Yesterday, I lost my cousin. He was a gentle soul and a dreamer whose life was much too short. Like I do, I wrote a poem to express myself. Dear E, this is for you. To all the ones I’ve lost...I have learned to catalogue the names
Of my loved ones on my soul Tattoo them in the chambers of my heart Because once their light goes out All that is left are the memories Frozen in color, sometimes in motion Often beneath the plastic sleeves of albums, A beloved phrase, and a half-remembered smile Because we all want a sweet life No one knows your struggles But I’ll collect your stories So I may find you again May your gentle soul Rest In Perfect Peace!
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If you ever get lost
Look to the north star It will bring you home Guide you back down to earth If you're ever wanting Rub a lamp on its side It will grant your wishes Wealth flows with the tide So wake your dreams up Shoot for the moon Make the first move It will all end right If you so believe, then it will be What is opened on Earth will open above The skies will open and you will see That the falling water are showers of blessings Come to wipe your tears clean This new year is going to be something different
We leave all the bad energy of the last behind All our failures, pain and mistakes To remind us how lucky we are To make it through the turbulent times A fresh new wind is blowing My sadness far, far away A bold new me in the making Built on the blueprints of my yesterday And you will know me For I am born again I'll blow you kisses of love instead Of the blood I used to cry In honor of #MLKDay and current events, here is "I dream in English," a poem I wrote years ago that is, sadly, even more relevant today. Let us never forget the brave men and women who fought--through words and their actions--for a better tomorrow. As long as there are laws, words, actions and beliefs that still proclaim the superiority of one person over the other, the Dream is still not realized. We must pass the torch to the next generation because this battle is not yet won. While I hope we can dream a better tomorrow, I hope we can work towards it with great fervor and love.
As the year ends, I rise
To the occasion of the new one Ashes are templates upon which To build your new dreams on I pull out all my rotten parts Salted the earth so they may grow no more I reach for a new dawn Climb up the walls of ivory-plated tower of failures To seek anew the dreams of my forebears The cohesiveness of my past with my future To render a more unified present Which I present to my newborn self And as the year ends, I rise There is something in my past
It eats away at my future I do not yet know what it is But it is jeopardizing tomorrow I must pull it by the root So that it may never grow again Find me all the time in a castle of gray and white
When you do, ask me what I left behind In time you will see that all I am Is not what I proclaim to be I am a shell of a shell Was never true to myself Perhaps it's not too late to learn That a helping hand eases the pain My castle is overgrown, I should cut the weed But the thorns are digging deeper, leaving fine scratches on my skin I hired a gardener to oversee The cleaning and pruning of thorns and weeds He took one close look at me And created a sculpture of my visage It is me, he corrected eagerly How he sees me! Surprised, I've never seen myself I am amazed, looking around, noticing That the thorns and weed were made to resemble me Come spring, I'll have a garden of fragrant flowers That my gardener has nurtured himself He's got a green thumb, an affinity for growth I meant to keep him... If he's not already mine Inhale the winter’s breeze
Green turns bare Life; a knotted ending I'm teaching you how a girl became a monster
All the dreams she'd hoped to spin All the songs she'd hope to sing On the road she drove too fast out of control The sad and the lonely The arms wrapped around me The truth and the tales All the lies we sold We're chasing tomorrow We're chasing fortunes We're chasing our pasts Trying to forget misfortunes Never a fantasy we couldn't ruin Fill in between lines and, true, You'll find us running as fast To get away from who we are *** Little ants. Tiny, little ants. **** I'm teaching you how a girl became a monster All the dreams she'd hoped to spin All the songs she'd hope to sing On the road she drove too fast out of control We were past the highway when you realized you never knew me at all
Regret is the word we use when we wish we could forget So you ask And I speak You glance anywhere but at me The trees reach in: soft, canary yellow appendages gliding against your skin As if to comfort you I am alone in my box, watching the scene like a bystander The cars weave in and out in front of you My words do the same, monosyllabic as they are Perhaps the silence held the knife While my words were mere menacing pinpricks Stoplight: blinking yellow then un-approving red Stop Exactly like a mother would scold Her bright-eyed child for being too eager Green You realize it might have been better not knowing me at all Afterall, forgetting ensures there is nothing to regret Sun: light, glare, heat, crisp
Butterflies dancing, gleeful Does not feel like fall Autumn, students chat
Worried about new school year Boredom, grades, what’s next? This place is not a home
It’s a place that thrives on tragedy It leaves me feeling cold And I cannot explain it You keep telling me how good it’s been But I can't stand my life Destroyed in front of me I wished I had enough courage to leave I don’t know what I’m still doing here I keep telling myself it ends now But the next morning I wake To see nothing’s changed And my prison gets smaller My leash suffocate me This place is not a home It’s a place that slowly Squeezes the life out of me A sacrifice of only one Dreams was written sometime in 2013. In my dreams I have lived a hundred lives
I have been both good and bad with iridescent shades of grays Once I was a teacher who led a revolution A cook who cooked for the king A revolutionary leader who killed a king A traitor with a heart of gold A queen who ran away The child who knew it all And the axeman who let the axe fall A cell phone which talked too much A book holding unto stories and touch Of the reader who left it behind But the best dreams are the ones When I'm with you The best part of dreaming Is that these are songs I've yet to sing #apathappears was written to commenmorate the show, during the viewing around January 27, 2015 |
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