Coffee Shop Text

I’m growing hard and cold in this tribal world. I don’t think you could say I am happy. With this constant chatter of unrest delving to rest inside my head; they are putting up camp, I can tell, they can say. There’s this perpetual expectance from society of what to be, how to say and why to live. I don’t know if I can ever grow to understand this type of living. I grip Excalibur inside the fist of my hand; it hangs loosely from a silver cord around my neck, claiming to have been pulled from the formidable rock where no one else stood to understand that it takes grace and patience, not sure strength. It’s as if I’m waiting to be saved, to be sure of protection from all of this pounding energy—consuming, eating away my vitality. Who’s ever really sure of their existence? I want to be told I am okay, I am going to make it through the day, that I am good enough. I want to be held and be seen as true. I’ve been thrown out, no packed bags but the clothes on my back. I have no home now, left to wander through tempos unheard of. It’s weird how people look at you, like they know where you stand. People have forgotten the language of telepathy, but that doesn’t mean we still don’t communicate, wordless. We aren’t ever really alone, because in some sense or another, people always know what you are feeling. They meet you--sad, betrayed, this deep seed of resentment and label you as unhappy, depressed. No one can explain how they know specifically, they just do. It’s too much for the comprehension of words. I don’t know how I feel about that. I could easily leave this barren place, with people who feed jealousy and fight for the funniest funny, an attack on the weakest link, but I wonder if it would change anything. Would the people really be different, would I make friends and feel content? Maybe green really is my color, and that is what I needed to realize. I guess I am just tired of feeling below the rest of society, when I think so much too. No one seems to understand my need to be at one of those colleges where thinking is revered, books a well sought-after perfume. I want to sit in those grand libraries; you know one of those brick, home-in-front-of-a-warm-crackling-fire ones? I want to live there. Create a home there. Drink my coffee, study and sleep there. Modern isn’t my thing. Ironic, when journalism is on its last limb, surviving by the newest new—the search for obliterating human communication. Give me a typewriter and that will do. Storytelling must never die. Faces must never fade.

I think confrontation is needed. To go out and be okay with falling down, once, twice or numerous times, you know. We must be open to meeting so many people, even if we don’t necessarily talk to them. To just interact with their energy is good enough. To sit in the open, alone, is the bravest of all. Because you are telling the world, I am okay by myself. I am okay meeting you. We may all be suffering, but I am still okay.  I love this feeling of essential rebellion.

A farewell to nobility in loneliness

The leaping woman arrives in an ambulance of starlight. Take heed young warrior, wanderlust vagabond—these stars burn for only so long; they can fall and die en masse of clouded fire, its grip reaching for a death experienced together, not alone like everyone else. Make a wish, or this search will be your downfall; see there, light-years scrape across battered and bruised skies encased in flaming trails of golden chariots. They didn't race ahead, star-bright, to fall in vain. Once, only once in a lifetime, myths braced for the constellation of gods splattered among the cosmos. Oh, see it pass you by now. Adrift a torrent of wind and sea and deserted dust storms, that leaping woman bathed in starlight felt as if she was rusting as burnt and red as iron. She was no "holy city," so she looked to the moon and waited for its milky cradle, a boat in a rather black, brash sea—a sailor’s friend in Poseidon’s tidal pull. Waves of stars took its shot, they rose up and hit like a tsunami's sucker punch until she clung to the orbit of impermanence. Her family always told her about the principles of practice, but what did they do other than call her a kind of lazy susan, waiting for the heavens to guide her home. So she leapt and she fell, and she snagged and cracked with each broken branch, until she lay still, very still, most like those monastic monks, waiting for the brush of enlightenment and the tongue of its tempters beneath a tree and its grassy roots. She was on the roof of the world, her name known only as Ngari, the remains of a celebrated and ruined kingdom, a place for the rather vast and few. Magical, divine—a final state of nirvana—a place to pilgrimage and find what all those stars lost, alone "to fly high and never fall." No need for another emergency call, this was her final search for home. 

Dear Journal

I have my days of worshipped dreams; wishing, living in New York’s lights, Europe’s sacred grace. But today in Phoenix wasn’t so bad. Phantogram in concert was more than anything I have ever experienced before. It was trance-like. In a small urban venue, I closed my eyes and swayed back and forth to the local beats that grazed each ray of light—in sync with the crowd’s pulse. Tonight I felt okay, more than okay, I felt healed. It’s been a long time. I danced how I wanted to dance. I was alive, crazed, one with the music, one with the moment. Encore and all, however, it had to end. I gripped my leather jacket and braced for the new cold that has finally found the Arizonan desert and called its fall. My ears were numb from harmonized souls, but there I was, throbbing in a high of something utterly unforgettable, something I could finally call an experience worth something. 

There is breath in the things you cannot see, in what cannot last

Where do moon tides dream when you lie beneath homemade stars? Deep inside, wear off the devil inside, and just breathe. It comes in waves now, that pulling feeling to go back, back in time. The streets curve as you move. There we all are. Moving, trying not to slip and break the liquid glass. Mirrors to another place, another universe. And we think, we are fragile. This is all fragile. Tiptoeing hesitance, cutting the blade in a perfect figure eight. Who’s keeping count? Landing on our feet, we are the edge of the water’s sleep. Nothing more than autumn leaves breaking with each footed grace, pumpkins lining the streets, young faces painted in midnight disguise. A revolution of its time, before the snow covers summer grass and fallen color, and skies darken with the bitter cold. The desert doesn’t seem to know so much of a season’s passing. Time slows and dust settles in a velvet cloth. Mountains are to be climbed, endless roads have to end somewhere. To get there. To rest there. To watch there. Away from those lights and those people. To just lie there with open eyes screening stars so real and far away for some message of salvation—some message just for you and that magic carpet.  A wolf’s call can sound there in the calm of the night without fear or danger, just wary like us. And loyalty. Oh, where we just question and they just breathe. Where they act; weightless, breathless, firelight free. Dust passes in a divine trance—quickly enveloping above, frozen, thick and muddy within. We turn to one another, each a ghost in some slow and precise dimension. Our voices, a muffled dance; our ears, a symphony  ablaze with a droning hum. We etch our name into the white sky, hoping to paint the sunset somewhere above us. To feel again in that moment, alive. Like we are the only ones that made it out from some broken apocalypse, under siege. Maybe everything follows a flight plan. Plane after plane landing and leaving, never breaking off-course into a new city, a new year, a new you. Every person following one another, hoping for something better, scraping the dust of far above stars, just breathing together.

Sure there are things we cannot see, but that doesn’t mean we cannot feel what is free. I wish I could feel it all for you.

Published writing

My writing was just recently published in NASTY Magazine's September Light Issue. Here's the full piece, if you want to check it out go here--it starts on page 45!

I was also named as an editor for the magazine, and helped write some of the previews for the issue:

Someplace away from Home

Finally posting about my roadtrip this summer. Taking the grapevine down LA.

There was something about this place that touched my very soul, cleansing, healing. The water swayed as it spoke, and I broke like the waves and the sun's setting gaze. Closing my eyes, I said to myself: this, this is what letting go means. I think we are all worshippers of the sea. Pulling, tugging, returning. We can all move on, but we can't all go back.

Hearst Castle.

This is divinity.

Me with Janey. And then again with Jackie.

 These are my best friends, Jane and Jacqueline. I'm going to college with Jane in Arizona, but Jackie is off in New York. They're like my sisters, and I miss them dearly.

Main street, Disneyland. The sky was unreal, just like its surroundings.

Home I go. South on the steamboat. 

Palm Sunset. Pismo Beach, California. This is where peace is.

The tea cups can spin us out of our own misery, you know. Blur our surroundings until we are left with only ourselves and the people we love. 

 California Adventure rave. Bathed in indigo, bathed in light. And we were brought together. Who would've thought, strangers from around the world; one.

 Santa Monica, California

 Here we all are. Though Eeyore is my favorite, I always loved Tigger as a kid, too. He was light, bouncy, and had a way of leaving everyone else around him a bit brighter. I always wished to be a bit brighter.

And then it was done. Just like my favorite series. My childhood. Gone like the last page, with tears streaming down my face, a plane dragging me farther away from my home, friends, family and everything I ever thought to be permanent.  Riding down sunset strip, riding the clouds, the mountains, the sea. And I couldn't do anything about it. And all I could think was just that.

It all ends.

Eagle Spirit, are you strong enough?

I don’t see any painted sky. Why does it have to be so blue all the time. I look each way for something new; my compass has no news of golden treasure, rains of enlightenment. There are things I have to be doing. This map doesn’t let up, I tell you. I know that it will hurt when I break away from some dotted line. But I can’t see you cry anymore. I can’t hear the disappointment anymore. I can’t hold your weight anymore, or watch the lines crease your face anymore. It’s the same old, same old. And where’s my news? Who’s reporting for me. It’s not timely. Books crowd my head. The christmas lights hang low, reminding me, taunting me of times, safe, and alone in my bed of green. I’ve lined these pictures and they grow old too. When will things stop growing old? When fire meets skin, and I blow away into the wind; blowin’ in the wind. Watch from the watchtower, won’t you? I’m not sure what I expected college to be like. Independence, new friends, variety, possibility. But there’s not much new but an old new town and dirt roads that now pave into palms and cacti. The bunny mountain isn’t so big no more, camelback’s not that small. I’m still waiting for power in crystals, and wolves with their mother moon. Luna, la lune. Native American legends in adobe mountains and sedona’s vortexes heal, you know. But I don’t know. I can’t feel. I want to feel. Young and used, I’d sit in the back of an old red firebird, my head resting against another window that trapped me within circumstance, and I’d watch those painted skies change each way. A compass that finally moved somewhere other than North. I wanted to melt with it all, like the sky with the heat, know the map and the treasure. ‘Cause fuck, it gets tired always searching. I wanted to just be, or know that there was something that followed after me too. Skies of maroon and gold, and magenta too. It was beautiful. It was heaven. It was homemade circumstance. And the past didn’t end, but danced in ritual’s hands of fire and sand. Dust storm take me away; wash my skin, cloud this view, make mud out of my sense of direction. Am I strong enough yet, blowin’ in the wind, burning in your eyes, El Dorado’s dusty Hidalgo? Look up towards the sky, and turn, side step, work your magic shaman king.

College

Due to the haze of what seemed like an ending, and yet, never ending last summer at "home," and a new wave of debilitating emotions over my move to college in Arizona, I haven't been able to post much of my writing lately. 

However. 

I did get back from a roadtrip at the beginning of August with some friends to Socal, and I have a lot of pictures and various writings/journals that I will post soon!

So don't leave. 

Strength in Broken Shells

Great danger, they let their guard down.

There was tank fire. There was artillery. There were airstrikes.
It was hard to navigate—tank fire, artillery, airstrikes.

How could this happen? Who is this man, the self-image of an African “king of kings?”
The latest news read:
Not a single sentence makes sense!

A loudspeaker blared, “we will remain,” in revolutionary refrain.
With a weary smile, the men were terrified.
Rebel fighters kneeled on the ground, belts of ammunition draped over their chests, and, prostrated in prayer, they recited: “God is greater than what I fear.”

Not by choice, the youth had begun to lose hope.
Human—an old man with a wrinkled, sagging face, muttered baffled and embarrassed.
“He is just a man. This will come to an end, finally.”

To an end, flat and open, shouting at the top of his lungs: “How long can we stay like this?”

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/03/magazine/mag-03Libya-t.html?pagewanted=1&sq=1943&st=nyt&scp=6

http://lens.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/03/30/lynsey-addario-its-what-i-do/?ref=world

So this was a found poem I wrote for a new york times contest. Thought I’d share.

I will go down with this ship, and always will be

 When the sun sets I'm 7 again, where dreams melted like rocket popsicles, push pops, hands sticky, stained the color of the sky; purple, pink, yellow, orange, burnt red. Sometimes I bring myself to a swingset, and just sit. I peel back and push my feet off the ground, kick my legs and hope my skin doesn't stick. That tree isn't there anymore, but I was in a different world then, a long-distance country, where you were here and I was there. The Gods above blessed me with wings, smiled down and lifted my eyes to blue skies and deep seas and the heavens as one with here and there and the in-between. Higher, closer, I'd make my way to the clouds, the sails, soon cathedrals and Ancient Greece and the Tower of London with the Eiffel Tower from peak to peak. My hands curled in stretched white grip. My knuckles and bones holding onto another side where I was free from you and me and this whole damned world. God, I didn't want to let go. I closed my eyes until they hurt, and let my head fall back, my hair mid-twirl, brushing the sand beneath and the sunlight that danced rays of white and gold in the mess of watercolor. Back when I was 7 again, where the beach was as close as the park, the water fountain, the ocean and a sandcastle as real and sturdy and naive as a disney tale, you and me. Where trees were an easy climb to the top of Mount Everest; the world in the palm of your hand, in the smell of the forever evergreen pine breeze and view of the city, so small and weary. Back when walkie talkies were your best friend; top secret missions took you to the Sahara, a camel and the sand and those boys from next door. Football every year, those boys don't know me, a girl can play just as mean. Summertime meant baked lemon chicken, a call from mom, the sun still high, baseball with fallen pine cones, the goal: that mean dog-haters window, backyard, mom and dad won't see. The pool, as rough as the Indian Ocean, no place for a doll and its tupperware boat. But that didn't mean you didn't want to see someone else sink, not me. The frontyard with all its leaves, plants with the goopy saliva and broken trees; a medicine cabinet, a chef's kitchen, if you may, brewed potions for a childhood of young love and magic and time's relentless chase. Sun tea with lemons and things lost and forgotten beneath the blue tides and the backyard tent with s'mores and tumbling, jumping, laughing high into the night kids. We'd walk through the center, sure and unseen, broken boards to the right and Jack and Rose and the Titanic with all its ghosts, loyal and brave, "I will go down with this ship," you'd hear them say. And you'd say. Where pets deaths were your first glimpse of this hard, sunken world, and they meant funerals and flowers and the whole neighborhood brought together for kind words and seances. But no one could replace that friend, or that curiosity in the glimpse of what death meant and the finality in that underground sentence. And in that california sun, and its cruel high noon, where you and your bike took crusades to save the orange and black caterpillars, the butterflies of its day, that couldn't make it to the cool pavement, the broken shade. And then you'd close your eyes and pray, and cry, and hold your hand out with that stick, scared to touch a creature so unlike you where moving faster didn't make sense, could not be done before the day was done where wings were grown and the sun and wind understood. I guess when the day was done, feet slipped, they struggled to kick, but could not kick. And the sand dragged down your limbs and eyes so high, until you and I were making circles with our eyes and we jumped, 1, 2, 3, like a bird in its first flight. The sand crashed in a tsunami wave, shielded our eyes from our otherside where we were young, happy and I was who I was meant to be, young and happy with wings, colorful and free and understanding of death, the sun and wind and the in-between. 


And yet there was no white flag above our door. I'm sure that that makes sense. 

Swallowed in the sea of green and gold and the lost and homeless

Wasn’t graduation a time of celebration, when hats raised to the ceiling meant transcendence of time and space and the in-between? You were out. Out of that prison, that prison so many called home. Skewed perception, am I right?

But that wasn’t the case. It wasn’t some holy night, some speaker of the peace. A flame should have been burning in prayer. But it was distinguished, you could feel it, see the smoke cloud the sun and wash away those green and gold colors so many came to paint their very skin. 

Not mine, no, no, no, never. What is life when all you ever feel is the moment candlelight is blown to ash, and wax hardened to the mold of your finger, that desire to burn like the rest, like you, inside. 

And when I stood before those people, I imagined what the person who called himself my father must look like; what he might feel, if he feels the desire to burn like the wax in its liquid heat, or the wick consumed in flames. I couldn’t stop myself from wishing he was gone, away from haunting my life, my existence, my coffin of safety I made to protect myself from his very draining, needy being. 

He was there against my wishes. I was only a child they say, no coffee for you, but go to college and get a job and pray; I grabbed my diploma, I grabbed my friends hand, my face red, my eyes watering, songs that whispered “they’re just spies,” raced along the inside of my ear and tired mind when I left that stage where so many failed to clap for me and my soft-spoken tears. I faced that doorway where I could see the man I hadn’t seen in years wait with caution. Vines stretched out to me, trying to tangle me up in devil’s snare. Deep breath, walk, “Hey J,” “Hey, hello.” And on I go. Wave of my hand, head bent, what do I do now, now, nothing, sit down.

And afterwards when I could find no one else but that very man who handed me a poem that spoke of pride and love only for blood and made-up words that was a testament to the imagined of what it would have been like to watch me grow from that “baby with blue eyes in my arms to a girl who holds her own.”

All I could do was hold my own, and care for someone who only cared when they had someone back home in their bed to hold and replace that loneliness, burning loneliness. 

Where did holding my own go? When I couldn’t say all the words I wanted to say, that slithered within with such sharp grace. Fake it. Thanks. Appreciation. I have to go. And to go guilt took nest within my gut of monarch butterflies. Can you feel that? Humanity, it’s energy all together and red and yellow and green and blue and purple. I closed my eyes and walked forward with increased speed. Where’s my family? What’s that? Do they exist? 

Nod of the head to a boy that lingered between the two; my face red, my eyes heavy in blue. Did he notice the way the green sweat its grasp as I increased the gap? The way my face held its own despair, regret, need to care and protect. 

And I was near breakdown, always working, pretending for others. And this was just another day; graduation, what did that even mean? I spoke of it to those people who did nothing but fail to notice, rather prizing in judgments. They looked at me with no emotion, I gained power with daggers of words. I told them. My one moment for truth. Beat the butterflies from my stomach, my lips and mouth and tongue dry from fear. Below you, who are you! I cried in nervous speech. Here’s me, here’s to my hard work, pain stakes and broken betrayals. The truth of how they made me feel, how no one notices one another, and we all keep going on without a care. How friendships were made throughout the years for a one-time playmate in the sandbox. A free for all, contest for the rich and famous and loud, yes the loud. I told them, I wasn’t sure of myself, but I can hold my own. With a glance to the boy that lingered between the two, always guarded, I wondered if he heard what I said. If he even cared. That it was done, over.

Like my graduation, like the kindergarten judgments, and stars that shone above an aqua lagoon, me on my back, weightless, my eyes looking for anything to call home. 

Open up your eyes, home is where the heart is, they say.

And good God do I want to know what that means, to give me heart, give me soul to patrol, patrol, survive and control where I can finally hold my own and say that this is where my heart is.

Tree of Life

Roots stretch through cold brown dirt; they intertwine together, linking arms, connecting the past to the present to the future. The tree, the roots speak of our family history, so long and forgotten; no one really knows the beginning, no one really knows the ending. Mind racing, braking, slowing to a drowsy stop painted leaves a tinge of green, roots a dripping brown. As kids did we one day think we would become this? You know, from that age where we held onto a yellow balloon with all our might; don’t let go, don’t let it fly into a space so black and glittered with stars and suns and moons and red planets bigger than our thumb and eye. Where spaceships flew and air was hard to come by. And without warning, the balloon leaped your grasp, and you cried out for help, for someone to bring it down, away from the unknown that was so dark with no night light to keep you safe. Leaf by leaf hung delicately to each branch and root, and we grew to become shy with our big, forgiving eyes. It was that first moment, that first realization that the rest of the world didn’t love us unconditionally like they used to, and they didn’t cry out for the yellow balloon that flew into the unknown, so dark, so constraining. They weren’t there when you painted eggs, blue, green, pink, yellow, purple, and you asked which sticker was best to finish it off. Which sticker, that was it. And there they were, your mother, your brother, your grandparents and adults that seemed so close because they were. They sat there and they smiled. “Which sticker do you like?” “I like you.” And a grin, pure and naive, broke your face into a million little pieces, and you spread your roots into the ground, into that one memory where easter eggs and stickers and people that loved you radiated in rays from the sun above; your biggest night light from the blackness of space and sky. Because we grow and our trunks age with lines that hug in circles, so deep and clear. And the roots wrap with such grace to connect our past to present to future. And like trees, we were alone, yet connected from leaf to leaf where we fell from innocence and youth and the summer breeze one after another, each changing like the seasons. We reinvented ourselves, cleansed in a sort of rebirth from the old ways of desire for unconditional love from the mass of piling, decomposing leaves. To love, to cry for the love of the roots we dug so deep, without a night light where we realized that no one loved us like they used to, that we were different away from our family, our roots. As trees of life we cried out for a yellow balloon in space: “This is not the end.” 

Embittered French Rose

“Adieu, adieu,” she said in the midnight hour; to the wind, the trees, the stars, broken alleyways and missed payphone calls.

Comme il faut; we all go on when the world stops spinning, and we have a chance to sit in our chaise longue and think, really think and watch the leaves blossom, and fall with each changing day.

And right in that moment, we whisper to ourselves, fermer les yeux:

“We are content.”

Earlier that night, the girl with long blond hair made her way down the Champs-Elysées, she walked côte à côte the Seine; the summer air stuck heavy to the nape of her neck.

Leaving the café, with her café au lait still steaming with wisps of blanc, she wished the nearby étranger, “Au Revoir,” and scurried off to the prochaine rue.

She noted the twilight hour and was transported to the belle époque when life was simple, elegant, and beautiful.  The cri de coeur pierced her with such intensity that she stopped for a moment and leaned against the rail to feel the wind, the trees, the stars and broken alleyways and missed payphone calls. She wanted to capture that one moment and sew another patch into her âme essence, paint another picture, breathe life into a dying sigh.  

When she reached the quartier, she watched as smoke cradled in waves from burning cigarettes. When engulfed in flames, she thought to herself.

With a light touch of the shoulder and an “entrez-vous,” she ducked beneath the low wooden beams to squeeze into the sea of people.

Déjà vu called the masse en rapport. Her head swam with a lyrical chord that beat with every string. The floorboards moved with a rouge ambiance, and as if in a masquerade, shadows spun in release to society’s beck and call—a rendezvous of sorts, for the lonely, the moved, the feeling.

As if a party of the fin de siècle, everyone was en suite, the entire world spinning in melodic symphony.

It’s like a coupe de foudre and you are struck, and you can’t move, paralyzed, mesmerized with him, her, that look, that sense of belonging, where you are home.

The espirit de corps swirled together in such beauty that the sway of bodies imprinted silhouettes onto the walls, the floors, the aura of energy itself, that moment captured in joie de vivre, a certain je ne sais quoi.

Who’s to call a faux pas? One’s own gauche, awkwardness defines the raison d’etre, unites us as individuals, living, breathing like a roman-fleuve of great sagas.

As her body pulsed with the blood of people and music coursing through her veins, the source of life’s light, she ran, away, faster, quicker now. Moving alone, among the boulevards, her debutante acted as a transformation from a world so young, new, naïve, where she questioned the very importance of amour-propre: why we can only love others once we love ourselves.

 “Adieu, adieu,” whispered the girl like a billet-doux nearing the end.

“Touché,” sang the midnight sky in the moonlight hour of a shooting star that brushed the black canvas of a film noir.

Encore, Encore. Adieu, c’est la vie.

Be comfortable, creature, and ride the wind

He spun as if a child beneath the twilight of darkened lights, mixed between north and south, doused in yellow. Back and forth he moved. Cars raced on either side of him, yet he danced in tribal ceremony. The fire to his left, people caked in reds, blues, green paints to his right. His loved ones, his people, united, he, himself, merged in symphony. Great lunges. It didn’t matter that cars raced by, that plastic bags circled his figure with great speed, that people smiled in condescension, that they laughed, that he danced. He smiled great, and he was there in that moment with the wind, the colors, the life that dimmed in so many. He was a child spinning beneath yellow sunlight and he smiled great. And he was home.

Ciel

Spin me around

Fly in a wind of film

Dance in the sky of blue and white.

As a little girl, I would dream and twirl, a life of cushioning clouds crowded my mind.

In the cramped car, with the windows rolled down, my hand swam through the current of sweet, warm air. 

It threaded through my fingers, pushing my hand up, pushing my hand down.  Strands of blond danced around my head, as I struggled to push wisps out of my eyes. 

Strings of guitar, beats of drums, and a husky voice sang out through the small speakers; the tune of days gone and past, a forgotten decade. 

Up above, pink mixed with orange, orange mixed with red, red mixed with purple, purple splashed with yellow. 

Cream, fluffy clouds invaded the canvas.  There I ran and played.  I jumped from cloud to cloud.  I spun and twirled.  I danced in the sky of raspberries and cream.

An angel of the heavens, my passed family haven. My own paradise of the gone and forgotten.

My childhood, I float.  My youth, I stay. 

Weeping Willow

A world so bright.  A world fading.

A time of highs.  A time of lows.

Chaos encircling.  Chaos goes unnoticed.

Am I the only one to realize this doomsday penance?

All we do is lie.

We lie on our beds; always alone, maybe together, perhaps with another’s arms encircled around our own lonely bodies. 

We lie to each other, we lie to ourselves.

We lie to the world, to authority, to the curious, knowing children.

And we hide from the sorrow pouring, seeping from the clouds above.

Can you feel the earth moving below your feet?  Can you feel it?

The earth moves in slow waves, but as time quickens its pace, the slow waves have turned violent. 

I feel it; So here I stand, scared of what the future brings, scared of the present, grasping for the past, shaking with the fury buried within thousands.

Move, we must move. Listen, open and listen. Peel away the painted facade of a world that does not pay for ignorance and your still voice.

You turn your head, away from the oncoming disaster of days draped in dark.

Away, only concerned with our own life and unfolding story, stuck in a fog of hallucinations.

And you run, around and around you go as the world unravels behind your heels.

The water bleeds over the edge, into the space of night and stars.

Fetch boy, like a dog on his hands and knees.

Crumble like a wall built so tall. Look. Watch. Understand. Forget. Repeat.

Can you feel the poison burning through your veins? 

Can you feel it bubbling to your mouth as you lie to yourself, to me, to our fragile, tired world?

Don't listen for the quake of oncoming change.

This world has gone flat like the light of crystal ships and the strong wolves howling, crying to their white guardian, suspended high in time. 

It cries for the terrible pain beholden upon us all, finally disappearing below the horizon of earth meeting sun, and leaving us amidst gray ashes floating placidly from the sky above to the ground surrounding us. 

And the gray ashes of all the untold secrets rains over the land of fading evergreen, over you.

Wash your hands clean of any lingering remorse.  

Caught in a waking dream

Hide and Seek. Marco, Polo.

Where are you? Hey, hello?

Inside and outside, you haunt my every being.

My soul stirs restlessly for your touch, your words that graze my cheek so softly. 

My lips tremble for remembrance.  My eyes, your starstruck acknowledgment. 

Along a path of burning coals, I walk.  I close my eyes squeezing back the pain. 

Steadily I balance, arms in flight, listening to the gunshots quiver past my ears.

Battle upon battle, bullets narrowly miss the mark.

Unscathed, with a hole in my heart?

The shadows of my subconscious, their medical hands stained blood red, are shattered as it bursts in crimson rain overhead.  

Part the waves of the red sea, here I come, look away. 

Both towering walls of still water breaks through my force field of domain.  I feel the first drops of red rain before I am awash in blue tides. 

With open eyes I am turned around, upside down; My sense of direction floats about my gasps for air.

You flash through my mind all calm and fine.  You tend to your next 'sweet thing', not witness to my burnt feet, or the scars of bullets that cut me into Swiss cheese.  

You cannot see me drowning beneath the waves of the sea. 

In a flash of white light I am asleep in a field of billowing, tall green grass.

I awake to sunflowers and roses and clear blue skies.  

I try to remember something, anything, but I am washed clean.

I try to remember your touch, and the way your words would softly graze my cheek.

My lips do not tremble, nor do my eyes look for those starry skies.  

Down the center, slightly to the left, a tiny stitch marks my beating heart.

I am back to the beginning.

Hide and Seek.  This time I am searching for me. 1, 2, 3. 

The lightness above us, heavy upon us

Light swirls above us, heavy above us, heavy upon us.

We question, we wonder aloud to the silence above us, upon us:

"Who am i?"

We whisper to the wind, the light, the darkness that shields the seekers in the midnight hour.

"Who am I?"

We scream, we yell, we cry. No answer from the chilled wind, fading light, and steady darkness that shields the speakers in the midnight hour.

We are alone to ponder the stained red question.

We see the light swirling above us, upon us, yet featherlike caressing our butter cream cheeks.

As children we skip and dance, for we are the light that swirls above us.

We run with radiant lightness through the emerald green fields, racing the clouds.

The bees whisper honeyed secrets in our young, naive ears.

Sprouting like the flowers in their beds of earth, we blossom into adolescence. 

The light grows heavier, the bees buzz grows fainter, the green grass is left to tickle our calves. 

We are young, naive. But we notice on another, and we love.

It's in the cool moments beneath the oak tree, book in hand where we yearn for adventures we will never have; we yearn for love and another's arms, eyes, sweet cherry caress.

Our sun kissed skin ignites under the heavy light of the sun.

Our first kiss, so instinctual, yet new. 

Everything seems to fade away in that one moment: the light above us, the wind, the bees and emerald green fields with the high grass and chasing clouds.

Our solitude fades, and we feel as one. Our previous fears dissolve into honeyed kisses--our newfound speech.

That's the first moment where we wished we would forget that question:

"Who am I?"

The days drift by heavy in light, chilled with the wind, dark as the darkness that shields the seekers in the midnight hour.

And as our skin ripens, we are fallen apples, bruised; our youthful lightness weighs heavier and heavier.

We no longer hear the bees buzz in our naive ears or skip and dance as the lightness above us.  

We no longer kiss under the oak tree.

We are bruised, heavy with the answer to the question that haunts us.

At last our rattled breath heaves a heavy sigh:

"Ah, death we are the lightness above us. We are heavy, yet as light as a feather."

So we dance and skip in fields of emerald green, chasing the clouds. 

Bees whisper honeyed secrets in our aged ears, and the grass tickles our feet.

We read of adventures never had, and love in another's sweet cherry caress.

We kiss the light, the wind, the darkness of the midnight hour.

So as we take our final breath, do not ask us that burdened question, "who am I?"

Fo we are the lightness above us, heavy yet as light as a feather.