I miss the days of Coka-Cola,
smoke in the back seat,
driving wherever we felt the
night leading us,
going wherever we wanted to be.
You’d run your hands down
my skin,
adventuring through
undiscovered
territory, leaving kisses
like red Xs
on a treasure map.
When you dig me up and realize
I’m not made of gold,
will you wish you had never wasted
so many days
remembering how I like
my tea?
It’s no surprise,
recalling how you traced the
freckles on my back
like constellations
to find your way back to shore
in case I begin to
sink.
Like an oyster without a pearl,
I’m a passion without a purpose;
Like a dream without a desire,
without you
I’m hopeless.
The thing I will miss the most
is when the sky gets dark and heavy,
full of cool summer rain;
the
Putt! Putt! Putt!
sound of a
motorcycle driving past as I press
myself against the ground and
listen…
The concrete is warm against my
skin, I close my eyes
and pretend I’m floating on the
ocean
in the fractured sunshine
beneath the whisper silent sky.
And in the distance I hear the
faint
booms
rumbling up from the
belly of the sky
and thundering in my soul
as the raindrops pool in the center
of my eyes.
I pulled the stems and petals
from your face
but you were sad and I was too,
so I gave you to the
Sun
and she warmed your flesh with gold.
From the start
I knew I couldn’t keep you,
like this place; here I cannot stay—
My sky has gotten dark and heavy,
crippling under weight that’s empty;
full of shattered summer rain.
If you were to unplug your TV, turn off the radio, throw away the magazines, disconnect yourself from your computer…do you realize how much less likely you would be provoked to indulge in unhealthy eating? How much less likely you would participate in impulsive shopping? How you would learn to depend upon yourself to search for facts and information, instead of relying on a biased news source to tell you what’s what?
Do you realize how much they control what you’ve learned to associate with who you think you are? How many things that you thought you learned to love on your own, not realizing it was because it had been thrust into your person by the media we consume?
Are you really living? Or just following the path society has laid out for you to follow?
We watched a broken bird
trying to fly a crooked path,
We watched the barn burn
until it was nothing more
than ash.
We counted all the fireflies,
the lilies, and the stars;
But we lost track of the hours,
of the time we thought was ours.
Suddenly, it seemed,
the World was not ours to lose.
We’d borrowed it from the celestial
skies, our fate was not for us to choose.
No doubt;
We’ll land among the asteroids
nothing more than dust,
The universe would easily forget
a species such as us.
My body
is preparing for a war;
Not a war fought with guns,
with mustard gas or tanks,
But a war of letting go
and letting wisdom flood every
corner of my soul.
I know that as soon as this wisdom
rushes through my veins,
it will uncover parts of me
I have spent years hiding away.
The parts society kidnapped,
brainwashed, and fed lies to;
the parts that didn’t fight, that
gave in, that began to believe.
And here I am, at twenty-two
having to learn to unbelieve
all the things I thought I knew.
My body
is prepared for war
With flowers and with kindness,
with mercy and with love.
It has prepared an open mind
and a willingness to help.
It is a war unlike any that has
come before, a war that
can only be won by sacrificing
pride,
not people;
egos,
not innocence.
A war that can only be won
by believing that peace
is not something to be imagined,
but something to be achieved.
"How vain it is to sit down to write
when you have not stood up to live"
— Henry David Thoreau (via halatus)
(via the1sttestament)
I feel a transformation
taking place inside my bones.
The ice has begun to thaw
and melt,
and the wings that lie beneath
are still too fragile yet to fly.
I chip away the frost,
peeling back the old skin
that once contained my soul;
for I have found
it does not belong,
that it no longer fits.
A strange sensation,
for something you once knew so well
to become something so foreign
and unfamiliar.
I unfold my fingers, let
them stretch and bend, become
reacquainted with one another;
I curve my spine,
let the feelings of this new body
become something I can
put words to,
put sense to.
And suddenly these eyes are
open;
the colors are shades that
I can’t name,
and the images become
indescribable
in the human tongue;
A light so bright, it was blinding,
but now I realize
it was always there,
it was just all that I could not see before—
No—
this is not a rebirth;
This is an awakening.
Everything about this place
is reminiscent of death.
I opened my suitcase and cried
because it smelled like your shampoo
and the earthly spices from your
cupboard, the color of the sky
and the white peaks of the mountains.
And then suddenly it was drowned
by the sickening smell of the sea.
I listed off the numbers,
of the reasons I could not survive
on this flat
Godforsaken piece of dirt.
But it wasn’t the lush, rich greenery,
the open air, the passionate human
connections—
The reason I could not survive
is because you are absent in my life
by the sea.
I dreamt of moments when time would
slow, so I could relearn how to breathe.
I imagined smoke consuming this
life to ashes
so that I could be reborn in the mountains
like a phoenix of the flame.
But I could not erase the word
“Home”
etched upon this city;
How could this be home when the
most alive I ever felt
was standing beside you, watching
the snow fall into the wind, your
arm holding me tight
against your side and you said so quietly
that only I could hear:
One day you’ll never have to say goodbye.
This war we wage,
no one can win;
Bodies shattered and broken,
good minds destroyed by sin.
They paint the streets red,
hoping we wallow in despair
innocent people, dead
while the killers are spared.
But does an eye for an eye
mean peace from within?
Or will we perpetuate the cycle
until we are forced to begin again?
