hung empty.

But sometimes empty is better filled with “I” and not “you” for now

and maybe my pen will just write words to America.

To me and my great-granddaughter who will have forgotten space and earth smells because her parents forgot to

tell her.

Sometimes a smile isn’t happy and tears bring the sweetest moments.

Sometimes I want my muted colors and lace-up boots

and sometimes I want my t-shirt

but what I really want is air that you can breathe and say, that is the world coming alive, and bare feet in grass and flying over the pool noodle.

We all have hard white walls and someone can push and push and we stay cool and firm, but poke us a certain way and they fall through the walls because they’ve shattered us.

And when you shatter their shell it feels good because you see their love and hate and it doesn’t fit anymore

because those hard white walls were what everyone else thinks

and everyone else doesn’t care about love and hate-

they let you be with your walls.

But I care

and I’ve broken my walls for you and you can see my delight and fear, see through me like the glistening pool around my dreams and trials, the bright yellow core of me that takes ages to swim through.

But I care.

I don’t want white walls because they’re all the same.

I want cracks in people’s conformity, cracks like fingerprints ‘cause they’re never the same.

You two can like the same song but chances are 

when you open your mouth it will come out different 

when you sing it because your hurt is different,

your veins carry different poison,

and your mouth speaks different hope.

The problem is that we can never understand because there’s no mass-produced fear or joy or revenge. 

Love can mean a billion things and we come close to knowing what your love means

but we can’t get there because it’s yours.

So I can hold your hand and hear your words and watch you fall over

but you are you and I can’t enter your world, nor you mine.

So we cry and scream and triumph uniquely alone, but up, up

our words mean the right thing and our joy is understood

exactly as we live it.

Because there is no mass-produced human. 

Because you cut that tree down and I want to climb it and both are OK.

Because we leave fingerprints that say

I was here.

My feet walked and my mouth let my brain communicate and when I left                 

it was better.

Olivia Madsen

February 2013

Keyholes

Oh, the inconsistencies of humanity!

We begin to open little keyholes to our vast and maze-lake existence inside of us,

only to stop them again and again.

Why can you not have the key that slides smoothly into the lock

I have carved for you?

The carving of it is painful, you know.

Little slivers of the wall I have sculpted must be cut away-

Did you know it is to deny myself the complacency of a safe existence?

I wouldn’t stop; but it is a process.

I must set myself in front of disappointment, bare, without reason. Because it is that

reason that causes us to say,

                        You are only going to be pummeled by this

            Creature in front of you.

                                    Why can you not simply take my hand

                              And say,

                                                            Me too.

But I have many stopped keyholes, and a few tentative windows.

But the headlong, the vivacious….                                    What is it for?

                                                            What is it for?

Those visions of unedited being,

                                                            I feel we cannot achieve yet.

Maybe the kindred spirits with whom I can finally find rest

I have not yet discovered on this achingly vast plant.

I have yet to look down on the water from the tree branch

and hold that knowledge and drop it before yours splashes.

I cannot hold my fingertips in space and let them drop

without yours

I am too afraid that the space created will be too far that it cannot be shortened to

when we walked side by side,

me reaching but not daring to move.

Spring 2013

Let it Be

My teardrops in all their glory

contain a world of salty purity.

Bathing a little pice of the earth in my unedited soul.

They are a cry to the powers beyond the sky,

of thanks or pain or a desperate plea to the heavens.

They come from the wellspring of life, the place where

spirit and humanity meet

and there a war is raged.

A release of emotion, where sometimes letting the world 

have it instead of keeping it is a refreshing secret.

It’s comforting to know that I must not keep forever those colors

glowing so brightly I cannot hold them

but by releasing them, let them live.

They live while I live,

Making room for deeper and more vibrant hues.

Winter/Spring 2013

A Note to the Deserted and the Desertee

You found what you deserved.

Congratulations.

She didn’t fall at your feet.

You got what you deserved.

I’m so sorry now for myself, because I could have been that girl.

I’m sorry for me that I didn’t realize my blindness earlier.

She thinks you are wonderful.

She’s right; I just realized it too late.

I’m sorry for you in the past and me in the present

that I couldn’t reach out my hand and

meet yours.

But sometimes, life is full of disasters that aren’t narrowly avoided

and hearts that don’t conveniently collide.

May 2013

Humility

I came out one morning

in the bright dewey freshness of the spring

early, to the Garden of my Dreams.

I had planted there, after painstaking thought,

the dreams I forsaw bringing me the most happiness.

but in that moment, I stood dismayed.

These are not my dreams, they are someone else’s.

Can’t we fix it?

Can’t you fix it???

My heart, the home prepared for these dreams grown from the

rich soil of ideals and hope, aches.

this cannot be.

The misfortunes in this world, sometimes are not to be avoided.

The raindrops of unexpected happenstance fall in the night,

when no one sees them, and these plants left behind are

not what I wanted.

I stood barefoot before God and said,

OK. I can’t make new plants grow…

    that’s your specialty.

       So I will take these, for I am lucky to have them.

  And I will nourish them, but

        keep alive in me the hope that there will be

better dreams springing out of this earth

tomorrow.

Spring 2013

Lessons Learned

"Out of the ruins and rubble,
out of the smoke,
Out of our night of struggle,
can we see a ray of hope...
We can build a beautiful city.
When your trust is all but shattered
When your faith is all but killed,
you can give up, bitter and battered.
Or you can slowly start...
to build."

I want a bicycle in my beautiful city.
I want streets paved in butter yellow.
I want wide open spaces at the 
feet of mountains,
baby animals and sidewalk chalk.

I want Christ in my beautiful city.
I want to eternally learn of Him, and from Him.

I want God in my beautiful city.
Because my beautiful city is only
a part of His.
I want to hug Him, and have
the bliss of knowing that
I made it.

And I want a museum in my beautiful city.
Ashes and the deepest despair, frozen
inside a case
where the parents can teach their children
what unhappiness looks like. 

I want you in my beautiful city.
We will walk hand in hand to that museum,
and you will tell me how much you love
and respect me even though the museum
used to be me.


June 22, 2013

My Song Has A History

The song running inside my heart
is changing constantly
And for that, I'm sorry.
Not just for you, but
for all of you
and me.
You told me my singing sounded nice.
I know.
Thats why I was singing.
So you could hear it.
Because it's nice.

You're nice.

I can hear you louder than I could last week.
This part is called, "Lady,"
But the part before is called, "Liv."
And there's a part you can hear still, playing softly, called,
"Divine," "Angel," and "Sassafrass."
And then there's that part that was thought to be silent forever,
but suddenly blares, "Sweetheart."
I've heard it before, but this time the tones are off-key,
sad and lonely because they know how this song ends.

And so the music flows forward, but keeps changing,
evading the possibility of a continuous melody ending 
in discordant disappointment.




June 21, 2013

Ghost

You are a ghost.
I did not seal your memory with tears-did you even exist?
I barely gave you a moment's thought
Recently, and now 
Youe flesh and blood is running through my backyard
You are running from me again 
And i am not even chasing you...
This time 
Let the words fall out
Dont keep them from me
As soon as i ask for them
Like last time



June 20, 2013

It just needed a half-sheet

I wish I knew better
how to love you.
How to see your soul and embrace the
crazy social projection.

I wish I could drop you like nothing
ever happened
and walk away.
I wish i didn't like your parents, your sisters,
your humor, your ties
so much.

I wish I could peek inside your head.
I wish I could glance into Germany.
I wish I wasn't so inexplicably 
attached to you.

I wish you didn't have to go. 
Even from a distance,
you are so good for me.

I wish we had kept being friends.

I wish you had let it go a long time ago,
because you would have been my Prince,
always.

I wish I hadn't cut you off. 
I still feel bad about that.

-    -    -    -    -    -    -    -    -

I wish you could see her right in front of you.
She hasn't gone anywhere; you hold a great deal
of her potential happiness in your hands.

I wish you'd take her, she deserves better than 
being dusted off at periodic moments
when you need safety. Because she is infinitely superior.
She has healing power.

Stay with her. She is building you, and you her.
We don't get any better;
there are few that deserve her.
She is fighting a different kind of battle;
fight with her.

Take very good care of her, whoever you are. 
She got broken-don't you dare ever break her again.
And you, you beautiful person, keep fighting.
I am waiting to find you.
You are going to help lead me out of the darkness.
I know you are learning.
I hope you cry. I hope you sing. 
I hope I find you soon.
But meanwhile, don't you give up.
              I need you.

Spring 2013