One
I can't wait to grow up.
All the decisions I couldn't make before,
Are mine to long for.
Like deciding my own bedtime.
Should it be 1030pm or 9?
Like doing away with childish things.
Adopting hobbies that relive these memories at scale.
Eating what I want before bed now.
But cow and sow I avoid because heartburn is real.
That's the deal of adulthood. We get to
Make the choice to push ourselves to recapture juvenile innocence
We desperately shunned as tweens.
In between desiring what was and what could be
We forget to live the present moments.
Two
After answers arrive
blessing brains burdened by crushing currents created
deep down;
end eternal
free falls from fear. Fight free.
Grow gracefully.
Three
Wind caress my cheek
You never gossip,
But the secrets of the world sneak
Through my pores
Every time you gust
I can't help but trust you.
Maybe it's your gentleness.
A series of light kisses.
Puts even the most hardened at ease.
Just be careful with me.
Don't reveal parts of me
While visiting others
I'm fragile you see
And not sure I can handle being fully witnessed and seen
Four
Rinse. Wash. Repeat.
Rinse. Wash. Repeat.
The old is new. I feel renewal
Old husk lay shriveled.
And here I lay shiny in the sun.
My cells thank me. Once hidden away by translucent shade.
The sun greets me.
Deep within my skin.
I want this feeling again.
And so the cycle begins.
Again.
With the rinse.
Five
The day will come soon
When you need me to sing
But I will be singing another tune.
The time will arrive.
When you want me to dance.
But my feet will have another jive.
It appears that moment Is here.
And all I have is my smile
Bravely fighting each tear.
Six
Hope floats on the current of our dreams.
A boat of mysteries. Principles of Bernoulli
Only slightly less confusing than magic.
Heavy tow. Light flow.
Depending on the route I choose to go.
Dragging disappointment versus elevating joy.
I can't explain you, but I obsess over having you.
What I know is true,
Is that I'm adrift without you.
Seven
Rather than take the wheel
Bow to the will of the road
The bumps, the divots, the potholes
The lines, dividers, and paid tolls.
Because overcorrecting leads to regret
Simple corrections beget smooth transitions.
Tread finds pavement within milliseconds.
Sometimes the vehicle knows more about the journey than you do.
So I cruise control through life’s construction zones.
Eight
Nested in the confines of what confounds us,
Is a curious thing.
A voice saying, “You know the answer”.
Tiny dancer, around and around we go.
At a rodeo with ourselves.
We think we’re the matador.
But really, the bull is more fitting.
As we peer through the door
To see our precious China in tatters.
Battered, dazed, may we be amazed
By how our state changes if we simply
Stop. Running Around.
Ground. Peer ‘Round the corner.
And hear sound from the voice saying,
I’m still here.
Nine
How does a tree grow deep roots?
A vessel finds the ground.
Holding coded instructions.
Seek nutrients, nurture, and nourishment.
First down, and then up.
No obstacle an impediment.
Through soil, clay, and rock.
Roots find a way.
What force guides this will to survive?
Encoded to be effortless.
Slow and steady over time?
I want to be the tree.
No surface too deep to contain the base of me.
Ten
Things come together at frayed edges
A patchwork of stitches
Yet the utility of the garment intact.
If a fabric is made whole again, why not you?
Stitches do not represent the worst of us.
They represent the parts of us that are transformed.
In between our choices, our flaws, and our fears lay the intricacies of our intentions and timely intervention.
It's in our wisdom and skill that we weave all three into unique tapestry.
And integrating the accents of events beyond our control with flourish.
Its what distinguishes us from being discarded as opposed to simply worn.
What prepares us for our the runway, rather than last seasons then away fashions.
I've a passion for making old things new.
I see the beauty in what I piece together.
Because the end product saw life beyond the mannequin.
And each rip, each tear, each hole, was not an end, but a place to begin again.
Eleven
This bird just designated me the luckiest alive.
Because I've been shit on more times in my life than I can count.
I recount the first blessing's setting fondly.
How lucky was I, under these gray skies as birds flew high, to have my shoe ordained as I paused mid-stride.
A strike from that distance had to be luck.
Through the years, disbelief turned to disgust
Disgust turned to disdain,
And finally disdain turned to delight.
Think of all the factors that must conspire
To win this discarded prize from God's anointed flyer!
Not only the right place and time, but also the right pace and state of mind, to have this experience be mine.
A minute delay by caution; a second ahead by impatience,
And the window closes.
Have you been victimized by shit and runs?
The promise of sunny blue skies
Cut short by a feet-seeking missile? surprise!
Whatever their intent or disregard in throwing shit at you, just remember...
It is a gift; being shit on just means you're in the right state of mind.
Twelve
Wind me up
But don't expect
Mechanical whirs
Grind me down
But don't expect
Black pepper
Hold me back
But don't expect
Us, forever together
See, what you expect
Is not what I reflect
When our paths intersect.
Because I know
Your pleasure shows
When I accept misery
As honey
Any attempt
I meet with contempt
May your dish grow cold.
May your tricks grow old.
Thirteen
They say I suffer from big ideas
Careless whispers of the mind
Breathless kissers intertwined
As though nothing else matters.
Infect the world around me.
I carry coded destiny.
We are all meant to encounter
A moment, an hour, to step into that power
Of holding with tenacity
Challenged capacity
That rhapsody within
Too bold to box in.
Fourteen
When I am older
I will know myself.
I will ask for help.
I will be love.
When I am older
I will find peace.
I will ease into gear
Not force the shift into place.
When I am older
I will speak my truth.
I will embrace the roots.
My ancestors planted for me.
When I am older
I will go on adventures
Enter exciting ventures
With souls that inspire me.
When I am younger
I will yolo my choices
I am free from the voices
Yelling out caution.
When I am younger.
I will be prone to injury.
My body will heal.
But feel my heart never will.
When I am younger
I will race to the finish.
Skittish when minutes
Turn to hours and hours
When I am younger.
I will say freedom!
But I will be anchored by people
By people who need me.
And when I am now
I will see a box made of Great Expectations.
Doesn't define me but cages me.
It's outside that I'm free.
Fifteen.
The wisest person in any room
Is not the one you may assume.
With bearded chin or whispy hair.
It's easy to assume the depth lies there.
But in the room and overlooked
A stature so easily mistook.
For ignorance of soul and mind.
For thoughts undeveloped, unrefined.
Is the quiet, kind, eyes of the child.
Who never tires of asking why.
Never tires of being kind.
Never far from a smile.
For the child's perspective of the world.
Is one of potential yet unfurled.
A world that seems so small to me.
Is full of magic possibility.
And small is big, and big is bigger.
Each moment parsed with naive rigor
The child won't let worldly lessons
Lessen how they see tomorrow.
Sorrow, to them, a fleeting pain.
Gain the chance to start again.
Upend the perspective that it's over.
Lower guards against the unknown.
Own their playtime as adventure.
Whereas the old practice worn wisdom, young wisdom is radical.
There's a lesson in the latter too.
A life lived full is wisest of all.
Unafraid of outcomes, unaffected by falls.
We can learn something from the child.
A soul untamed, and free and wild.
Sixteen
On the swing between lucid dreams and insanity
Is a point that starts to blend.
It feels good there.
Suspended between endless imagination
And bounded creations birthed by mind and soul.
It feels good living in wonderland
Without having to plant a flag in this realm.
To sew into the hem of this planet, Our futures; nudged to plan it.
Planted roots ground deep into reality.
And suddenly it's duller than Groot's personality.
I'd rather live at the point between
Lucid dreams and insanity.
Seventeen
A chance encounter.
Doesn't do justice
To the fact
That I know you
Before I knew you.
Time is life's Loki.
Cruel pranks for no one's amusement
But his own.
Because if I knew
That you existed
Beyond my minds eye.
We would be more.
Could be more
Than even God,
With all her omniscience,
Could know.
Eighteen
Some want what they cannot have.
Others have what they do not deserve.
You deserve what you reap.
I reap what I have not sown.
Some sow what they believe.
Others believe what they create.
You create what you desire.
I desire what I need.
Some need to control.
Others control that feeling.
You feel regret.
I regret feeling anything.
Nineteen
Consider this.
Eighty percent of the ocean is unexplored.
If our souls are more vast than the depths of Poseidon.
How can we know the selves we are hiding?
How can our essence be captured by one vessel, one venture?
One moment of surrender?
Twenty
Like icy tendrils stretched over dew-soaked field.
Like plot twists where primary figures are unceremoniously killed.
Like the shrill trill of alarm bells
Like the foreboding promise of perpetual hell.
Like the sell of an heirloom to barter for life.
Like the eyes behind the hands behind the knife.
Like the strife of accepting uneasy peace.
Like rumblings preceding volcanic release.
You are gripping; you are disease.
Your deceit foments dis-ease.
And reality becomes
The degree to which
We retreat from that
Which depletes us.
Incomplete us.
Injustice.
It's a lonely island when it becomes just us.
When silent Killers say, "but what about us?"
Both grinds sanity to dust.
Listen. You can't believe in God
When it's in hate you trust.
And I won’t believe in fool’s gold —
that love only corrodes and rusts.
Lord, help us grow,
Beyond what we know.
Twenty-one
As the mist clears
I fear that
What may be behind
The Veil
Is more scary
Than the lack of clarity
Of shrouded vision.
So now I must make a decision.
Confront what's before me?
Or retreat into the fog?
Twenty-two.
You leave me in stitches.
Laugh so bad.
Hurt so good.
Torn to pieces over you.
Pulling myself together
A daily encounter
The rapture of bliss
The rupture of downturn
I earn my stripes
Though daily strife
Living this life
Harmonic incongruency.
Twenty-three / Twenty-four.
Part I
Daybreak
Sun warms skin exposed
Heart grows fuller with each golden hour
Shower me with the radiance of a journey through expanse
As your rays reach me,
I am touched by your journey through the universe.
And I know more deeply through you
Part II
Silver moon
Wise and reflective
Softer glow still illuminates the soul
More control over how my day cycles than I acknowledge
Because you are only here for parts of the month.
And yet, I know you are there.
A force that cools
A force that calms
A force that grounds
A force that says, renew.
Twenty-five
Darkness comes before the light.
Before universal expanse banged into existence,
Before endless night greets the dawn.
Before empty sky is lit by bomb.
It’s the darkness that brings brilliance to the shine.
Blackest shroud that gives meaning to uncovering.
Blackest night that gives potency to the sparkle.
So come, darkness. Do your worst.
I can’t wait to luminate.
Twenty-six
Desire to fly
Reflects the belief that our
Reprieve is above.
Twenty-seven
I miss you when you're here.
I love when you're away.
I can't say why .
But the space between your absence is the highlight of my day.
Perhaps it's the heart growing fondly.
But honestly, it embraces the present moment
More than dwelling in longing.
I can't wait to love you again.
Twenty-eight
I'm so afraid of being an open book.
For pages to become faded.
For corners to be folded.
For type to be smeared.
For pen to stab with underline.
Being open too long will stretch my spine.
Expose pristine pages to be torn asunder.
To have Paragraph Witnesses creased, folded under
One another until the page loses its integrity.
Opening my literary structure.
Plotting me.
Am I all exposition?
Will you tire of my rising action?
The climax exposed, is this where you feel emboldened?
Poring over words to see secrets I hold in?
As I fall to resolve, do you speed through it all?
Do you ever witness my final conclusion?
I'm so afraid of being an open book.
Passages mistook, when consumed in isolation.
Pages only towering columns without concentration.
Chapters incomplete as holistic representation.
But,
Along with these thoughts in my head
That fill me with existential dread,
Is the desire to be well read,
And the timid resignation with which I shed
That fear.
Twenty-nine
We often begin with the end in mind.
Is that kind to our minds?
Mind your thoughts, young pupil, they betray you.
School yourself in lessons of geometry.
Pathways are less lines and more circular symmetry.
We end and begin renewed again.
Akin to a pinwheel but propelled by forward motion.
Each revolution a revelation. Circular propulsion a revolution in itself.
Some stay in place.
Others run at rapid pace
Hoping at some point the wheel breaks.
Somewhere in between is the ease of flow.
Where beginning at the end doesn't omit
The centripetal force present in your journey.
So that you begin to see
You've only seen your journey in 2D.
That force has changed your trajectory
Just enough,
That you see your end point from new perspective.
No circle, rather, a corkscrew,
Reflective but distant cousin to the ending you knew before.
Thirty
I don't know how to say goodbye
To the pain
To the past
To temptation
To trials
And so I lie to myself.
Convinced that see you later is a firm adieux.
But what I do, is dwell in you.
I don't like that about myself.
I can't quit that about myself.
I never can say goodbye.
Comments