There's this girl

I used to know her.
I still do.
I've got her phone number,
and she'll occasionally drop by the house
to see if anyone's home. just to say hi.
the examples we carry to prove to ourselves
that we haven't forgotten one another.

i can't lie.
it's been different without you around.
and i see you now
and i'm glad things have been
the way they have.

i remember i used to be pretty good at making you smile,
but those were nothing compared to the brilliant one you wear now.

he went out on top

Had finally dug himself out of the hole
got his life on the right track
had finally received redemption.
was now ready to provide his fate and be
what he was supposed to be so long ago.

he knew that he was at the top of this game.
but fate knew that this was as high as he would ever go.

and it needed to take back his borrowed energy
so that it could continue on and allow others to borrow its time
who would provide more than this man did.

what he did provide was taken back with thanks.
time and fate will miss him. more than we ever could.

I knew it

Right then and there.
All I could see was eyes.
True and Blue.

Everything around them was a mess
eyelids half open
wrinkled at the corners
barely conscience.

I saw us as 80 years old
with our hair all a mess.
Waking up next to you.
And not somebody else.

And later on too
when you were all around
not in a good mood.
I could not help but be by
your side probably more of an annoyance
than anything else, but still with the good intention
of bringing your smile back.

When you're willing to work this hard
you know what you are.

Yea, there's a definite.
I'll always be in love.

Everything to Gray

If I stare hard enough, there is only the vibrant color of your face
and eyes played out against a gray background. The edges of your blonde head
are touched by a light smoke, as the surroundings turn pale and dark,
losing their color to becoming different shades of black and white.
the lively hue of your skin, and your shimmering blue eyes
protested against the collapsing contrast, holding steady
refusing to be overtaken.

My worst dreams were the ones where the the color runs away
from you and you become just like everything else.
The ones where you stop fighting and as you walk away
you become enveloped
by white and black
your purple dress fading to a midnight hue.
warm ocean eyes to cold charcoal.

To be unfinished business.

To say good bye, and to never say hello again
is my greatest fear. A final moment together
Where we didn't get to say what we really wanted.
"Wait, I love you, don't go!"
No. we swallow these words
and others emerge painfully,
wringing our souls on their way out.

I hope you are always reluctant to see me go.
Because I am always reluctant to leave.

scrapes

They show, they tell.
They heal, but are split open again.
And the edges of fresh skin
ebb and flow, the gap closing
now growing, a recurring feat of
blood loss. Small enough for everyone who sees it
to say "ouch" or "yikes" or "eeeh"
but not so bad that they use an
"o my gods" or a "jesus!"

And they heal a funny way.
Like they are patchwork under our skin.
Never really the same as what was there before.
the skin forming a certain mark
Never really forgotten.
the incident occuring may not being remembered
but the visible growth still evident to this day.

Anchors

Our faith in the storm,
to prevent us from being ymoved
when the chaos comes.

Don't you know that the rock
which doesn't move
slowly weathers away? Turning to nothing.

Let me free to roll with the waters, so that I may
live on. Because I have been held in this place far too long,
slowly dissipating into the wind's
salty arms.

"I'll die til I'm dead"

young children chanted an oath to each a sacred promise that when broken would shatter the hearts of those who were involved. at least that's how it used to go.
the adults overlook the truth of the matter, children's ideas more full of universal truth
than anything they thought had at their "mature" age.

but the pact is spoken together. and though they speak at one another, they speak
only to themselves. to the world inside of them.
promising that they will give back the energy they have borrowed in order to live this life.

bodies enervated by the soul. insidesilluminating,
light spilling out from behind your eyes.

and the clock begins. the light grows dimmer.
the proximity of soul to body has begun to grow
and the sharp vibrant radiance in the beginning
has started to dull and round of at the edges.
fires burning low as red goes to black
dying a little more every moment
until there's no more dying
left to do.

A Light!

That's the one. Past trends say otherwise.
But perhaps it doesn't follow the pattern.
It is the immaculate outlier. Golden, glorious.
I will strive for that one. On my last chance.

Goodbye

It's hard to say.

You can tell

when they're skeptical.
when apologies are empty words.
they are cautiously forgiving.

there is no softness in the face.
blue eyes accentuate the cold stare.
maybe they want to believe
but they were let down
too many times before.

Lived to Tell the Tale

as we run from the city
of who we used to be
the past lies desecrated
instantly turned to ruins

the storm moves closer and closer
until the twister is upon you
pulling you from your feet
and into its mayhem

the tornado tosses us-how uncontrollably we rise and fall,
bodies moving like marionettes without a god.
not landing as the same people who were taking off.

chaos threw us higher than our tallest fears. it became
our tallest fear, to not be the ones in control. how sad
the realizations are, that we'd rather be in the eye of the storm,
numb lifeless and idle, than in where everything is electric, alive
and in motion.

the calm twilight

fills my heart with disquiet
laying you to rest I embark, my full night's struggle ahead,

the river absorbs the black canvas above,
my kayak slicing through the velvet darkness
paddles scooping the water, indents casually refill
begging me to cut the self replenishing stone;
praying to feel the emptiness again, watching healed wounds open and remembering;
cycles of pain paired with the time frames of numbness and ignorance.
the quiet flow of liquid onyx beneath me rises
I am deaf to the tsunami as silent waters
drown out my cries, cold water rushing over my nose,
stifling my breath, my ears boxed;
my vision enveloped by the depths-blind and thrashing in the lightless waters

thousands of air bubbles rise around me, prodding me to inhale,
the hopes of capturing these minute sirens resounding

calypso's hand raises me above the surface for a moment of sustenance-too soon
poseidon's hand crashes over me
i fade deep, the crystal moonlight a poor tether

hours lead to a blackened shore, washed up amongst the iron sands. the hallucination of stability.
the attempt to catch me off guard once more;
my deep breaths mask the rising tide, and it stands: an aqueous skyscraper ,leans; races to the ground, thousands of shards of obsidian falling violently,
calculated,
cold slices catching me across the face, the chest;
coagulating tides slither around me, bounding my ankles, holding me captive, my feet sinking into the landscape;
immobile;
unable to fix my gaze elsewhere, the dark, oily sea a constant reminder
eclipsing sapphire eyes forevermore.

Pushing Pause

When I see you
everything stops and time inhales
Leaving just enough of a moment
to show the shimmer of sapphire
in your eyes.

And in the instant you come
swimming into view
light refracting
underwater, pristine and clear
the silence encompassing us
the world forgetting we exist

and we soar
a thousand miles
to somewhere remote
cool and quiet
the sun relaxing behind clouds-
a daydream.
but just for a moment

before time exhales
and we reluctantly
reawaken
to life.

every time you close your eyes

your dreams are close at hand.
they are hiding in the darkness somewhere.
ready yourself, light a match to lead the way.
no. let them find you, wait here in the silence.
relax and watch the panoramic play out on the back of your eyelids.
before you realize it they have crept their way to the front of your mind.
smile and breath and feel them console you.

but in an instant they retreat, as your pupils contract to the light of the world
that is waiting at the gates of your lashes,
pounding miserably, yelling in tongues,
interrupting your recollections of your greatest thoughts.
preventing your desperate escapes.

what your rib cage holds

how cold this heart is, red granite left
outside over night.
how the shards fly as it explodes.
how beautifully, artfully it shatters
a symmetric eruption leaving us in awe.

hard hearts, they break.
they shatter like window panes.
they are jagged to the touch.
and they slice open everyone
who tries to mend them.

but soft hearts are the worst. they bend
and stretch. they become weak in areas
that have been pulled too thin.
until they are stretched so far that they must contract to protect themselves
then they tear like the muscle they are. they parts becoming irreconcilable.

their ripped edges do not create smooth faces like the hard ones. But instead
lifeless tentactles dangle with nothing left to hold on to. unconnected to each other,
stringy remnants that were pulled from the arms of their brethren.
lonely, with the life running out of them.
praying that someone will mend their ruptured heart.

soft hearts decay. hard hearts erode.
regardless, they are both worn out more thoroughly
than their original appearances would ever
let on.

The facts

fate isn't fair. It's even. To maintain there must be balance. And so not everyone gets the same chances. The "luck" that ultimately supersedes our skills and personalities is the first and final determiner of what challenges come into your life and just how grave they are. Will you get hit with something you can handle or something you can't? This luck is spread evenly across the entirety of time.

there are lucky ones to balance the unlucky ones
and the ones in the middle to wait their turn for a chance to become an extreme, complaining that they are forgotten by fate. knowing full well that no one is forgotten.

regardless of how tightly we hold on to things, some will still
slip through our hands. because they were meant to change us
by not giving us what we want, we are forced to cope with the matter in any way we can. and by constantly trying to take what we have, to rip it away from us, it causes us to fight for what we have, to cherish it while it is still ours.

think of the olympics. Think of the people winning medals, who are fulfilling some of their greatest desires. Think about the billions of other people who have that same dream, but will never accomplish it. It's not always their own fault they never got what they wanted. It just wasn't in their fates.

and they will be in pain from it until they become numb to it. And it will bother them until it doesn't. Until they move on. Until they are at peace with their life. But do not mistake this, they have been at war. how long is uncertain, but they must have hurt sometime. And I know it hurts to watch people hurt. But to tell them to deny the hurt is to tell them to deny a crucial experience of life. that it just wasn't in their destiny shows that something else was their calling, and whether or not they accepted it was up to themselves.

the constant flow of energy from the surroundings into the self and vice versa is remarkable. Some is lost in one direction but gained in others; the shiftings of what matters and what doesn't. the choice to achieve one goal over another. We too must realize when fate is done allowing us to use its energy. When it becomes time for that energy to belong to someone else. The energy is never ours. the energy is borrowed. and there comes a time to give it back. in silence, and reverence, humbled by the simple fact that we had the opportunity to borrow against fate.

fate is fate. Fate is not unfair. and even though we think its "unfair", we still play by its rules because its the only chance we have living a human life. we take it like an ungrateful teenager who is allowed to go out on the weekends but has a curfew. call it ugly and unnecessary because it makes us feel anything except in control. But if you open your eyes, you would see how beautiful it is, because if we can understand all the possibilities and can be okay with them we can say, "there is someone who has a better life because of me". No matter how much we try and fight it to be what we want, it will be what it will be.

A Tree Struck By Lightning

May still live through the endeavor. Staying alive through the ordeal proved its will to survive. That given a situation to give up or fight, it chose fight.

Just so you know.

"I gave it up for you. In spite of myself.
I changed myself not because I was ashamed of that part of me. But because I was ashamed of the fact that you were ashamed of me for having that part of me. And the only logical thing to do without hurting you was to change that part of me. But it hurts doing so."

I hope you understand why I walk
a little slower these days.
Its because the poison is slowly spreading,
the poison that comes alive when it is awakened by the sound
of our denying ourselves for the sakes of others.

How the evil of the mind try to hide the spirit. But the spirit speaks
and the truth seeks. And I don't know how much longer I can pretend to be
something I'm not.

Scene: The Grocery Store

The place where you called me the worst grocery cart organizer there could possibly be. I decided to understand this potential new theory and have discovered that:

It is not mathematically possible.

To be the worst grocery cart organizer I would have had to have failed to possess all the qualities that are considered the epitomes of organizing things in the grocery cart.

If there were certain qualities to look for in an organizer's cart, the greatest would be the separation of fruits and vegetables in their entirety from the heavy items- cereal boxes, cans of soup, etc. The downward slant of the cart's carrying section causes weights of the food to be shifted, which causes undesired forces on the mixed in fruit and vegetables, ultimately yielding undesirable fruits and vegetables due to bruises and soft spots.

There could be an infinite amount of qualities along with the one mentioned above that would make me be considered a bad grocery cart organizer, proving that I'm pretty close to being the worst grocery cart organizer. But I do possess this one trait of keeping the fruits and vegetables (and sometimes the bread) separate. If i did not possess this quality then it would be understandable that I was the worst, assuming that I already had all the ill-desired qualities as well.

So maybe my percentage of good organizing skills is low, but there is still the chance that someone out there doesn't separate their fruits and vegetables.

All I know is, he ain't me. He's mister 0% and i'm mister .00000000000ooooooo1%. So you can call me terrible, that's a title i've earned. I take that happily in stride. Because I am. You can call me subpar, because i'm down in the trenches with all the other guys who are underperforming in their grocery cart organization. Telling me to try harder would be perfect the perfect bit of advise.

But when you call me something I'm not, it stays under my skin, crawling for days. I am not actually "the worst". but it stays with me as if it is trying to tempt me to be that. Like a scarlet letter for everyone to see, read and know about. To let everyone have someone that they can point to and say, "well at least i'm not the worst guy, he doesn't even separate his fruits and vegetables". That is not a name that fits, but a title you awarded me. It is a crux.

Shock and Awe Campaign

All my words are nimble, agile, stealthy. Invading your shores.
They bring diplomacy, good tidings; they bring war.

And you're always caught off guard
when something new presents itself
a mind that is still so unexplored.

I spend all my time waiting for you
to catch up and figure out what I had
already figured out a long time ago
what we speak of now

and by the time you've recovered, there is
another tidal wave falling from above you.

Stammering

i'm so unsure of myself that i don't even take the time to capitalize "i".
Thoughts of winning, granduer, achievement, they don't even cross my mind.
So what would you expect me to do, when the only thing I've got goes away.
Caught off guard, forgetting what it used to be like, to be me. Instead this someone else.

how they run

crystal clear down the sides of your face
they reinvigorate weary souls
they are the catalyst in the process of change.

you cry a thunder storm.
sounding off triumphantly
looking so perfect and natural
your tears, they smell of rain
so pure and clean, healing wounds;
absolving the forsaken.

they are lightning bolts,
tracing the contours of your face.
they strike so hot,
cauterizing my insides
searing the brand of your name
into my heart.

broken

don't think that it is incapable of what it was before. that it is any less than it was. sometimes bones may not regrow the right way once they have splintered. but they are just as likely to come back stronger than they were before. because it shattered does not mean that it won't break again. but the possibility that it will be greater than it was is enough to get up and hope for the best.

tessellate

how the pieces fit. so perfect. all the little shapes coming together. all the delicate shards swept up and put back in place. "good as new"

but the lines are there, however fine, they are there.
and they are screaming.

about the injustice they were created from.
they won't let you forget how it felt to be a shattered form of what once was.

as though forgetting was possible.

and when i see the lines in the mirror, i remember.
and when the cold water flows over it, i feel it find those niches.
the wind fights through the smallest of spaces.
time never lets you forget.

and if the appearance plagues you, just mend it.
you can sew it back together. super glue it.
whatever you need to do to try and remember what it felt like before hand.

you come to terms with it. and i'm happy if you do.

but i can't help but feel it will never be seamless again. and that makes me feel greater than i ever did before. proof of staving off adversity. demonstrating that this is still mine to keep. My chance is still out there, because I have not given up.

unthawing

its unnerving; i'm unraveling
at the idea of just waiting things out.

like coming in from the cold
and waiting for my hands to unfreeze.
the slowest torment. and i lose focus
throwing myself all over the sink.
curled up clutching my icy digits.

i clench my hands tight. and hold. and can only think of the misery.
how it stops you in your tracks, how it captures the mind and all i think about is the thaw.
your bones warming, blood flow returning.
thinking of just getting through this ordeal,
romanticizing a return to comfort

you try to rationalize it.
telling yourself that it will be all over soon.
but soon doesn't come early enough.
and the pain lingers. a continuous pushing.
and it lasts, until it doesn't.
the ache goes away for a while.
and i forget about it. and move on.
never really learning from the experience.
dooming myself to relive it over and over again.