poetry. "You said."

I thought i'd put up some recent poetry (recent meaning written today, so they're not fully edited.) but here goes.

i want pretty words now, you said. i want to paint with words that don't bruise, and don't make you cry when you hear them. 

I want words that dance around themselves in ambient light or just under the faint twinkling of the stars. 

I want you to smile when you hear them, laugh when you speak them, touch you in a way that lightens you until you float. 

i want these words to express you.

but what if my expression clashes and dashes, and cuts, and paints a mean jackson pollock. and what if the lilacs behind your house don't remind you of me.

and what if you having your pretty words means i have to give up my bad words, and i cant fling paint at him or cuss him out or just scream if he hurts me.

and what if you take my cutting words away and i'm left with nothing to say, and then i'm just silent.

silence cuts deep, too. 

but if you still want your pretty words, take them. take the tiptoeing words and whispers and the silent screams, and the tears that fall noiselessly to the ground, and do with them what you please. 

take the shuffles and hesitations, and those pauses between words, just take them, and put them all together into one big quiet.

why don't you silence the world while you're at it, hand out breaks, and beats, and rests, and don't let anyone get a word out until revolution and everyone's mad, and just wants to let everything out, and then all that's left are those angry words.

but if you want pretty words, go ahead, take them and use them. just don't paint me with them.

Shimmery Black Holes & Dead Stars

Sometimes I wonder if you’re actually here.

Or if you’re floating between two worlds

not really sure which one is real.

Am I some mirage you stumbled upon
in a drunken state, that you see
but don’t understand how it got there
or whether or not it will disappear in the next moment?

Is the effervescent irridescence ethereal

or do those shiny things we wish on last forever?

Is forever really what it seems, or are those

supposedly logical people relying on an

infinity that doesn’t actually exist?

Sometimes I wonder if you actually see me
or if I’m transparent, like a fog hanging over
a still-sleeping town.

[for stars will rise again. tumblr, ffffound]

and then i go numb.

Remember how I'm in denial? Well I'm even more so now. I just found out that a woman I was close to was killed when her church collapsed in Haiti yesterday. I'm not really sure how to deal with her passing, and she left two children behind in Haiti (1 (who I used to babysit) and 10) whom are now being taken care of by a 12 and 13/14 year old.

I just wish there was more I could do. But sometimes I feel like I'm not doing anything at all.

Be a better person, at least.

Something... something.

L’Éternel est mon berger:

je ne manquerai de rien.

Il me fait reposer dans le

I hope you’re lying in green pastures.

You know, they read that

psalm at the wake,

the deacons and the deaconesses

walking single file into the church.

It wasn’t a large affair,

I mean, it was a big church

but the service was small, humble, like you.

The pastor was supposed to console us.

I guess in a way he did, how he kept

rambling on about the night.

I wanted him to say something like

“It’s when it gets as dark as it can get

the stars come out.” But he didn’t.

He just kept going on and on about the night.

I wonder what souls look like:

where they go. Is yours a wanderer?

Is it floating, an effervescent bubble,

Like the one she just popped by

coming into my room and asking questions?

You can’t ask Death questions like

Why? or What are you doing?

I read once that Death is like

a blind man, pointing a bony finger…

something like that.

I pray for your soul.

That it isn’t just out there,

that it has found a resting place,

that you have found a resting place,

where Death can’t interrupt anymore.

[rest in peace sister jacqueline.]

i wrote this poem two years ago almost to the day.

it still resonates. death is never really that far away.

life: on being in denial.

Life is usually interesting. However, we go through life never thinking that anything will ever happen to us. It will always happen to 'those people'. That nothing bad would ever come of my family, because we're good people. That nothing will ever come of us, that somehow we live in this impenetrable bubble of protection. 

That bubble seemed to burst today for my family, yet, we are still, I believe in denial. I'm listening to a live TV and radio station that is talking about the 7.0 magnitude earthquake in Haiti that occurred at about 4:53 p.m today, and speaking to the fact that things "always seem to happen to Haiti-- never anywhere else." That Cuba is so close to Haiti, but they weren't hit. I'm sitting here stunned that something could have happened to "our Haiti."  

That is blatant denial. People seem to be looking for an explanation for these events, something other than the fact that this is LIFE. 

There will always be trials. Sometimes they happen on larger scales, and sometimes on a smaller scale, but they are always there. 

We are so quick to say, when something happens to us: "Why didn't it happen to them?" But perhaps it has-- on a different scale and you're (we're) too shallow-minded to see it.

new stalkee: Fashion by He

hahahahahahaha. He is hilarious, and full of truth. 

This is the second or third fashion blog by a guy I have read, and it is completely worth my time, and also makes me laugh (which I sometimes need when taking a break from homework). 

Check him out: http://fashionbyhe.blogspot.com/

p.s. if it helps, he writes in a post about how much he hates UGGs.

Here's one of his posts:

Bad new year....

It is really cold in NYC, but that in no way gives you the right to tuck your sweatpants into your socks.
Why are you even wearing sweatpants in the first place?
Not a good start.
-He

READ IT.

being the outsider

this morning in assembly the headmaster of the school got up on stage and talked about his aha! moment, his moment of awareness. The first was when he walked into the grocery store in his neighborhood in Maui and was the only white person in the entire store. he was the outsider. 

then, during French, our teacher asked us how many bathrooms we have in our house (yes, i'm in french 1), and one kid said 5... and wasn't even sure. 

and then he asked how many rooms we have. in france, the bathrooms aren't considered a room. so when one kid said he has more than 10 rooms in his house, he probably didn't mean including the 4 bathrooms. 

that's how you know you're from a different world. When you have 1 and a half bathrooms, and three bedrooms, and only a living room, not a salle de sèjour, a living, and 60 million sofas to go with them.

[flickr]

on emptiness.

Maybe we should spend less time trying to fill emptiness and more time trying to feel emptiness. Maybe that's where there's healing.

[cara @ i'm feeling good/rumi]