awakened

it’s raining today.

everything is falling through

or rather,

coming through.

while the structure may collapse in on itself,

by morning it will glisten with that familiar glow of

self-realization.

today,

my mind will burn within itself and have nothing but thoughts to light up through.

today,

my chest will break but my heart will pump through it all

relentlessly.

because today, i’m coming together, i’m letting rage and affection sew my skin on and i will tread across the city naked

in my new dress;

i will be.

(finally)

 

my chest pains

I can say

that when I saw him

It was friendly

(which it was)

and my likeness receded

to friendliness

(relatively true at particular points)

But against all

rationalities

(a particularly familiar and cliche love-struck feeling)

I still saw us together

(an imagining painted by colors whose frequencies did not exist)

Even when he seemed in a different place

and I completely

un-intimate

It still seemed right;

impractical;

wrong in most ways

But I think it hurt me, more,

to think of us not ending up

‘together’

the reality struck me as obvious and hurtful

and I’ve never (almost always)

been so perfectly out of

line

and I only hope;

(hopelessly romanticize),

that years later,

(or seconds)

In a moment of pure friendship

he feels a tinge

something of an itch

of what I felt

in my mind

because I;

one,

can only hope.

(for you)

(for your love)

(for your being to touch my being)

(differently)

beyond the parentheses

closing in on me

From the Florist by the Corner

where do you buy it from, babe

where do you get it from

do you happen to find it walking right next to you


on  the parallel sidewalk pavement




where do you stumble upon its fragrance


how do you track that motherfucker down




do you follow its footsteps in the snow


or do you kick through its gold in the autumn leaves




does it let you in its home


does it have a welcome mat


or do you just walk in on its tea mornings


and late cocktail parties





do you try to remind it of your 5-day schedule




how it needs to show up sometime soon




or does it barge in on you unexpected at 2 in the morning 




does it try to make it more bearable or is it like the surging pain




of period cramps right before your monday 8 ams





does it let you breathe in your prayer


or is it the ominous silence in the bathroom





when the clock ticks too loud for life to go unnoticed


and when the grumble from the laundromat begs to be heard


when your stomach shrugs from too much thought


and your mind throbs


dying on the inside from the absence of closure



 


is it like a chameleon constantly changing its guise?


or is it the same sleep-killing chirping of the birds at the breaking of dawn?


does it ever come pass you by when you miss it in afternoon coffee breaks


or does it find you rolled up in a blanket with your third cup of coffee at midnight



 


where do you buy your meaning, babe


where do you find that sense of purpose




it’s written all over you in colors I have not found the names for


but I hope to wear it as proudly as you do when it finds me




if it finds me



 


so just tell me,


where do you buy it, babe?

 


 

Religion

One day I will come back home.
I will walk on the familiar welcome rug
and smell the scent of childhood;
an emanation from a past life.

One day I will come home.
When I can walk into the arms of loved ones,
without bearing the need to care for those
biological associated with my
name.

One day I will come home.
But it won’t be to hand written to-do lists on
my wooden desk
nor to the kitchen slab with
food awaiting knife cuts
and other members
awaiting sugar coats.

One day I will come back home.
Treading on familiar sidewalks and skipping
the ending lines of cubes.
Racing my spirit
and finding it
at the doorstep.

One day I will come back home.
I will lose the idea of my self the moment
I ring the doorbell
and will slowly let my soul
fall prey to
religion
as I walk through the door
to home.

 

Skipping Time

Dear,

listen to me,

I have not walked the Earth long enough that cemented roads seem,

to be,

just the same to me,

I did not follow my dreams and will and aims and goals and things they told me to write down on lined paper in second grade because I did not see,

what they did with words on paper, what they did with words at all, so please,

understand me when I say, I do not know,

it is not me you see waking up to mirror reflections of her ego so big it radiates in a circular dark halo around her throat,

it suffocates,

she suffocates,

on words and poetic conventions, she does not believe,

in broken science and perfect rhymes and adultry,

never has she walked away from anything, simply,

because of its familiarity,

and this, her rationality, was merely,

true.

They told her describe yourself in 5 words,

but words just too big, too small, to fit herself within,

she felt the echo of the space left within the letters she could not utter,

the fitted words she couldn’t crush her thighs to fit between too close a space for parked cars

she never knew how to be,

and she made revelations on the idea of her mere existence early in eighth grade when she was told she could not be worthy,

of letters and bodies she did not have,

and she believed.

Naive, naive, naive,

she runs and plays with ghosts of her dreams,

she knows, she knows, SHE KNOWS, how to build her own delusions,

strong enough for escapism and fragile enough for penetration.

Later throughout the years, they asked her what kind of person she wanted to be,

WHAT KIND,

and she did not want to be, she did not know how to want to be,

she stared at her blank paper and drew cubes all over,

tall modern skyscrapers of the new world that met Greek architecture of fountain-ancient times,

she wandered off between the lines, tackling ambiguities she knew she would never conclude,

she knew that at this point, any question raised in history class, was merely for discussion, it was not to know for sure,

how her own skin, like red ribbons wrapped around cake, could tear at the sight of existence itself.

Her existence remained a haunting ghost that never stopped at the threshold between reality and delusion

But oh, in eleventh grade,

she walks in to sobbing, and black, and all to her disknowledge of life,

she encountered death,

not anyone she really knew, just someone who knew another someone who had a mother who had a daughter whom she lost to medicine that was still too retarded to save from developing drug-resistant biology

the date and time for funeral life was sent across from face to face I couldn’t escape, what was this they told me of?

I did not go, I only traveled there in thoughts of what might’ve been a realistically painted Audrey Hepburn portrait of the scene,

All black, because sorrow came in colors and clothing,

All sobbing, because melancholy only manifested in tears,

All good memories, because remembering was only for the dead,

And all along, the faces she never knew of, came to condole her lost member,

Sorry if I’m intrusive, but honey,

none of this makes you feel better,

not coffins and roses, or spoken verses of religion can really help you through this, and most definitely not people who never knew her who act and sob and cry,

you are here, and he is there,

what is there to be so mad at God about,

what is there to be so sad about,

it is all gone, and this is only irrational.

When I die, when a dear friend or family member dies, I will not invite, I will not pretend to know the people he did not know while they offer their fake condolences,

Honey, I’ve met you once,

over lunch because a sister of a friend knew you, and happened to run into you one day,

and so we talked about background, horoscopes, and names of friends, we both did not remember,

so when your husband dies, I will not be there condoling you because if I open his coffin next to five others that look nothing like him, I will not be able to identify him, because his features along with yours are merely names smudged in my memory,

I do not know you,

and I will not fake sorrow for your day, your week, your month, your year in black just because you’re too emotionally distressed to understand where I’m coming from.

In twelfth grade, she was revising all profoundly-held ideologies, there was no going forward beyond this,

this world of Socrates, Descartes, and Heidegger now suffocated her, in all aesthetic ways of course, she knew she would forever admire thought,

but how she thought these thoughts, it killed her,

going back and forth on something she knew she would never knew,

little words of knowledge were so beautiful, but she’s grown tired of beauty,

her face has already wrinkled from anxiety and too early knowledge of all things of life,

it’s like she skipped high-school altogether and was walking into her fifties all dull and tired.

A grandmother to none,

she hoped to bore no children in this world of misery,

I did not want to bore my children and their children with my forgetfulness and incessant need for care,

I simply did not care enough for my grandmother, and expected patience to have a shorter time span at my time,

I just wanted to die next to my morning coffee and book,

looking outside my window, and letting the china cup fall and crash in my mind while it rests peacefully on the ornamented glass table,

I just never wanted to encounter my own anymore,

for this little fragment in time, between life and death,

let me have the peace of not knowing who I was and who I will be, and not caring enough to know, to have let go of all knowledge and all memories, and floated in this, just now.

Everybody’s Fate

“So how can you not get your heart broken?”
“Not fall in love.”
“But how can you not fall in love?”
“By trying to stop fate.”
“How can you stop fate?”
“You can’t.”