Monday, October 6, 2014

Do you ever?

Do you ever dream of me
the way I dream of you?
Like calm waters whose airy surface becomes an inverse reflection of a reality
that seems so honest and actual,
that when you awake,
you question who is the dreamer
and which reality is the dreamed?
Either way, when you awoke something ancient inside me,
I bean to give,
like water pushing rocks, trembling.

My need to give feels like pouring myself into a bottomless ladle
that's reaching across the horizon
looking for the edge of the universe.
If I only knew how to give it to you
I might stop overflowing across your fields of flowers.
I'm flooding into the streets.
It's been years since I was shaken,
and I still haven't figured out how to stop
spilling over myself into your void.

Gushing through the cracks,
from that bottomless edge, I push myself up and up again
like air bubbles trying to escape and find their airy surface,
searching for the answers in the map of seaweed and sea stars.
I pause here suspended,
wondering if you will ever understand
or if this feeling was just a reflection of a dream
where I swim through questions if my feeling was a dream
and if you were even real.

Saturday, July 26, 2014

Love isn't Safe

What I want has nothing to do with me.
Love- a giving word
that does not ask for compensation.

I cannot create it
I cannot make it, I have no say.
Love is not something that can be controlled.
Love is surrender.


It is a force that does not come from without
but within.
A force, compelling and absolute
as life finding a will to live
as the planets trying to escape their orbit around a star
as a bird's unwillingness to become grounded.


Love is probably one of the biggest risks to take in a lifetime


because it requires complete openness to another 
and invested trust in them.

Love is transformative.

Losing it can strip you of everything you thought you knew,
thought you had built,
thought you were
and leave you soft and naked like a baby
discovering the world for the first time
crying from a forgotten depth of existence.

Love
As the lights cascade across the skies and down your cheek,
I want to laugh nonsense with you until the crickets hum us their lullabies.
I want to lay in a tent with you and listen to the rush of the rain.
As their drops trickle over our fortress, swaddled like children, I want to caress your feet with my soles, and trace the outline of your face up and down with gentle fingertips.
I want to hear the sound of the earth with you.
I want to bury my head into your chest and feel the deep drumming, dancing, the beat within you.
I want every season with you. I want to feel the changes, exchanges, and the rearrangements with you.
an exchange
an embrace
an invitation
to make meaning of our lives.

Stormy Nights

Fighting every emotional bone in my body,
I move
slowly initiating
my mind slowly swaying like a boat on your seas

out-
Put your hand on my chest.
Feel thunder inside me.
I am drowning in the storm.

and in-
The currents swirl like blue infinity around me.
I hold my breath. Calm stillness in the center 
to observe the capability of your insistence on destruction,
never apologizing
never taking accountability,
wrecking, breaking, blaming...

If I hold on, you'll take me down
to hit the hard, hard ground,
where I lay heavy with your tides flowing over me.
If I let go now, I might drift away, 
find some shelter in another lover
with two feet firmly planted, ready to make roots.

My hand cracks
as fingers unfurl, the only sutures left for hope of our salvation, 
I see through the splinters 
a yellow warmth, a singing light. 
As it rises over the horizon, breaking clouds, I know
there comes an end to eternal storm and night.





Thursday, July 3, 2014

Thoughts

You are not above your feelings,
how you respond emotionally defines personality.
Nor are you ruled by them,
how you respond with choices defines character.

Emotional responses are difficult because they ask us to be raw, to be authentic, honest and open when faced with a world from whom we want to protect ourselves. In order to maintain an openness and honest relationship with our emotional responses, we must understand and be comfortable with our true selves. Being in touch with our true selves requires work, because we must incorporate this into our daily lives which are wrought with challenges both internal and external.

Each day we make choices about how we carry ourselves into the world.

We all have a choice to live in fear of our emotions. We can choose to avoid them, act like we are above our feelings, or worse, like we are absent of them. This repression can manifest in great anxiety or depression, and sometimes outbursts of anger. We can fear being our true selves because being open and authentic, or feeling vulnerable, can lead us to great disappointments and feelings of rejection or inadequacy. These are complicated emotions that can be alleviated with help of understand and eventual acceptance of ourselves. The old saying still rings true, we cannot love others until we love ourselves. Loving oneself, in my perspective, means acceptance of the self. When we are honest about who we are, what we want and what we need, then we can better understand ourselves and the emotions we experience.

We also have a choice to let our emotions rule our lives. This too can lead to great suffering, because we become so consumed with the feeling in the moment, that often in doing this, we lose sight of the bigger picture and what is truly important in our lives. I am in no way trying to undermine great pain and suffering, because these can be felt acutely. However, most feelings are temporary, and how we feel today changes from how we feel three days, three weeks, three moths... from now. Time and space are invaluable friends when dealing with difficult emotions because they help us to gain perspective on the situation, and they allow us opportunities to gain insight into ourselves. Acting upon feelings in the moment can be exhilarating, but when they rule or lives, there is often a lack of stability. We must remember to let the choices we make today be the consequences we can live with tomorrow.

Feelings are part of the human experience. They can be a gift and a curse depending on the situation, but it is important to understand that while feelings are an important part of who we are, they are not us in totality.






Sunday, June 15, 2014

All Children

We are all children
lost in strange long bodies,
with long lines of excuses etching deeper under our eyes.
We cover them to conceal ourselves from exposure,
for each limb and hair, although grown organically, are subjects,
objects for judgement.

We are all children
lost in a sea of confusion where innocence like foot prints and beach balls wash away with the tide.
We are all reaching out for salvation
or a buoy to carry us back to shore, where waves erode us some more, until we forget our naked selves,
forget what we were stretching towards.
Stretching, our bodies grew longer but we did not know why.

We are all children
forgetting the wonder in the puddles of low tides,
forgetting the important questions about the snails and why they stick to the rocks,
forgetting how to cry,
how to feel,
how to say I love you before bed
and know it will always be there in the morning.

We are all children
pretending to like our bodies,
pretending we are tough,
swimming away from shore and trying to keep afloat
as we choke down salty tears and water,
we are trying to prove ourselves
to ourselves
that it will all be ok,

because inside we are all children
reaching out for love
from ourselves. 

Wednesday, June 11, 2014

Untitled

I don't understand why I love you the way I do.

I offer it freely
which is what has always felt right,

yet everyone is telling me that I won't find what I am looking for, unconditional reciprocation, if I just give it away. I am supposed to make you work for it.

This logic has never made any sense to me.

It felt like saying,
you know, we love you and want you to understand how significant that is.
But instead of offering our love and all of its beautiful, nuanced complexities,
we are going to withhold it
because you have to prove that you are worthy of receiving what we already have for you, and are ready to give you.

Love does not need proof. Love does not need validation. Love is beautifully naive and optimistic. Love is hope and potential.
Love is about giving, growing, compassion and understanding.
Love knows no judgments. 

I am not one who likes to withhold my love. I keep that window open,
inviting and honest
like the way a child takes your hand and smilies,
offering their trust in you with every tiny finger,
offering you a chance to try your best at being trustworthy with every missing tooth.

I want to love you.
I want you wrap my tiny hands with yours and smile at you like the big skies over flatlands.
I want to share with you my enthusiasm in the sunrises,
my experiences in the pink and orange glow before night,
my curiosity for the changes in the clouds,
and my serenity in the stars
as we lay side by side on the hood of your car listening to the wolf sing
as spring gently melts away a bitter winter.
I would lay there forever if I could. 

I don't understand why I love you the way I do. You do not open your tiny hands and invite me through your window with gaps in your smile.
You are distant like the wolf
singing to a lover moon who does not return your call.

I am alone on a car waiting naively...
at least while it still feels right.


Wednesday, February 19, 2014

Begetting

The wind blows down empty hallways
looking for a flame to flirt with
or a body to caress.
It howls, lost
wondering why the halls
stood silent and
deserted,
why all the mothers are not attending crying children,
why all the shadows and demons are not frightening the young into their bedtime stories,
why all the lovers are not sneaking into their beloved's bedchamber.

The hallways, dark and still
smelled of old flames' smokey souls
snuffed before midnight.
Mourning, the wind whispers
ancient sonnets that traveled on its path
leaving behind bleeding hearts dripping of rose petals
wilting down the cold steps.

Curling upwards, the gusts thrash dried buds against each other,
desperately searching for something to hold,
something to remember

a time when hallways bustled with life
when flames eternal lit the nights
and laughter echoed back to the songs of the wind.






Wednesday, February 5, 2014

Blowing in the Wind

How many times do I have to let go
before I feel liberated from the weight?

It's like an incredible sinking stone
that hits the bottom
so hard
it shatters through, resurfacing
to an even deeper space
to sink in further.

How many days must I make
and fill with my life
before I feel full?

I wake up and make french toast,
I read books about theory, watch Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid,
I go to work, I go to class,
I put every ounce of myself into the things I love,
but somehow still have
empty space
reserved.
Somewhere I am waiting.

How many miles must I run
before I am far away enough,
before I scream and cry enough,
before I break and change and rearrange enough,
before I stop trying, and
am brave enough
to let go,
and finally mean it?