what things bring you to life?

why do we always have the knowing and the naming,

but when it comes to forever,

we are so quick to gives these up; even if we know what we lose

each time

we compromise

the things

that make us alight with

the glow of knowing/ being known.

when you go,

I have not been as prepared

as I should have been.

and all along

I thought the walls

were carefully

(oh so carefully)

put in place.

So now I delicately select

the eye color

that I think this moment should have.

I shape the face on the mannequin.

I push and pull the clay, my hands covered

in

the making.

I wield the tools to gouge the smile, sad and slightly

bent,

maybe upside down.

and now that I have made and created and breathed life into this.

I order the walls to come up and fill the spaces where the clay insisted on

such things as breathing.

and all along, I wanted walls to weigh down

and protect against the things that fly.

and all along all I have ever loved is the idea of wings.

sway,

conflict.

who wins in this petty war,

there are stars, and hearts.

who will win the great wars,

if these modest bickerings end in such great endings.

what will be left of

whatever worlds

we decide are worth

keeping whole.

but perhaps it is in the

grenades and incinerations

that we shape a new

destructed place.

perhaps this destruction is what is needed to

be

renewed.

So the years pass,

so slowly but with the small molasses movement

deceptive

and you don't even realize

that you are wanted.

With (out) in

So is what you do counted,

when your mind is rebelling.

Let me feel. Let me feel. Your body screams, twisting in the pain of withdrawal.

Let me be.

but you take it, this weak weak heart,

and

make it beat in an unfamiliar way, unnaturally. Be this, you say, shaking it angrily, surprised and betrayed when it,

shakily,

refuses,

weakly trying to return to its joy.

If I had to guess I would say that it is fighting in its way.

You are angry that it has decided to

not pay attention to your worrisome

whisps of control.

Of the sea.

I live in a landlocked state. With houses that look the same, and roads that are laid out perfectly in a grid

by someone who hoped we would not get lost.

The shopping malls, with stores selling pretty things, conveniently at every corner.

The gas stations, selling candy and soda-pop and things to help the journey in the cars go well, to go faster.

So faster we drive, on the perfect roads.

Our lives, quite eloquently and effectively sanitized of the miraculous.

What of these dreamworlds, at night? They show us in pictures, and perhaps on the news, of the sea.

But we are landlocked, you see. How do we know such things are real?

The strength of waves, crushing down, over and over, onto a sand-filled beach. Creatures we really do not believe exist, shimmering in the waves. The sun sparkling on the shore, tiny tide-pools a whole world to be explored.

And here, we can see the sky. We look up casually, at the changing ceiling of our lives. But how could it possibly go on past this? We know, they tell us, of far off planets and galaxies, with swirlings and hopings and no endings, colors beyond what anyone could ever put on a canvas.

But we are landlocked you see. To these bodies. Trapped, in a world sanitized of the miraculous, while it

is, to our great surprise,

already.

This is my season. If you can own a season.

Red wagons with smiling children, vegetable gardens full of things I cannot exactly pronounce. The slight mist that settles in the hair, and makes your hair dewey with expectations and when you look around, the world sparkles slightly, holding its breath.

Music and art in the streets that make you take that breath in once more, and gasp at the beauty there. Water flowing over songs, and portraits of people you have never met but that you inexplicably love more than anything you have ever owned. Will ever own.

The exhaustion of this, the bubbling inside of you that threatens to become more important than any plan, the excitement of recognizing the living; the vitality of every place you look.

The power in your words and expressions, the way you can take someone who is fragile and make them whole with a single action. The winter struggling to become something more beautiful.

And all the words, all the feelings, all the prayer, all the insecurities and hope emanating, at the same time, from all the hundreds of thousands of souls. The quick smiles and quick laughs and the individual struggles of what it means to be human, the tracks of life struggling to become something

more beautiful.

This is where the winter and cold surrender the pain of change, and this is me now.

Surrendering the confidants, the carefully laid out plans, and learning to savor this moment now, to take it all in because this is fleeting and worthy of my hope.

So this is it,

the first part,

The part that is exciting.

When there is a new soul to see,

to meet, to inspect with sparkling Curiosity.

Well, hello there. Where have you been, I have missed you,

I think.

I have been sitting here, sipping away at all the pleasures this life

incites, waiting for you to join me.

So here you are. You laugh at my jokes, and you have deep secrets,

and there is nothing more I could ask for than this.

Welcome to the table, we have been waiting for you. There are feasts to be had and countries to explore, colors to create and games to be played.

And we have already won.

I am bound to the hopes of this generation
we want change
am I wasting your time, the way hair bursts into colors,
and you think about
the chains that silently prevent you from moving [your world?].
the warm liquid underneath your tongue and surrounding your soul,
tries desperately to keep you sated with comfort
with the small joys [bribes?] that await you if you succumb to contentedness
if you let the lullabies of the modern sirens lull you into believing
that there is nothing wrong with embracing
the privilege [earned?] your birth extends to you
place and time and color and language
are you really willing to let this be what
will be the separateness?

Haiti

If you have been paying attention at all, you will see that Haiti has been devastated by an earth-quake. It probably sounds selfish to mention the state of my heart at this moment, an overly-privileged luxury. Yet I must tell you, I have seemed to lock this away in some bottom part of me.

You see, the implications are too grand. Every piece of good that has been done/ will ever be done in my professional life is erased so many times over by this one world event. The magnitude of the death and destruction is so overwhelming because it is simply too big to be healed. 100,000 deaths have been estimated.

I find myself changing the channel. 'What Not to Wear' or 'Scrubs.' I cannot watch this, because there is absolutely NOTHING that I can do. Awareness? Yes, I am a proponent. Stop Genocide in Africa. Feed The Starving. AIDS Awareness. Yet, quite hypocritically and shamefully, I whine about four ankle surgeries in six months. "How could this happen to me?" I angrily muse, while sitting at home completely cared for.

In an even darker place, there is a little voice doubting being cared for by a God who lets schools collapse on top of children in a country barely recovering from past natural disasters. Will He really care for me if not even these are cared for?

100,000 people. There is nothing, nothing I can do or will ever do that could begin to salvage this kind of wound in a people, a gouging in the flesh of our world.

So I change the channel. I put down my newspaper. I find myself deliberately locking away that portion of my heart, like amputating dead flesh that would kill the body if allowed to continue in the raw. Because with something so devastating raw and exposed, how can anything else matter, ever, compared to this one event?

I have never been good at compartmentalizing, how can I give myself permission to enjoy the aroma of coffee or the thought of Arizona-- when the people are suffering now? Nothing could be significant again, and I do not believe this is right.

100,000 people. Every person you have every known, your entire town, everyone you have ever met and loved and everyone each of them has known and loved. All of their potential, their children, their grandchildren. The meals they would make at holidays, the words and symphonies they could have created, their choices and learning and potential to cure disease, the poetry and art we have lost. The kind words of 100,000 people that would have been spoken. The future of an entire people, and the carving and missing in the lives of the survivors of their dear ones.

We should mourn for the loss of these.

Choices

Sometimes, I feel like I am training myself out of what I want to be. There is this vague idea in the back of my head of a ‘dream,’ and so forth, but reality then hits, and it hits hard: what if the dream, when realized, becomes a nightmare?

A doctor or a writer. These have been my converging dreams ever since I can remember. Since my sister was diagnosed with cancer at the age of two, since I was diagnosed with a rare disease at the same age—I have been fascinated with the power of physicians. The secret knowledge they seemed to possess, the magical powers of healing. I envied them their minds, their ability to be called upon in emergencies and know how to act.

A quote by the author of A House on Mango Street details the young child’s awe at her friend’s face being stitched back together after being split open, and notes that ‘this is what one person can do for another.’ This idea still intrigues me, interests me to no end.

Yet, here I am. Two courses away from being able to attend medical school! Yet, despite the allure of the career—constant learning, a tangible skill set desperately in need, fulfilling that ever-so-apparent potential: I am not sure if it the life I want. The career yes, the perfect job. The life…

Perhaps I remain too much of a romantic. I still want to travel the world. Cook in Paris, and drink wine in Italy. Live in London perhaps, drift down the Nile once again. The taste for adventure has not left me, the desire for newness and excitement and dancing! A career in medicine will not give me this. I am desperately afraid that whatever in me yearns for art and magic and a life filled with surprises will be squelched by a job that requires everything.

I am torn between the lives—perfect job, perfect family-life, or perfect life? Medicine will give me one, marriage will give me another, but maybe it will always be writing that gives me the third. Which to choose?

Black and White (Makes Grey)

I am so angry.

This confession takes me by complete surprise, because generally I am not. But I will be discussing God or people or the wrongs in the world, and I find myself fighting back tears spontaneously. Because, you see, there is so much injustice, and you see, if anyone decided to step back and not fight,

if anyone had the means of stopping the murders, the rapes, the hunger, the genocides, the destruction of spirit and religion and culture, the deaths of children and the pride of men, if anyone could watch eight to ten people cram into houses with no food, no medication, no access to education, if anyone could have complete power to change this, who would not? 

What kind of God would not? There is so much that needs to be interceded, so much suffering. "suffering" do we even know this word? The physical, spiritual implications of the inhumane beating that a birthplace could assign? The hundreds of ignored people, sleeping on packed dirt, and rationing the last pieces of bread to family members. The burning, the drowning, the homeless, the starving-- who is watching these? 

What is the reason? "Sin"? I feel set up. Because, you see-- here we are. Born human. (And, really what is it to be human? To mess up, to discover, to apologize, to learn and try again and live!) Born 'sinful'. Do I really think the crime matches the punishment? I don't think so.

Yet, I see the beauty as well, so I know that God-- whoever he is, this God that I claim to love and whom claims to love me, has the propensity for mercy. That he is good. 

But what I don't quite understand is how I am supposed to see myself as 'evil' for simply being the way I was created and born to be-- human. Imperfect. 

What I don't understand is how to claim the immovable love of God when so many are waiting to be loved.

Grey (Anecdote to Bitterness)

so it has come to this.

remember this. you cannot take all the sadness away.

you are not strong enough.

no matter how strong you are (and I believe, you are, ever so strong)

so now, as a writer, I am supposed to write the words to tell you this, to show you really.

so when you, future reader, see this and feel the odd combination of guilt and hope that comes with wanting to fix the broken things: you cannot.

this is not something I am telling you to discourage, but to free you. Be happy. Remove as much pain as you can from this world, from those who are hurting, but don't be so overwhelmed that their sadnesses melt into you and you are consumed by it.

Be happy. Add joy in every way you can, paint and shout and be deliriously happy. Take care of your soul, don't let it shrivel in anger, don't let it become bitter with all the pain you see. Because all those hurting need you to stay hopeful, to cling to whatever is idealistic if they will have hope of change.

Don't let anger turn into bitterness. It sounds so easy, I know. How does one go about keeping their soul from bitterness? 

add as much joy as you can, take away as much sadness as you can. And hopefully, in the end, someone somewhere will have lived a little more, with a little more dignity.

the ships are burning

and somehow along the way

you couldn't be saved

how must that be

seeing the flames from so far away

and knowing that there would be nothing

left of this life 

the ships are burning but there is no turning back now,

how gracious you were.

little by little by bit

this humming grows swelters 

wanting to be fed, demanding

a response.

so when the wise have been questioned

by the idealistic

on how to live well, on how to conquer a good life

they begin to sing softly

under their breath,

their heartsongs

in response.

confused the students of the wise stumble away

angered at the perceived silence and unconvinced.

They scowl and feed the growing buzzings and hummings

meeting its demands for knowledge and wealth

and filling their faces and voices with the expressions and words

that the hummings require.

They live like this for awhile, tossing late at night, turning, and tossing

and wondering if tomorrow they will have enough left to devote to 

satiating the hunger.

Then the idealistic, after time, if fortunate, become wise. 

They realize nothing can satisfy, nothing can fulfill or cover the emptiness that loudly demands to be filled.

and instead they begin to fight.

They let the other sounds, the ones so easily ignored and overwhelmed by the distractors

slowly come forth

their time is now filled with observation and joy, the quietness of integrity and truth in living,

and this, as is only learned by experience, is what they do when asked by the idealistic how to live well.

they smile softly, and sing their heartsongs, the only ones that can quiet all of the noise that tries to take over. nothing can conquer life, but the heartsongs,

these are the life. 

Mr. Summertime Love

well, hello mr. summertime love

why don't you take me 

to a dance

and toast the cicada songs and firefly rumblings

the burst of heat against cool skin, the smacking of sweaty skin

and the shavings of cut grass flipped sideways and forward

mr. summertime,

show me the embers of freedom celebrations

wayward diamond fire beams sizzling in the heat

quiet men you adore more for their silence

children in braids and shimmery eyes entranced 

with the displays of firecolors in the July sky

afternoon lunches with cool breezes and sweepings of hair

against our cheeks, secrets and joys and laughings and 

the slippings of love that so easily are given

a quick squeeze on the shoulder, a lingering hand.

mr. summertime love,

love these; with me.

somehow, once maybe, or more

I decided,

that all the cities and experiences and exotic tastings

of exotic lives

do not match the warmth and filling and completion of

laughing at our own nonsense here.

our clothes smell of burnt charcoal and soggy marshmallows,

small nats and nighttime creatures dart in and around and on top of the skin of my arms--

we pull the blanket closer

there is laughter and banter and the subtle sighs of late night stars, content with their bedtime whisperings of our joys. 

we do not know, that this: 

the bantering, the marshmallows, the stories of volcanoes and stars, 

the thick and thin flames quietly bursting from the ground, flickers and reds, blues, oranges--

these:

are our great joys.

I see you with your old skin

the way your hand should be leathery but

is soft and downy like the feathers lining a nest

the way your eyes are satin, and shift between remembered youth 

and the dullness of remembered aging

This is my apology, for never knowing you as young.

For not remembering with you your childhood, your sister, your dearest friends.

Your time has not been forgotten.

irrelevance is

not participating in the 

small details surrounding you

not delighting in seemingly insignificant accomplishments

not delighting in yourself any longer.

Tomorrow is the last day.

I have been missing India greatly. I feel like my heart is split in two, three, tens. These people I adore with all myself, I feel like I have to shove it to the back of me in order to survive emotionally. But I deeply care about these people. 

recognition of needing

the pressing of warmth and emptiness 

the familiar slow burst of yearnings

the anticipation of continuation without 

a great joy.

leave,

and unexpectedly

there is tearing 

the left behind is 

too apparent.

you are me.

we were,

goodbye, dear friend.

please be us soon.

When the Rich are Dying and Buy Organs From Nowhere

putting the perpetrators of 

greed,

ease of life, and ease of infliction

-- put the pain in the arms of the other.

no eyes, no mourning breaths, no pleading.

a simple transaction to save the wealthy

the inconvenience of a guilty conscience.

How You are Responsible

it becomes harder to ignore the ugliness and

tepid yearnings

when the nameless are Named 

so they want the luxuries you have dangled.

the vacant words become their lifelines.

maybe there are the unloveable who spend their moments wishing for tenderness.

i keep remembering the thoughts of me, wishing for future.

instead of loving and wishing for this.

i am homesick for the tangling.

promises

the sounds lull and twist

and here is the part where the drifting souls

collide haphazardly with the smatterings of hope

the cries in the night and the small, quiet sobs

of those abandoned by the broken hearts.

they never wanted to alarm you with their 

slow sadnesses, but they envelop you without

permission or apology

citing the loveliness of your words and the

bold claims you made in your naivety.

at the funeral of wisdom and choice

you sang a eulogy of forgiveness and 

hope; without consideration of consequence.

you became the advocate of the invisible

but would not stop to wonder if you could deliver.

I think that the fact that

you make me laugh out loud

and I understand the nuances of 

your joys and sorrows--

should be enough.

Crippled Sometimes

Are you crippled by the shadows of 

skeletons and bones, creeping and whispering in 

the crevices of you[rs.]

The lullings and hopings that you

cannot give up

The faces and voices of the dreams you promised

never to let fade.

The devastation of the leaving and the windings of roads that have no ends or beginnings, but that you cannot bring yourself to diverge from.

The temptation of letting the hurting suffer in isolated silence,

containing and cauterizing wounds that someone else made,

Yet knowing this will never be enough to silence the whisperings 

that your joy is imminently entwined with the removal or addition of some kind of joy

[perverse games? ingenuine flauntings?]

banking

how do you justify the spending of a life
the spending of the time, energy, and concern
the amount of emotion allocated per person
per room

You say that no one
can see the way your eyes light up the night.
But I am looking
and I see
that you have more than just
a way to be alive--

Come with me
see the things
you have promised to see.

No other way is worth it, can't you see that this is made for you?

Instead you rip angel wings into fine down
sifting through the remains and making them into a pillow
for your weariness.

How can you already be weary?

Be joyful, choose it.

Free.

I get jealous of writers. Perhaps more aptly, their characters, their shameless (if not flawless) display of combinations of letters and words. I walk into bookstores and mock them slightly, turning up my nose at the raised print on the covers, the way the books smell so new when you flip through them-- all of the possible adventures that begin and end within 50000 words. I pretend like this may not be what I have always yearned for-- an absolute adventure, to any ends, with no confines. I like adventure, I like change-- my roommate told me I foster it, crave it (much like the unfortunate caffeine addiction I seem to have developed.) Maybe it is not so much the adventure that I love as it is the possibility, unrestrained, that at any moment (barring financial restraints) I am absolutely FREE.

I like this.

stop it. stop all the burning. it is inconsiderate to casually burst into flames when there are so many frozen in complacency.
don't you understand the inconvenience of this?
you have robbed them of their ease, their contentedness. Thievery. Your skin is flushed, and your heart is flushed, and you are making the comfortable people discontent.

so who has the responsibility
to tame the reflections that get away
were you the one to hold and break the mirror
maybe you dropped it into a casual song
without regard for the listeners.
Listen.
Don't bother chasing the mirror images, crossing left and right and
sweeping to the side of your face.
Don't bother looking. Stop examining.
let them run.

Soundtrack of the Moment

Jose Gonzalez-- Heartbeats

Wyclef Jean-- Sweetest Girl

Jimmy Eat World-- Let it Happen

Coldplay-- The Scientist

Damien Rice- Rootless Tree

escuchame, por favor
eres mi sonida, mi sonrisa
te quireo, te extrano
nadie en el mundo me conoces lo mismo
cuando voy, vas
cuando vas, voy
donde eres
mi alma esta perdida, porque estas perdidas
no se cuando regresaras, o si regresaras a mi.

quien eres?
o, una pregunta mas mejor, quien soy?

What do you want??

You know what I want?

All of these things, possibilities they call it, opportunity, 'potential' --- Grad school, the things I could do with my life,

They talk about it like they have stock, investment, time that gradually becomes worth more the more I live. They talk about passion like it is something that is expendable, something that runs out. Hurry.

No.

I want people to be safe, before they get hurt. I want women and children to not be afraid of those who are supposed to love them, and I want innocent people not to suffer for the corruption of others who were hurt somehow. I want the corrupt prosecuted, I want them (even them) to be treated as human, I want everyone else to understand that you can't deny them (even them) this, or else bits of your own humanity begins to be revoked.

I want to jump out of a plane and land somewhere I may never be again, learn languages just so I can tell women with sad eyes that their children are beautiful, ask them to teach me how with out knowing what I will be taught, and I want to never ever 'get it out of my system', I don't want to find a husband because that is just kind of what you do around twenty--- why not marry some man when I am 82, and spend the rest of our lives listening to the wonderful stories, imagining the beautiful places and never giving them up? Why not love when you find the person, not when the timeline tells you to?

I want to cry and laugh and be completely honest, feel what hurts (pain is there for a reason)
I want to scream at you when I am angry, call you out on your falsities, have you call me out on mine. I want to live according to no formula, I want to use my mind to consider, my soul to consider.

I want to be absurd, happy, content--- acknowledging the pain of this world, the way that the people are hurting, but not let it consume me

SO they ask me, constantly, always, What do you want?? What are you going to do?? What is your one year, two year, five year life plan?

It can be hard to explain.

How
does
the
shards
of whatever
is left
come
together
and equal

the damp palms
the heart not resting
the mind not sleeping
the twisting in
my belly

the fight with my features
to stay as they should,

the music not salving
the words, the touch not satisfying


the disappearances
of intangible ties.

how do you stay whole, with the emptinesses

so glaringly apparent?

leaving is not difficult.

leaving ideas, dreams, people-- especially if there is something or someone to leave for, someplace to journey to.
the man leaves his wife for his mistress, the woman her old comfortable job for something new and more. there is that promise of excitement, of novelty, intrigue-- that tiny whisper that says you are not happy enough -- a different kind of greed.
two weeks, months, years, decades later you become nostalgic, or fight off the nostalgia self-assuredly-- citing the shiny new people, accomplishments, places and experiences as trophies. you did the right thing by giving up that mundane little place, relationship, that small town.
it took so little to be happy then, you muse, and there is a tickle in the back of your thoughts, like a small feather, and you wonder-- maybe I was happier then, in that small town
'all the world's a stage' but
maybe
if the script was never written
and the actors were all drunk before they could get into costume

I could be happy with just the stage alone.

memory

i have been careless with my life.
not necessarily unappreciative of it, but merely careless. Finding pleasure in unnecessary risks, naively embracing the possibility of death without considering the possibility of injury, or the emotional consequences of those who I have somehow been loved by.

recognizing this, this previous carelessness and the mistakes of others, i have a perpetual need to remember and recall the beautiful moments. much like a photographer might miss the actual event by focusing his attentions on capturing it, squinting into a tiny screen while the world flees around him--- i am constantly focused on remembering what i should be feeling rather than simply feeling it.

isn't the loveliest part of memory they way that it surprises you by recording without you knowing it? shouldn't this be pleasure enough?

costs (unintentional?)

feel.

every bit and piece of the way your skin feels when the cold rain hits it,

the way the heat and sun sashays around the crevices and fine lines in your face

(faces?)

damages cannot be paid for losing this.

remember.

every bit and piece you chose to gave away.

the way the hands and arm around your waist sashayed you,

(yours?)

damages cannot be paid for losing this.

not enough

does everyone get the pressure
deep in their chests, or away from them somehow
when the combination of thoughts of someone missing are combined
with the right pressures and imagery and fear
of something loss
like the air or the feeling, the pure feeling, grows and expands
and nothing will relieve the way you are to me

momentarily

wait it out, breathe. hope to make a wall keeping this at bay
but hope to God you never will.

i am afraid of
what is missing.

flavor

So, I like the dimensions of music
it gives extra flavor to the words that aesthetics cannot.

you give this as well.

sdrow:words

sdrow tsuj era sdrow eht os : so the words are just words

egap eht no sgnikram tsuj : just markings on the page
,eseht evlos yeht lliw woh: how will they solve these,
eseht: these
?erom hcum os deen taht eseht: these that need so much more?

nothing but mirrors of what is real:
still don't know?

leaving

here goes the hour
who was looking for it, was it lost?
all of a sudden it was gone, and no one knew to look

so are you, I have noticed.
look away for a moment,
and the moments add together
all of them
and quickly disappear.

kiss me, quickly, before this is gone.
before I censor you to me.

The Peddler

this is how we discuss

the war and the dying and the

children crossing borders in a desert

quietly, in a warm room, hushed voices

we sit here, holding our lattes, sipping

flinching as our tongues are singed with

chocolate and milk, cursing our misfortunes,

and feeling our soft bellies tighten with the pain.

how do we solve the problems of this world?

we decide that we are qualified for such things

we know how to satiate the screams, evidently.

dressed in corduroy and cotton, cashmere and denim

leather shoes, diamond rings, hair that is long and conditioned with

oils of the dying animals (cows and beasts, monsters and similar such creatures.)

then we tell them to believe, they do, and we cite our own God’s victory,

when it was us selling our souls.

(have we been bought?)

The peddler sells trinkets, saved souls and peace, on a golden chain, with charms.

Cows and beasts, monsters and similar such creatures.

(what was the price? did we ask?)

But he won’t stop the screams (is he responsible for the crime?) and he won’t sell us much but the leather shoes and diamond rings.

crazy words

what if one day those who have cradled the same experiences cease to be

a holder of your days anymore

remind me that

there are those who won’t destroy

thank you for

your unintentional kindnesses

art and music

are not forced to be emotionless in their call for change

they do not appeal logically, with reason and planned out rules

they appeal by revealing pieces of who we are and who we may have forgotten

we recognize ourselves in the cascades of sound and color,

we are reminded that the way the world is isn’t necessarily how it should be

appeal to them, with your colors and pianos and voices

remind me that

there are those who won’t destroy.

Where is the inspiration?

Register the

The glass of red wine, swirling (opposite and together)

The warmth flowing from you to it

The curve of the glass, cool in your hand

The biting in the back of your throat

The settling of the fog on your skin

dampening

You can’t think of

These leaving things.

Don’t remember so intently,

It shouldn’t be so intentional.

Shiver slightly

The lights distorted

In water-coated twilight

Silk and glass poems and prose

Shredding nonsense

Ebony, slip quietly

Foolish fools talk of nothing

To cover up the hidden triggers

Imaginary weapons that

Wound more than ordinary guns and knives.

You try and keep the ones that sing or scream

Under careful observation.

You don’t want to think that maybe

They have a better grasp

(It shouldn’t be so intentional.)

self-inflicted darkness.

I am feeling quiet.
It is 5:17 am, and I am attempting to reset my sleep schedule by staying awake through the day, and going to bed at a good hour Friday evening. I need to be able to not stay up so late.

It is always dark, you see.

Crazy

Restless restless restless. I like it when the little crazy things become known about a day.
Examples:
I wanted to steal a polar bear.
I cut my finger while trying to make a flashlight out of an Altoid box.
I took photos of ice and light today.
I have to ration my socks to the feet that need them the most.
My room is shrinking.
I only like living alone sometimes.
My car has been starting since my dad came and fixed it.
I went sledding with trash can lids, and was the happiest I have been all day.
My sister sent me a mooning elf and I think she meant 'I love you.'

Some Things Look Pure But Are Not

Me.

School ending.

I am not as motivated as I used to be.
As much as I complain about school, I like the feeling that someone is caring about the state of my mind-- about what and how I am learning.
Perhaps it is merely that I am not as obsessed over this. I am not sure where to go from here-- I am going to be a senior next year-- and you cannot go to school forever. I will probably go to graduate school, or disappear to London. Which has been a mild dream for awhile.
I would like the luxury of this--- painting perhaps and writing light stanzas here and there, living in a shabby flat, and drinking shabby wine, and being utterly unaccountable for anything. Perhaps utterly happy.
I do not like it when people start making your life into a time-line. It is my life, and I prefer not to have a map detailing when and what I should be doing with it.

Mostly, I want to be surprised.

Some Things Look Pure But Are Not

Snow.

Decisions

I have decided I enjoy this journaling to the nothingness.
Perhaps I will find in these tepid fingers a few words
to manipulate and coax, wield and petition politely.

I have no sense of how they come or when they decide to go,
but I wanted to let you know,
they will be here for awhile.

Joy

I was having a conversation with my mother recently, and she commented on my writing, noting that none of it was joyful. I was unsettled with this comment. In reading through my past poems and short stories, I understood the confusion. I used emotionally evocative wording, and uncomfortable subject matter. However, what I found to be useful as a comparison (against to a black sheet of paper, the white looks whiter) she found to be simply sad.

My mind drifts, as I go to my grandparents. It has been an odd week.

I am tired. Of starting over. Of being afraid to let people invest in me, being afraid of relationships that will give me something to miss, to mourn. I am tired of not having definite answers, of having too many damn feelings welling up, constantly, of injustice and suffering and the lack of faith rampant in this country. Rampant in myself. I have been bemoaning the ripping of my heart, left in various places in the hands of friends who can do with it what they will. I try to ration it carefully, how many pieces, after all, do you have?

Should I really entrust so much?

I have lost dear, dear people-- to time, to death, to space, to fear.

I am almost at the point of welcoming a monotone, an easing, just let me feel nothing! It would be easier. That same lack would be almost a relief. But not quite.

That, would be a lie. Unfortunately.

Because, I genuinely want to know people. I genuinely want to know this God whom I serve and fear and do not understand and love. And His world. I believe that this world is full of adventure and heartache and is the most brilliant place. Everything, is amazing, really. So in losing the tiredness, losing the fear, in becoming an emotionless creature-- I would lose this also. The way thoughts burst like electricity and light and something palpable across faces of those you know, or are trying to. The dance of making an unknown face someone who means something to you, who becomes precious unexpectedly. The surprise, of the depth in the light of their faces, glimpsing realness there. Pride in knowing that these people will be and are living, always and eternally, and thinking, and feeling-- every second of every day they have. Not always perfectly, in fact-- but simply with integrity and honesty. Striving to be worthy of their purpose, to be men and women who are worthy of the image they were created in.

I don't want to know what it is like to have nothing left to look forward to, a sort of completion, a resignation of having lived a good life. Of being satisfied with dying, because, really, haven't I lived? No more cities to explore, no more hearts to know and love, no more wishes and dreams and secrets to share.

My grandpa is a good man. So as I listen to him speak with no sadness in his voice, it hits me. This is what he is saying, I realize, as I listen to the stories and ask questions about love and life and dreams.... Why does it feel like he is saying goodbye? Why is he done dreaming, and talking of life like it is done? Resigned to leave his home, the truth in his friendships, the hope of newness and wishes?

I have been praying for just this, I realize. Wishing so desperately not to be so invested in living, really living.

And it is this sentiment perhaps, that has me after talking to my grandpa for forty-five minutes, a man whom I adore with all my heart, pulling off the side of the gravel road and sobbing so uncontrollably. How dare I pray for a lack, when I have been so filled?

If you memorize the textures of things, with your eyes instead of with your hands, the textures of walls and lights that make shadows on these walls, then you will understand. You will understand how the emotions and the twitches in peoples' eyes have textures too. The quick and quiet flinch of pain that briefly precedes the smile that is supposed to be there. The light that leaves the peoples' eyes, the darkness that swirls around the thin skin underneath those eyes. You will understand the texture of the sighs, and recognize the lilting music and the notes that raise just a little bit off in the voices, like a piano that needs tuning.

And then there is the joy, or the excitement, or the passion, or all of these things. When people cannot get the words out fast enough, or they stumble and let out too many, and stop and catch themselves. Like they have accidentally revealed too much, too soon, and want to take back all of the things that they have given away.

All of the people, everyone, have surprises in their movements and answers, and not necessariliy the answers themselves but the way in which they respond to the questions. The way in which they crinkle their eyes, or look away, or mask themselves with monotony.

This is the way in which I love people, knowing these things.

As He Thinks

For as he thinks in his heart, so is he.... Proverbs 23:7

May you live every day of your life.

Doesn't scare you, the power entrusted to you? That my thoughts will make me who I am. You cannot have a positive life and a negative mind- the fruit is a reflection of the tree that bears it. Power is frightening- I never understood why we should fear the Lord until I began to fear my own mind- which is merely a fragment of God's awesome ability.

the darkness rains shadows that sting and bite
tiny rocks pelted at baby skin
a little voice cries pitifully somewhere in the darkness
outside your window
you want to run, dodging the shadows, to save the voice
the little voice crying
but you cannot outrun darkness so you sit inside
quietly by the fire
watching the warmth glitter
listening to the wailing, the crying
you sit safe, convincing yourself you can do nothing
nothing but listen
the umbrella sits idle
by your rubber boots
and yellow rain-jacket

the voice begins to scream.

Table four or Table eight??? :)

We are shaped and fashioned by what we love- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.

What do you love, what do you desire of all the world?

“Try table four.” Rob, my fellow host of the night, said this delicately, almost as if he were trying to convince me to try a dessert I didn’t think I would like. As if I were about to try a flaming pudding, or strawberries with brown sugar and sour cream. “Try table four.” As if he was pretty convinced I would like it, but not one-hundred percent sure. Because, that table just might not work out, and I might have to put the couple somewhere more pleasing. A table that tasted a bit differently, more acceptable to their tender palette that distinguished harsh lighting and chair comfort level. The couple squirmed uncomfortably in their fancy attire as I glanced back at Rob. The woman shifted and sighed loudly as her black leather boots with the tiny tear squeaked in discontent on the slick wood floor. The thoughts ran through her mind and leaked across onto her face, coating it in concern. Sticky, sappy concern- the kind that covered up real problems by busying one’s self with problems that didn’t exist. The woman busied her mind. Did this girl really know what she was doing, or was she simply looking around thinking about the ways in which people speak? Her eyes were sharp, harsh, like streaks of blue paint haphazardly brushed onto an old canvas.

I led the couple to table four, where the light was muted gently by a red lampshade. The woman sat down, eagerly picking up a menu. Her eyes shattered the words on the menu quickly- ravaging them and tearing them apart with her mind. Was it her birthday? Did he forget again, this meal a last minute attempt to pull together ‘love?’ Was he busy all day talking with his young secretary- a girl with a dress just a bit too short, and teeth just a bit too white? The woman looked at her husband expectantly, silently asking him, begging him to sit down. The gentleman squinted, and watched the soft light dance across his wife’s eyes. The lighting transformed the woman, and suddenly she was no longer the tired woman who entered the restaurant, but an echo of something that used to be very beautiful. The softness of the light made her skin glow, and her manufactured blush was matched by her own blood, flowing softly underneath the skin on her cheeks. Echo.

“Eck hem,” the man muttered discontentedly.

“Can I help you sir?” He shifted weight onto first his right foot and then his left.

“Do you think we could have a table with better lighting please?”

The woman’s face twitched for an instant, the right side of her face sliding down, those blue eyes freezing to black, before it quickly was composed again. Perfect smile. Same world, deprived of art. Same eyes, deprived of light.

“Of course. Right away sir.”

I let out a breath of something not unlike relief, as I quickly led them to table eight. “Try table four?” No. No, I don’t think it worked- it would have been too easy. Too much like a fairy tale. Table eight would have to do.

*

More than anything else in the world, I don’t want to ever sit at table eight. More than anything else, I want to be someone who will sit with her in the shaded light, and finish the canvas. Paint her the rest of the portrait. Turn the sharp, harsh streaks of blue paint on the old canvas into something to be cherished. More than anything, I want to turn the world into a place full of artists- people who will look at things just slightly differently, just a bit ‘off kilter’- and each of these different from one another. A place where people are willing to look at the dramatic difference that light can make, and how blue is such a broken color in the dark, an exploited one in bright light, and a beautiful one at table four.

When asked by all these artists that I want to create exactly what it is I want, I respond slowly. Carefully. I taste the words on my tongue, turning them over like candy in my mouth. The consonants are spicy and the vowels are sweet, both melt into each other. Flaming pudding. Strawberries, brown sugar, and sour cream. I breathe through my nose, and open my mouth, letting the words cascade, dribbling down my chin, speaking. “I ask that you let me help define the world somehow. Let me help you live and realize that you are living. Let me become a writer, a dreamer, one of those who is mumbled at as I walk down the street, thinking only of the next way I can show my readers how I see the world. How I can make emotion tangible, and make everything more real than it already is.” The artists stare at me, and make wondrous things, shaping and fashioning things to love. I smile and move my pen across paper, watching them and write about them loving. This is my greatest desire, and this is what I will choose to do forever.

how many days had she spent

sitting on her bed and trying to figure out

why her heart could not rest

why her mind was so full of life

how many years did she spend

listening to music that made her recognize that

there were more like her in this world

how many tears had she spent

on people or ideas of people

sitting in her room trying

to capture them perfectly with

just the right sentence

the perfect simile

how long did she spend wishing she could

do something more to give dimension to those she

spent all of her time

loving or

imagining she did

Ten Pieces are Missing

ten pieces are missing
from the puzzle
so we laugh and are happy
her lips split into a smile
as her chubby hand spreads the picture across the carpet
her mind was filling with the sounds of the picture
lullabies and poetry
the room smelled like wetness and tasted like crushed violets
and felt exactly the way yellow
should feel
bright and warm and two-dimensional
anything could happen now
everything could change and the sounds could become
nightmares and bitterness
the room could become cold and tired and if we find
those last ten pieces
it could become colorless and real

but for now
her face is bright
ready for warmth and violets,
wetness and yellow

ten pieces are missing
and so we laugh
and are happy.

Starting out 'blogging'

So... I am going to have to give props to Wendy for this crazy "blogging" as the call it. What exactly am I supposed to be writing...the bits of my life or stories, poetry or journaling? We shall see, I suppose. Short and sweet, just to start.
How about a poem? Will that work? I like poetry- I will write you one. Or maybe, as I told you short and sweet, I will write a bitty poem thought. You know, those things that try to cram all of your emotions concerning days and years of thoughts into an idea. Yes. Let's try that:

some people love with
such an intensity
that they are suffocated by it-
and appear not to love at all.